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The night after Robb executes his best friend, he dreams of him. 

In the dream they are young, green boys yet untouched by war, splashing around in the hot springs beneath Winterfell. The aches and pains of the day melt away in the warm water. Theon is smiling his ever-present smile, eyes slipping shut as he sinks into the water until only his head is visible. Theon has always liked the hot springs. It is not the sea, he once said, but it’s the closest thing to it that I’ll find in these frozen lands.  

Robb mirrors him, letting his eyes slip shut to bask in the warmth of the springs. He wonders if the sea is ever warm like this. He has heard Theon speak of the ocean often, but has never actually laid his own eyes upon it.

When he opens his eyes to ask him about it, Theon is gone. 

At first Robb thinks he must have dunked under the water to wet his hair, but the seconds turn to minutes and Theon does not emerge. 

“Theon?” Robb asks, suddenly afraid. There is no answer. He searches for him, wading through the shallow springs and swiping his hands through the water. Again: “Theon?” 

He looks and looks but Theon is nowhere to be found. His heart races as panic fills him. Theon is gone. Theon is gone. He knows with a sudden dread that he will not be coming back.

He turns again, and Theon is back. He stands before Robb, years older, hair longer and face leaner. His eyes are hard. He is soaking wet, water pouring off of him and turning the dirt below him to mud, dark hair sticking to his neck. They are in the forest now, Robb’s bannermen surrounding them, watching. 

His lord father stands beside his mother, watching. His siblings are there, watching. Theon’s as well, the dead brothers and elder sister Robb has heard stories of but never seen, their faces a blur. They are watching. 

There is a sword in Robb’s hands. Theon’s stare is unrelenting. There is no fondness in his eyes. 

“Go on then, Your Grace,” Theon says. “Do your father’s duty.” 

Robb wakes up damp with sweat, panting into the cool air of a room he does not recognize. Still bleary with sleep, he looks around for Theon, and then remembers that Theon is dead, and that Robb killed him. He is alone in his bed. 

Robb takes deep breaths. He does not weep. 

You will not even cry for me? he hears in a whisper, clear as day, but when he startles and looks around the room there is nobody there. 

He gets out of bed and dresses quickly, Grey Wind’s irritation at being stuck in Robb’s quarters all night urging him out the door.

The day is cloudy and the air thick with the promise of rain, as though reflecting Robb’s mood upon the world. His men are being careful with him today. He is greeted with the usual respect as he walks through the camp outside the castle, but to him there seems to be a somber sort of veil over the world. Perhaps it is only an echo of Grey Wind’s gloomy displeasure as he walks beside Robb; neither of them are in high spirits as of late.

There is no time for a king to wallow, however, especially not a king waging war. There are many matters to discuss, plans to be made. He must get the envoy to return Theon’s body to the Islands sorted, and he wants the men ready to begin the march West by this time next week, hopefully sooner.

As Robb crosses the courtyard, his eyes catch on a figure on the very edge of camp, gazing out at the treeline. The figure’s hair is dark, as is the cloak upon its shoulders. The figure turns slightly, as though sensing Robb’s eyes, and Robb’s stomach drops. 

Theon, he thinks. But that is impossible, because Theon is dead.

Robb takes a step towards the figure, but is stopped by a call of his name. Robin Flint walks towards him, bows slightly in greeting when he meets him. 

“The men have gathered, Your Grace,” he says. 

“Good,” Robb says, voice flat and even. “There is much to discuss.”

When he glances back at the treeline, the figure is gone. 

*

The raven had come mere days before Theon was set to return to Pyke as an envoy for their cause. He was originally meant to leave a week ago with the rest of Robb’s envoys, but the trip had been delayed; first, his men were not content with the idea of sending Theon home, and then, when Robb had finally convinced them that sending Balon Greyjoy’s son to speak with him was the best course of action, the weather had made travel more of a risk than it was worth.

Finally, when the decision had been made for Robb to progress Westward and the Mallisters were set to deliver Theon to Seaguard, the raven had come. Robb was in high spirits when Maester Vyman had requested an urgent audience.

Dark wings brought dark words. Full-scale, coordinated attacks from the ironborn along the Northern coasts. The Stony Shore besieged, Moat Cailin fallen and Deepwood Motte captured and held. All of this done before Robb’s offer of an alliance could even be made. All of this done with the knowledge of what would become of Balon’s last living son as a result.

“How many know of this?” Robb asked after he had read and reread the letter in his hands. 

“Only those in this room.”

Robb nodded. “Bring Theon to my solar at once. Do not harm him. Do not chain him. Do not spread this news. I wish to speak with him before it is known to the rest of the men.”

Despite his instructions, Theon seemed to know that something was wrong the moment he entered, though he did his best to seem at ease.

“You wish to speak with me, Your Grace?” he greeted, teasing little lilt to the title. 

“Yes,” Robb said. Something in his voice or his face made the humor slip from Theon’s.

“Is something wrong?”

Robb pulled the letter from his pocket, forcing the mask of King onto his face. 

“There is word from the North.” He unfolded the letter and slid it across the table. Theon stepped forwards to take it, but didn’t read it. “There have been attacks from ironborn raiders all along the coastal villages. Deepwood Motte and Moat Cailin have been seized. It seems your father has rebelled.”

Theon stared at him for a very long moment, still and silent, as he took this in. Something like devastation in his eyes, a terrible expression he had never seen on Theon’s face before. His eyes dropped to the letter, which he read in silence, hair falling like a curtain over his face.

When he was finished, he smoothed the paper down against the table’s surface. He huffed a weak, awful laugh, two laughs, and then strode across the room to reach for a glass and a bottle of wine.

“Theon, please. This is serious.”

“Yes, it is,” Theon agreed, lifting the bottle as if in a toast. “But I am not dying sober.”

“I will not be doing anything today,” Robb hurried to say.

“But you will do it.” It did not seem a question. 

“I…I don’t know,” Robb stuttered, to his shame, sounding such a little boy.

Theon scoffed, crossing back to the table and setting his glass down. “Please spare me pleasantries, Your Grace. If you mean to kill me, tell me true.”

Robb knew not what to say. The mask of King he rarely had to wear around Theon when they were alone together like this. A decision such as this, the demand of so soon an answer. 

“I must consider my options carefully before I come to a decision,” Robb started, as though he did not already know his options and the decision he must make.

“Well,” Theon said, examining the glass of wine in his hands. “On one hand, you are a king, beholden to no crown nor will but your own. Robert Baratheon is dead and you swore no oath to him. On the other, this is a grievous offense my father does you. Rules of war dictate you send him my head—though seeing as he knew what would happen if he attacked, I doubt it will do much to dissuade him.”

“You have given this thought,” Robb said, somehow taken aback.

Theon barked a mirthless laugh. “It has been my fate for near a decade, of course I have given it thought. Though I always did expect that it would happen in Winterfell.” A thoughtful pause, in which Theon took a swallow of wine. “I spent many a night wondering how far my head might roll down that hill. Perhaps it would make it all the way to the bottom, though I have never seen a head accomplish such a feat.”

Nor had Robb, during any of his father’s executions that he had been witness to. Robb had never given thought to what it might be like to see Theon lose his head the same way. He knew very well why Theon was in the North, had known since the beginning, but it had never felt like something that could truly happen, something real, until this day. 

“I do not want to kill you, Theon,” Robb said helplessly, feeling very small in the face of this new, harsh reality. 

Theon smiled wryly, a little bit bitter and a little bit sad. 

“I know.” He said, and finished his wine. 

Neither of them had much to say after that. 

*

Robb spends the better part of the coming week coordinating with his bannermen to move their forces West. There is no use in dallying while they wait for word from Robb’s mother or Ser Cleos Frey in King’s Landing.

Robb’s unease will not leave him. He thinks unceasingly of the cloaked figure on the edge of camp, of last night’s dream and Theon’s unforgiving eyes. If his distraction is obvious, his men say nothing of it. In fact, it seems they are all doing their very best to pretend like Theon never existed among them at all. As though half of them weren’t present to watch Robb kill him. 

Robb knows that Theon has never been loved by his bannermen—too many recall the countless ironborn raids and then men lost during Balon’s rebellion—but he also knows that he had made friends among their men. Sometimes Robb was jealous of his friend’s easy ability to jape and laugh in a way that a King could not. Nights Theon spent with others, sly looks exchanged in the mornings. 

Robb looks to his right. The space that Theon would always take up, standing just in Robb’s line of sight. They could exchange easy, sly looks of their own—or at least, Theon could send them his way. Theon’s spot at the table is now filled by Wendel Manderly and Galbart Glover, stepping closer as to fill in the gap.

As though Theon never stood there at all. 

It is a thought that he carries with him for the rest of the day and into the night. Into the beginning of the journey days later, and many nights on the road. 

Perhaps it is an outlook he should adopt as well. Not that Theon was never here, but that he is gone and will not be coming back.

It is one more weight to carry upon his shoulders, one more loved one lost. There has been no time for him to mourn his father’s death, nor Arya’s disappearance, nor Sansa’s terrible marriage. There is no time to mourn Theon’s death, either. Such is the duty of a king.

With his mother and Theon both gone, Robb finds himself sinking further into that role. He spends the days riding and planning with his men, sups with them, drinks with them, but all of it at a distance. Nights, he spends alone. 

There has been no word from King’s Landing. There has been no word from Robb’s mother on the status of her treating with Renly, though he imagines she is still making her way there. He thinks of her as he lies in bed, staring at the ceiling of his tent and unable to sleep. He has not been sleeping well of late, and recent events have not done much to change that.

He would never admit this aloud to anyone, but he is…worried as to what his mother will think of his response to Balon’s disrespect and the fact that they still have not delivered Theon to the Islands. He does not want her to think him foolish or unthinking. He does not want her to think him a little boy, playing at being a king, unable to keep it together when his mother is away. 

It would have been a blessing to have her there when they discussed Theon’s fate. She was not fond of Theon, but she had known him since he was a boy. Surely she could have tempered Lord Mallister’s thirst for Greyjoy blood, surely she could have presented an alternative. All Robb would have needed was a softer suggestion from someone who was not himself. 

He can only pray to the Old Gods that she will bring good news on her return. He needs a bit of good news right now. He needs a bit of levity, a sly jape or a shared glance. Gods, he misses Theon. He misses Jon. He misses Bran and Rickon and Arya and Sansa. He misses his father. He misses his home. 

A king cannot wallow, a king cannot long for the simpler times of childhood, at least not by the light of day. But at night…at night Robb sometimes feels like a boy, hiding under his blankets from a storm outside his windows. 

He is jolted from his musings by a stirring outside the tent. Footsteps, the heavy fall of boots in the grass. 

The tent flap does not open, but something in the air suddenly changes. Grey Wind feels it, too, growling low and quiet in his throat from his perch on the floor at the foot of the cot. 

Robb inches towards the edge of the cot where his sword lies propped against it. There is the slightest scrape of movement against the ground. Grey Wind stands, teeth bared—and then his warning growl suddenly fades into a soft whine. He troys towards the entrance with a curious noise. 

The movement from the entrance stops as well. Something wet drips onto the floor in a slow, rhythmic dribble. 

Tap, tap, tap. Drops of water against the ground. 

Robb is swept with a wave of unease so strong that it freezes him in place. 

The looming shadow of the doorway is black as pitch and just as thick. It seems to grow taller and wider the longer he stares. The flames of the dying fire cannot reach it, cannot breach the darkness. He cannot see Grey Wind, though he can hear him. 

“Grey Wind,” Robb whispers, finally wrapping fingers around the hilt of his blade. “To me.” And again, when the wolf does not come running: “Grey Wind.”

Grey Wind ambles back out into the firelight with a whine of disappointment. Robb rolls off of the mattress and pulls his sword from its sheath in one swift motion. His bare feet are cool against the ground as he creeps towards the door. 

The strange dripping sounds get louder, louder, louder, until the noise ceases altogether. The silence is abrupt and echoing. 

There is nothing in the doorway. The ground is wet beneath his feet.

Robb slowly lowers his sword, despite the dread that will not leave him.

There is nothing here. There is no one. Robb is alone. 

Grey Wind noses at his hand as Robb climbs back into bed. When Robb scratches at his head, he realizes that the wolf’s fur is damp—as though wet fingers had run through it only moments ago. 

*

The meeting with his bannermen following the deliverance of the news of Balon Greyjoy’s attacks went largely and unfortunately as Robb had expected. 

The immediate calls for Theon’s head from Glover and Mallister were unsurprising, but their vehemence took him aback. Theon had fought beside them for months now, risked his life for Robb’s again and again, and yet they called for his blood as though he were an enemy. 

Robb, as a king was wont to do, allowed them all to say their piece, taking them in in silent thought. They echoed what he already knew to be true, what he had already turned over in his own mind countless times. 

“The only reason the squid is here at all is for this very purpose.” Lord Glover argued, to murmurs of agreement. “What use is a hostage if we make no good on the threat?”

“It is an unfortunate situation,” Maege Mormont said, not unkindly. “Greyjoy has committed no crime of his own, and has fought loyally for our cause. But if you take no action against the ironborn after so direct a slight, then our enemies will have no reason to fear retaliation from you in the future.”

“I do not plan to take no action,” Robb promised. “I will dispatch troops to the coast as soon as possible and drive the ironmen from our shores.”

“And we thank you for that,” Lady Mormont said. “‘But if they think you weak, they are like to return.”

She was right, Robb knew. His men had the truth of it. Doing nothing would show Robb to be ruled by emotion rather than the other way around. He could not be lenient just because Theon was his friend—he had always been a hostage first, no matter how Robb tried to ignore this fact. Balon had attacked the North directly, a blatant insult to Robb, who he knew held Theon’s life in his hands. It was a challenge, a test: will you carry out your father’s promise or are you too weak to follow through?

The boy within him was screaming for him to exercise his right as King to do as he pleased. To choose friendship over strength, to choose one life over thousands. To choose Theon, his brother and his friend and his something nebulous he could not quite put to words, over his father’s oath. 

The King within him knew what he had to do instead.

Robb took a deep breath, lifted his chin, and nodded. “Retrieve Theon from his chambers. I will see him delivered unharmed.” 

His men made haste.

They chained him this time, though Robb did not order them to. Manacled at the wrist, Theon was marched into the room between two guards as though he was a lowly prisoner and deposited at the foot of the stairs before Robb.

He was not smiling. Theon stared up at Robb with a face of stone, squaring his shoulders and raising his chin in challenge. He said nothing.

Robb stared down at his friend and hostage, securing the mask of King upon his face and feeling the weight of the crown upon his head.

“When my father and King Robert broke your father’s rebellion, your father bent the knee and swore fealty to the crown.” Robb started, voice carrying through the silent room. “Your father has now broken his oath. Worse still, he has declared himself King of the Isles and attacked the North directly—a slight against me and my people. And a slight against you.” 

Theon’s mouth twisted  bitterly, but still he did not speak. 

“As your friend, I am sorry it has come to this. It is a great injustice that your father does you.”

Theon scoffed. “My father is not the one here to swing the sword. You are a king, and yet you carry out the wishes of a dead man.”

“My father swore an oath as well.”

“Two dead men, then.”

One of the guards moved to strike him, but Robb held up a hand. 

“Yes.” He agreed, for it was true, “I inherited my father’s duties when I inherited his title. Slights must be answered, and oaths carried out to their end. I am only sorry that this must be one of them.”

Robb knew it must make him seem weak, apologizing twice to the Greyjoy he must kill, but he could not help it. He did not want to do this. He did not want to, and he needed Theon to know that. 

But Theon was unmoved. There was no fondness in his stormy eyes, no forgiveness. Robb felt vaguely sick.

“Do you have any final requests?” Robb asked, forcing his voice steady. 

Theon’s voice was steady as well. “Will you at least grant me the honor of doing it the ironborn way?”

“What way is that?” Robb asked, though he already knew. 

“The way of our god.” 

“Drowning.”

“Yes.” 

Robb looked at his best friend, who stared stonily back. Robb nodded. “Very well.” 

“Your Grace,” someone said, “You cannot mean to—“

“I cannot?” Robb echoed. “Burial rights are important and should be followed. Especially for someone who has committed no true crime of his own.”

“Do the ironborn have any respect for our people’s burial rights?” Lord Mallister protested. 

“Theon did not kill your people,” Robb said firmly. “Theon has been here, fighting by my side. By all of your sides. The crime is not his own, though he must pay for it. We will honor his traditions.“ 

There was  grumbling, but no outright protests. Theon looked at none of them, eyes on no one but Robb. 

“We cannot journey to the sea for this, but Tumblestone is the nearest river. You may have a final night to get your affairs in order and say your goodbyes, and we will go to the river tomorrow morning. Will that suffice?”

“And if I say no, it will not suffice? I lose my head instead.” Theon huffed what could have passed for a laugh if it were any other time and place. “It is not saltwater, but it will do.” 

“Very well,” Robb said again. “It shall be done.” 

*

The wolf dreams come frequently on the march to the westerlands. So do dreams of Theon, and of home, and of that day in the river, but Robb likes the wolf dreams the most.

There is a certain wild freedom in hunting in the night. The blood-lust he cannot allow himself to fall too deeply into lest he never come out of it. The thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of sinking his teeth into his kill. 

One night, after he has eaten his fill and is on his way back to camp, the wolf catches a familiar almost-scent. It is not unlike the death-rot-smell coming from the long box that he avoids, though this is more of a hackle-raising gut feeling than a true scent. 

The wolf follows it. Thoughts of hands on head, fingers in fur, man-sounds that the wolf knows to be laughter. Weaving through tents and sleeping men, he comes upon the only other thing in camp that is awake.

Sitting on a log around a long-extinguished fire is a man that is not a man, a familiar yet unfamiliar presence, here but not-here. The not-man turns as he approaches. He makes a face but beckons the wolf forwards with that hand on head, fingers in fur. 

“You again? Don’t you have deers to be hunting or something?” Theon asks. 

Theon? Robb thinks. Robb, not the wolf. Robb, confused and reeling—suddenly aware that this is a dream and that these kinds of dreams are not supposed to end like this. He does not see Theon when he hunts. This should not be. This should not be.

Grey Wind presses his snout into Theon’s palm, which is dry and calloused. Theon huffs a laugh. Scratches at his head. Fingers in fur. 

Robb wakes up all at once. 

He feels the phantom touch of Theon’s palm against his snout. Fingers in his hair. Fingers in his fur and in his hair, winding Robb’s curls around them as they lay abed. A dream. A dream. Only a dream.

His heart races as he lies there, breathing into the quiet of the night and reminding himself that it was only a dream.

 *

Theon died fighting. 

It went like this: Theon and Robb both waist-deep in the flowing river, a few of Robb’s chosen bannermen and guards lined up along the shore to witness. Fully clothed, boots and all, Robb felt the weight of his layers growing heavy and waterlogged. 

Theon stood before him with the gold chain Robb gifted him around his neck and his wrists still fettered. It was not usually the king who carried out the drowning himself, Robb knew, but something about the idea of Robb’s northmen carrying out this ironborn tradition did not sit right with him. And besides, it was as his father always said: he who passes judgment should swing the sword.

Robb’s hands were empty. There was no sword to swing here, but Robb would pass this judgment all the same.

“We do not go meekly to our deaths,” Theon warned him when they arrived at the river, standing still as his ankles were unchained. “If you mean to kill me, Your Grace, you must kill me.” 

Theon had told him, once, that the ironborn must die fighting to make it to their Drowned God’s watery halls. Robb would not deny him that. Keeping Theon chained at the wrist seemed a pointless cruelty, but it was the one stipulation his bannermen were adamant of. They seemed worried that if unchained, Theon might dive into the water and swim away, but Robb knew that his friend was no craven.

Nor was Robb. They could not stand there forever, delaying the inevitable. Robb reached for him, unsure of where to put his hands. They ended up on Theon’s shoulders.

“Do you have any final words?” Robb asked. 

For a moment, Theon’s somber mask cracked and rippled. There was no forgiveness, but there was sorrow, perhaps. The slightest slant of fear in his brow. He looked very young, like the boy Robb’s father brought home a decade ago. Then it was gone. Theon stood up straight, squared his shoulders.

“Bid my body to the sea.”

Robb nodded. Hands on Theon’s tense shoulders, ready to push, preparing to push. The moment stretched; Robb did not move. He took in his friend’s face, his dark eyes and the slope of his nose and the curve of his unsmiling mouth. Theon stared steadily back. 

Robb wouldn’t have had to look him in the eye if he took his head. Theon would be staring at the ground right now. Shamefully, Robb longed for that distance. 

“Go on then, Your Grace,” Theon finally said, voice hardly carrying over the bubbling of the river. “Do your father’s duty.”

Robb took a breath, braced himself, and pushed Theon down into the water by the shoulders. 

As promised, Theon fought him. 

The fetters did him no favor, but he clawed at Robb’s arms and his chest and struggled to break back to the surface. Robb had to grab at Theon’s flailing arms to keep him down, had to brace a hand on his chest and force him to bend. It took much effort to keep Theon submerged. Robb felt a terrible swell in the back of his throat as his friend thrashed under his hands. 

He had known he would have to take his father’s place as Warden of the North since he was a boy. He always knew that would include executions. Swinging a sword and taking a man’s head. It always seemed an honorable way to take a life, justice served quick and clean. 

He had killed many men by now, both quick and clean and slow and bloody. He had killed them by sword and by wolf, had tasted the blood of Grey Wind’s kills in his own mouth, but he had never killed like this: bare hands, thrashing limbs, holding a man down and down and down until he stopped moving. 

Drowning was a terribly brutal and personal way to kill. 

Even more brutal and personal was the knowledge that it was Theon he was drowning. It was Theon he was holding below the water so that he could not breathe, it was Theon who was clawing at his arms with waning strength. 

Robb wished so badly to separate his best friend from the body below him, but Theon would not let him—Robb had felt these hands upon him in countless ways, he had seen Theon’s hair fan out in the hot springs like this as he dipped his head below the water. Every moment was an excruciating reminder of who he was killing and how. 

It did not feel like justice, swift and clean. It felt like murder. 

It seemed to go on forever. Surely a man could not hold his breath for this long. Surely a man must run out of air eventually. 

Finally, finally, the thrashing slowed until it stopped. Theon’s heart beat until it suddenly did not. Robb felt the life leave him. He suddenly knew that it was a sensation he would carry with him for the rest of his life: Theon, moving and then Theon, still. Theon, living, and then gone by Robb’s own bare hands. 

The splashing stopped, though the river continued to babble and flow. Robb kept his hold on his friend so that the current would not carry him away.

The quiet that stretched after it was done was heavy and strangely somber. If any of them were glad to see Theon gone, they did not show it. Good—Robb didn’t know what he would do if they did. 

Robb could not bring himself to let go even now that the deed was done. He loosened his shoulders and let Theon float to the surface, eyes closed and face slack as if asleep. 

“Help me get him out,” Robb commanded, grateful that his voice didn’t crack with the emotion clogging up his throat. 

Dacey Mormont and Patrek Mallister stepped forwards to aid in pulling Theon out of the water and onto the shoreline. Grey Wind trotted up and sniffed at him curiously, nudged at Theon’s hand with his snout. Robb could practically feel Theon’s wet fingers against his own face as Theon lay there, still and unmoving. Robb suddenly could not bear to look at him any longer. 

“Prepare an envoy to deliver him to Pyke.” He said, turning away. 

The babbling of the river and Theon’s terrible thrashing echoed in Robb’s head all the way back to Riverrun. 

*

Much like the one that was meant to send Theon home before that cursed letter arrived, the envoy is delayed.

His men urge him to send Balon Greyjoy Theon’s head as proof that the deed has been done, as it would be much easier and faster than delivering an entire casket—but Robb will not hear it. The last thing Theon ever asked of him was to bid his body to the sea. Robb will not send him home in pieces. 

Robb sends ravens to Pyke and to Deepwood Motte and to Moat Cailin with news of Theon’s execution. In the former two letters are promises to return his body to be properly handled as to ironborn custom. The two letters that Theon wrote the night before his execution are delivered as well—one to his sister at Deepwood and one to Lady Alannys Greyjoy on Harlaw. 

Jason Mallister refuses to deliver Theon’s body to Seaguard himself, despite the fact that he was set to return home anyways, citing hostilities in Ironman Bay. He will not have his men killed at sea for reasons of sentimentality. 

Robb knows he could very well force Mallister to do it, but he has the truth of the dangers. No, Robb thinks. They head into the westerlands, towards the coast. If they are able to secure the coastal castles, Robb can treat with Theon’s sister or uncles to have the exchange done there.

And so it is arranged to have Theon’s body brought along with the rest of the army. His casket is stored on a wagon near the rear, with the prisoners and livestock. 

Robb does his best not to think of it, though the dreams that plague him make that difficult. He often feels cold at odd times of the day, the ground outside his tent often muddy despite the lack of rain. 

When he is not dreaming of the hunt or of home, Robb is killing Theon a dozen different ways. 

He beheads him, stabs him, slits his throat. Locks him outside during a winter storm, Theon banging on the door until his hits grow slower and weaker and eventually cease entirely. He presses Theon into the dirt with hands around his neck until he stops breathing. He holds him below the water until he stops moving. His bannermen are present for all of them, watching him do his duty. 

Robb does not know why, out of the many men he has killed before now, Theon is the only one that has affected him so. It saddens him to have lost his friend, but it was Balon Greyjoy’s doing, not his own. He committed no slight against his friend. He did his duty as Warden and as King. No one faults him for it, save for his own, unconscious mind and the casket in the back of the army procession. 

He is largely able to keep these thoughts confined to times when he is alone in his tent—it would not do to be distracted during the day, nor during battle, which is waged largely at night. 

This night, using a goat trail that Grey Wind sniffed out during one of his hunts, Robb is able to lead his army around the Golden Tooth without being spotted and catch Stafford Lannister and his men in unawares. 

The battle is swiftly won. Robb and his men overwhelm Lannister’s forces with ease, cutting them down as they stumble out with sleep-heavy limbs and half-trained swordsmanship. 

Robb stalks through the castle courtyard, Grey Wind at his side, the rush of battle pumping through his veins and the taste of blood in his mouth. The cacophony of sound beats against his ears, the clanging of swords and shouting of injured men. 

In the midst of it all, Robb thinks he hears Theon call his name.

The sounds of battle fade into background noise as he turns towards the sound of Theon’s voice, searching the chaos for the source of it—but it is night, and it is dark, and it is war, and Theon is dead. 

Robb! He hears again, behind him now. He turns. No one is there. 

A dead enemy truly is a thing of beauty. Behind him again—he turns—no one there save for a dying Lannister soldier. Oh, the shots I could have made on this night if only I could still hold a bow!

Robb stills, sick of spinning around like a madman. The sounds of the battle return, drowning out any further imagined commentary. 

Because it must be imagined. Some strange memory drawn out by the battle-fever still rushing through him. Theon cannot be here, because Theon is dead. 

He shakes off the blanket of unease that has settled over him, and continues his march towards victory. 

*

Dreams, Robb can write off as his mind dealing with his grief. The glimpses in shadows as well, the sound of his friend’s voice heard in the heat of battle, the late night creeping feeling of something unknowable in the room with him. 

It is when he sees Theon in the light of day that he truly begins to worry. 

The first time it happens is during a strategy meeting, of all places. They are speaking of the latest raven received from Roose Bolton at Harrenhal. Robb finds himself remembering the way Theon used to smile to himself when Lord Bolton spoke, of the many leech-related jokes he would make when the man was not present, and then looks up to see Theon standing in the corner, doing exactly that. 

Robb blinks hard. Looks away. Looks back. Theon remains.

He casts a quick glance around the room, but no one else seems to see the dead man standing in the corner. Robb’s only consolation is that Theon, when he realizes Robb is staring at him, seems equally as surprised to be seen.

“So you have finally decided to stop ignoring me,” Theon says, his smile gone. Hearing his voice again, far above a crackling whisper, shakes loose something painful in Robb’s chest. “I thought I was going to have to start breaking things.”

“Your Grace?” someone says, drawing him back into himself. He realizes he has been staring, wide-eyed, into what to the rest of his men must seem to be an empty corner of the room. 

“Yes,” he says, tearing his eyes away from Theon, who is looking at him with some humor now, mouth twisted amusedly. “I am listening. Please continue.”

The discussion continues. 

Theon does not leave for the rest of the meeting. 

He paces the room meanderingly, occasionally making clever or insulting remarks that the men speaking do not hear. He is dry, this time, for reasons unbeknownst to Robb, and overflowing with a restless energy that Grey Wind picks up on, his own eyes following Theon’s movement from his crouch at Robb’s side.

It is incredibly distracting. And sort of terrifying. 

Am I going mad? Robb wonders. Is this some vengeful spirit come to torment me, taking the shape of my friend? Or is it truly Theon, somehow lingering in death? And, again: Am I going mad? 

By the time the meeting is over and his bannermen are shuffling out, Robb is nearly at his wits’ end.

“Finally,” Theon says when the last of the men has gone and the door swings shut behind them. “I do not miss how dreadfully boring these things could be.”

“What do you want with me, spirit?” Robb asks, searching his head desperately for some scrap of Old Nan’s advice. Did she ever tell stories of any ghosts other than the ones in the crypts?

“That is an unkind thing to say to your dead best friend,” says Theon, or the thing pretending to be Theon, crossing his arms. “And self-centered to boot. It is you who is keeping me here, not I who has any want of you.”

“Me?” Robb says, “What do you—?” 

He takes a startled step back as Theon stalks towards him, dark eyes flashing. 

“I told you to bid my body to the sea. And yet here I remain, rotting in a box in some wagon, carried along with the rest of your prisoners.”

“You will be sent home,” Robb assures, aware he might very well be talking to empty air. “Once we reach the coast, I will arrange to have it done.”

Theon stares at him contemptuously, a look he had never once given Robb in life. It unsettles him, reminds him that this may not even truly be Theon at all. 

“I should hope so,” Maybe-Theon says, “I do not wish to be here any longer.”

With that, he turns on his heel and strides out the door—through the door, for it is shut as Robb’s had been those nights ago—and then he is gone. 

*

Now that Robb has seen and acknowledged him by the light of day, Theon suddenly cannot seem to leave him alone.

The first few sightings strike deep unease and fear into Robb, worry that grief and the weight of the crown have finally driven him mad, and he does his best to ignore the spirit. Theon, however, is not so easily deterred. 

Robb sees him often. Sometimes from afar, sometimes from far too close. Sometimes only glimpses, sometimes far longer. Sometimes Theon is as he was in life: smiling that ever-present smile, rolling his eyes at the Northmen’s gravity and making jests that only Robb can hear. 

Sometimes he is not. Sometimes he does nothing but stare, face solemn and eyes hard, as he did in the river. Sometimes he is as soaking wet as the moment he died, carrying the river with him everywhere he goes, and sometimes he is dry. Sometimes Robb does not see him, but feels his presence the way you can feel the weight of incoming rain in the air. Sometimes he is not there at all, or at least Robb cannot sense him. 

After days of this, Robb comes to accept that this apparition will not be leaving him in peace anytime soon. 

“If you insist on haunting me, could you at least stop getting river water everywhere?” He asks one night, after Theon makes himself known inside of Robb’s tent and begins soaking the rug laid out atop the rocky ground. 

“So you are speaking to me now?” Theon asks with a crooked half-smile, and spreads his arms, flicking water everywhere. “Alas, I have no control over my present state.”

Robb frowns down at the now-damp rug. Grey Wind circles round the ghost, trying to nose at Theon’s side and whining when he can’t make contact. Theon gives Robb an exasperated look, as he often did about the wolf’s antics. 

“Are you truly my Theon?” Robb asks him, chest aching at the sight. “Not some spirit taking his shape?”

“Can spirits do such a thing?”

“I suppose you would know more than I.”

“I know nothing of other spirits.” Theon shrugs. “Yes, I am Theon. Not yours, any longer. But I died as myself, and I remain so in death.”

Robb considers him. Theon does not always appear as solid as he does now, but here in the flickering candle-light, shadows cast upon the world, Robb feels like he could reach out and touch him. 

This ghost looks like Theon. Speaks like him as well. Robb supposes it is not the most outlandish thing that could be true—direwolves were thought to be extinct, after all, and Robb has his wolf dreams. That the dead may linger if they are not properly honored is not so much harder to believe. 

“You say I am what is keeping you here?” Robb asks, remembering Theon’s accusations when first they spoke. “Because your body has not yet been bid to the isles?”

Theon looks away, smile fading. “Yes. At least…that is what makes sense to me. I am not able to go home like this,” he gestures at himself. “I have tried. Perhaps I am too far from the sea to make it on my own.”

“We are near the coast,” Robb offers. “Ashemark and the Crag are our next targets, and they are right beside the sea.”

“You will let me go then, yes? You said arrangements will be made?”

“Yes,” Robb nods, feeling the sudden weight in the air. “It was your final request. I will honor it.”

Theon gives a sharp nod. And then cracks a cocky smile. “Have you missed me terribly in my time away?”

Robb cannot help the smile that splits his own mouth at the familiar note of teasing in his friend’s voice. He thought he would never hear it again. 

“Yes,” he admits, feeling a twinge in his chest at the glimpse of  surprise on Theon’s face. “I have. Very much so.”

Theon’s expression softens into something fond. He steps closer to the desk, further into the light. 

“As have I,” he says, voice hushed as though telling a secret. “It is…an awful thing, to be present but unseen.”

“I see you now,” Robb promises, feeling a vague sense of guilt for the days spent trying his best to ignore him. 

Theon, however, looks nothing but relieved. 

*

Once the uncanny strangeness of speaking with a ghost has passed, Robb is simply glad to have his friend here with him again. Things settle into a strange sort of normalcy—not like they were before, as Theon is most certainly dead, but Robb supposes that one can get used to just about anything. 

This ghost Theon, though sometimes unnerving and prone to fits of melancholy, is much the same as the Theon that Robb knew in life. He seems to think his new ghostly predicament as much a jape as he thinks everything else.

“At least I need not worry about dying every time we engage the enemy,” he tells Robb one night as Robb pours over the Greatjon’s map of the westerlands. “Though I do miss wine. And sleep. And sex.”

“I am sure there are lady-ghosts out there,” Robb offers, though he of course is not sure of this at all. 

Theon seems to give this some thought. “I wonder if it would feel the same. Ghost sex, I mean. Living women are warm inside, but a dead one…”

Robb would once have flushed at Theon’s suggestive tone, but he is a man grown now. Instead he shakes his head and asks, “What do you feel like? I mean, how does it feel to be a ghost?”

“Cold,” Theon says, and nothing else.

“Is that all?”

“Well, if I focus, I think I can feel my body rotting as well. The dark, and the worms, and the stench of it…but mostly it is only cold. It’s as though I have returned to the North: everything is freezing and you are the only one who sees me.”

It could be a jape, if not for the resentful edge to Theon’s voice.

“Why is that so?” Robb asks, to hide his discomfort at the thought of Theon’s body rotting in his casket. “That I alone am able to see you?”

“I don’t know,” Theon says disinterestedly. “Perhaps because you killed me.”

“Balon Greyjoy killed you,” Robb says, as he has repeated to himself many a time over the past few weeks. 

“My father gave me up for dead,” Theon agrees. “But he was not the one who held me under water until I ceased to breathe. That was you, Your Grace.” 

“So it was. At your request.” 

“So it was,” Theon echoes, dripping river water all over the Greatjon’s map. “It was an honorable drowning that you gave me, if there ever was such a thing.”

Theon is smiling again, but it is a sharp and bitter thing. Robb looks back to the water-dotted map.

“Would you like to know how that felt?” Theon asks. “Drowning?”

The challenge in Theon’s voice and Robb’s own morbid curiosity outweigh his discomfort. “Alright,” he says. 

“It hurt, at first,” Theon starts thoughtfully, “when my body realized it could not breathe. My lungs ached as though I had been running for miles. I felt your hands on me, keeping me down.”

Robb thinks of it, vividly: his hands pressing down on Theon’s chest, Theon’s clawing fingers, his kicking legs. 

“I got very cold,” Theon continues. “My body grew heavy as lead. It got harder to move, and to fight. There was a moment where I knew I was going to die, and panic filled me, for I did not want to die. But by then it did not hurt so much, and the panic left. It was…almost peaceful, in the end. I felt your hands on me. I heard the ocean. I thought of Pyke, and of Winterfell. I thought I was finally going home. But…”

He looks at Robb, then. But instead I am still here, Robb hears his silent blame. Instead I am stuck here with you.  

“A clean beheading would not have taken quite so long,” Robb says, stepping around the silent barrel of wildfire. “If that is your biggest complaint.”

Theon stares at him for a moment, or two, and then huffs an exasperated laugh. “I have seen heads that continued to blink after your lord father removed them. Perhaps it takes just as long to die that way, only no one knows it.”

“Maybe so,” Robb says, though the idea unsettles him. 

He thinks of his father, losing his head. He thinks of his father, still alive for a time, skewered on a pike outside of King’s Landing. What if Father is stuck in the city as Theon is stuck here? he thinks. What if he never makes it home, even in death?

“If you lose this war and your head along with it,” Theon draws him from his thoughts, “perhaps you can let me know how long it takes.”

Robb gives him a dark look. “You wish me dead?”

“Of course not. It is only a joke.” Theon says, unsmiling. “You should not take everything so seriously, Your Grace.”

The shadows grow long. The river drip-drip-drips onto the floor. Robb thinks of his father, and of Ice, and of blinking up at the world from the ground, head cleaved clean from his neck.

He looks back to his map. Theon says nothing else for the rest of the night. 

*

For all of Theon’s japes and complaints, there are some benefits to his current…state. He is able to go around the camps unseen, and enjoys bringing Robb little reports of murmurings he’s heard among the men. He can also scout ahead much easier than living men, and warns Robb of an ambush amongst the hills below Ashemark. 

They take the castle in the night—with less ease than they took Oxcross, but the battle hardly lasts til morning. In the time it took them to travel from Oxcross to Ashemark, there has apparently been a song written about the former.

Wolf in the Night, it is called, composed by Rymund the Rhymer and spreading quickly through the continent. Bards are fickle creatures, Ser Rodrik once told him, who will peddle any tall tale that will get them quick coin. 

After it is performed for Robb and his lords in the castle’s great hall, Theon will not stop humming it for the rest of the night—at first because the tune was in his head, and likely continuing when he saw how it got under Robb’s skin. Even Grey Wind seems to be enjoying Robb’s suffering, giving happy little trills whenever Theon reaches the chorus.

“I told you they would write songs about you,” Theon says. “If you win this war, there will be at least two or three more.”

Robb sighs, shedding his cloak and his crown, his temples sore from its constant place upon his head during the day’s long meetings. 

“I have no need for songs, Theon. There is little truth to them—many are half-truths at best.”

“You claim Battle of Bitter River is only half-truth?” Theon says, mock-scandalized. “You should not say that in Lord Blackwood's presence, else you will lose a bannerman.”

Robb only rolls his eyes. “Perhaps they should write a song about you, then. The most annoying ghost to ever haunt this world. It would even be factual.”

Theon scoffs. “I think my situation is song-worthy. Though it would be more of a spooky lullaby for children than one sang at feasts and such. If only I could still hold a bow, I would be quite the heroic ghost.”

“I’m sure you would. You would terrify the enemy by dripping the river upon them.”

Theon frowns. “You are quite rude to me now that I am dead.”

“It was a joke,” Robb placates, feeling the fatigue seeping into his voice. It seems like each day the crown feels heavier, the weight of kingship upon his shoulders. It is nights like these, alone after spending the day with men who see him as King first and Robb second, that he longs for his home and his family.

Perhaps that is why he invites Theon into his bed.

He often sees Theon in the evening regardless, but Theon had told him he does not like to stay when Robb sleeps— it makes me feel unsavory, he had said, like a spy or a pet. And jealous besides, for I do miss sleeping quite a bit.  

But Theon humors him tonight, lying above the blankets beside Robb, on his side with an arm curled beneath his head like they are boys again. Sharing a bed with a ghost is not as strange as Robb thought it might be. He can feel no weight on the other side of the mattress, and he can see the pillowcase beneath Theon’s head begin to grow damp, but if he keeps his eyes on Theon’s and thinks of home, it feels almost normal. Even the chill in the air is reminiscent of the North.

“Do you remember the first time I showed you the hot springs beneath Winterfell?” Robb finds himself asking, voice hushed.

He watches the slow, nostalgic smile spread across Theon’s face and wishes he could reach out and touch it. 

“Aye,” Theon says, “If Winterfell had but one thing in its favor, it was those lovely springs. There is nothing like them on Pyke.”

“It was the first time I ever saw you truly excited about anything. For a while, it felt like you only left the water to eat, train and sleep.”

Theon shrugs unrepentantly. “It was not the sea, but it was the closest thing I was like to find in those frozen lands. And it was the warmest place in the castle by far.”

Robb is struck by the sudden memory of his dream, the one he had the night after he executed Theon. The two of them sharing the simple, warm joy of the hot springs until Theon disappeared. Until Robb killed him a second time—the second of many.

It is suddenly much harder to pretend that all is well. Even soft memories of home have been tainted by this terrible war, Robb thinks bitterly. 

“I wonder,” Theon says softly, voice nearly a whisper. “If you had drowned me there, do you think I would be warm right now?”

There is no malice in his tone, but it still feels as though Robb has been drenched in ice water. There is no pretending here. There is a ghost in his bed, slowly soaking the blanket in a man-shaped outline.

“Sorry,” Theon says, apologetic, reading some awful emotion on Robb’s face. “Forget I said anything. How about this: close your eyes and I will tell you a story.”

It is something they used to do as boys, when one of them could not sleep. Theon was a spirited storyteller, and the ironborn had such strange histories and exciting legends. 

Robb is far too old for bedtime stories, but he agrees to it anyways.

“Hmm, let’s see," Theon murmurs, "Have I told you the story of the Dagon Drumm? The necromancer?”

He has, but Robb shakes his head.

“Alright,” Theon says. “It goes like this. Dagon of House Drumm was a fierce reaver born during the Age of Heroes. During one fateful raid upon the Stepstones, his ship was wrecked by a terrible storm…”

Robb lets his eyes flutter closed, listening only to the familiar sound of his friend’s voice as he speaks of an awful man who practiced black magic and bound his enemies as thralls and soldiers in death. It is not a pleasant story, but Robb feels relief seep into his bones as he empties his head and sinks into the mattress.

He is asleep before he realizes he is falling at all.

*

There are whispers among the soldiers in Robb’s army, talk spreading from fire to fire, of strange happenings around camp. Horses spooked for seemingly no reason. Fires going out, strange chills in the air, wet boot prints along the stone halls of the castles they conquer. Puddles of water appearing in strange places. Snatches of laughter in the wind. Man-shaped shadows in the firelight.

Stranger still, some say they have heard the Young Wolf talking to himself, alone in his tent. Some say he must be speaking to his wolf—a strange habit, but not unheard of. Some say he may be speaking to something else. Something only he can hear. Most do not believe it, of course. Robb Stark is young, but he is sound of body and of mind. He has a strange connection with his direwolf, but that does not mean he would collude with the otherwordly powers.

But there are the strange happenings. And the casket, with the Greyjoy heir rotting inside it. 

The king killed the Greyjoy heir in the river, some whisper. Drowned him, according to his people’s savage customs. He killed the Greyjoy heir and brought his body with them. Maybe he brought something else along, too.  

When Smalljon Umber brings these rumors to him, Robb shakes them off. Men will talk, he says. War is full of long and boring journeys and they must entertain themselves somehow. 

Privately, he is worried. He has forgotten himself, has been so caught up in the relief of having his friend back that he’s been careless about it. He cannot have his men doubting him, especially not his sanity. 

“You must stop causing trouble around camp,” Robb orders quietly when next Theon appears to him. 

Theon scoffs. “I am not causing trouble, I am bored! You are the only one I can speak to and I fear it may drive me to madness.” 

“The soldiers are starting to talk,” Robb says. “They know that something is amiss. The last thing I need right now is some kind of panic over ghost stories.” 

Theon frowns, crossing his arms. “I do not take orders from you any longer. I am dead and still you chide me like a misbehaving dog.” 

Robb sighs, not in the mood for his friend’s theatrics. “I am not ordering you, I am asking you. If you must haunt my army, can you at least stay away from the poor horses?”

“Fine,” Theon sighs. “I miss riding, is all. Perhaps during the next battle I will go find myself a ghost horse.”

Robb laughs—quietly, conscious of the guards in the hall. “Maybe we should have drowned your horse with you as well—like the Dothraki do, so you could ride it in death.”

“There is still time,” Theon japes. Both of them know they cannot afford to kill a horse for no reason. Too many soldiers are already running into battle as it is.

“Do you have any news for me?” Robb asks. Theon does so enjoy giving his little gossip-reports. 

Theon grins, “Aye. Apparently Patrek’s squire has been sharing a tent—and a bed—with Dacey Mormont’s. Though that could mean nothing. Perhaps they are only swapping squiring tips as they share the long nights together.”

Robb blinks, taking in this news. “Interesting,” he says. “Anything a bit more relevant to the war effort?”

“Hmm. There’s a group of Blackwood men who are considering deserting. Though it is likely just talk—they are not like to make it all the way back home with just the four of them.”

Robb nods absently. They should probably get moving again, before his army grows bored of waiting at the foot of a sacked castle. 

“If they do try to run, I will let them. I would like to see how far they make it.”

Theon laughs as loud as he pleases, unworried about being overheard and thought to be insane. Robb, not for the first time, envies his freedom.

*

The morning they are set to leave Ashemark and march on the Crag, Robb awakens to terrible news. 

There is word from Maester Luwin: Bran and Rickon are gone. Disappeared in the night with their wolves, Hodor and the wildling woman. The Reed siblings are gone as well. 

And then a second letter, this one from Roose Bolton: Winterfell has fallen. Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik are dead and the castle has been put to the torch. No one can say who did the awful deed—Lord Bolton, whose bastard son is the one who discovered the wreckage, is claiming it was the ironmen come to take revenge for Theon’s death.

Theon himself has serious doubts about this. He tells them to Robb later, after Robb has read each letter thrice-over, words burnt into his mind. 

Winterfell is too far inland for the ironborn to care about, Theon insists. And why would they take revenge for my death after condemning me to it themselves? No, I say it was more likely wildlings, or any other enemy who knew the castle was undefended.  

But Robb can hardly hear him over the cacophony in his head. The last of my siblings, gone, he thinks, devastated. Bran, a boy of nine, Rickon three, possibly kidnapped by the wildling woman—if they are not dead and burned with the rest of Winterfell. 

Part of him is sure that they must be dead. The wildlings are known to steal children to raise as their own, but Bran cannot walk and Rickon is a baby. Surely they would have no use for them. The rest of him is not so sure—the Reeds disappeared the same night, and have not been spotted since. Perhaps they escaped whatever calamity befell Winterfell, whether it was the ironmen or some other enemy who laid waste the castle. 

Whatever the case, Robb knows with dreadful certainty that he never should have left home. 

It is a sentiment he need not make plain to his bannermen right now, not when many of them have sacrificed so much to be here--sons and fathers killed in battle and undefended homes ravaged by the ironborn. But he knows, in his bones, that he must return to the North soon. He must rebuild. He must search for his lost brothers. He must keep his kingdom together, and damn the Lannisters and the Baratheons and the Iron Throne too.

Despair and grief turn to rage, simmering inside him as they continue their march on the westerlands, sacking cities and taking castles and waging their war. His men can see it. Theon can see it--he snaps at the ghost more often, dismisses his japes and his weak attempts at comfort, until Theon’s mood is as black as Robb’s own. 

He carries this rage with him all the way to the Crag. They fall upon the castle in the night, taking it with far more casualties than is necessary—Robb can admit this much to himself. He fights with a brutality he rarely allows himself to unleash, subconsciously urging Grey Wind to do the same.

He tastes the blood of the wolf’s kills in his own mouth. Feels the wolf’s growls in his own throat as he tears through the Westerlings’ meager defenses. With the rush of battle pumping through him, it takes him far too long to notice the arrow that has pierced his side—and when he does, he feels more of a dull shock than any pain. Grey Wind’s teeth close around the neck of the man who did it as he grips the arrow and yanks it out. 

Robb hears a sharp hiss beside him, and looks up to see Theon hovering, arms outstretched as if to cover the wound. 

“You should’ve left that in there until you found a maester. A few inches to the right and you’d be bleeding out right now.”

“Lucky you weren’t the one shooting, then,” Robb says, feeling suddenly lightheaded. He thinks unbidden, of the time Theon saved Bran from those wildlings in the wolfswood. A perfect shot, right to the heart. If Theon had been the one shooting at him, that is where Robb would have been pierced as well.

The following stretch of time is hazy and muddled, as the dust of the battle settles along with the pain in Robb’s side. He is led inside the castle and up a flight of stairs and laid out on a mattress.

He notices vaguely that there is a pretty girl above him. Theon is here as well. The last thing he feels before unconsciousness takes him is a warm hand on his side, washing away the blood, and an ice cold palm on his forehead. 

Fever-dreams fall upon him with a vengeance. They are disjointed and nonsensical, though sometimes meaning bleeds through. 

He is at home, and in the hot springs, and in King’s Landing, watching his father beheaded from the crowd. He is training in the yard with Jon, who bests him with a sword again and again. He is watching Jon freeze to death beyond the wall. He is watching Sansa being beaten in the throne room before Joffrey and his court. He is watching Arya and Bran playing in the trees of the godswood. He is watching wildlings slit his little brothers’ throats. He is watching Bran and Rickon burning and screaming, trapped inside a burning, screaming Winterfell. 

He sees Arya, dead. His brothers, dead. His mother and his father, dead. Theon, dead. Winterfell, burning.

He tries to run to them, to all of them, but he cannot move—and when he can, it is too late. Father is mounted on a spike. Arya is gone. Sansa is lost. Jon is frozen. Bran and Rickon are nothing but ash. The blood of his family on his own weak, negligent hands. 

Robb drifts in and out of consciousness for an unknowable amount of time. Sometimes Theon is above him. Sometimes it is his mother. More often than either, it is the pretty girl. Jeyne, she tells him. Jeyne Westerling, the only daughter of the man who ruled this castle. 

He must speak aloud in his haze, must babble feverish nonsense, because Jeyne speaks back. She does her best to soothe him, dutifully nursing him back to health as he lies in her very own bed. Their maester was slain in the battle, she said, else he would be here in her stead. She is very kind, with warm hands and a soft, pretty smile.

“I’m terribly sorry about your brothers, Your Grace,” she says one night, when he is awake and mostly lucid. “I pray that they escaped, and are alive and unharmed.”

“As do I,” Robb says, his voice an awful scratch in his throat. She reaches for the pitcher of water on the bedside table and helps ease him into a sitting position to drink.

“I wish there was something I could do to help,” she says, sitting so close and so warm and smelling so good. “To lessen your sadness, or at least to ease your pain.”

She pulls the glass away, her warm hand coming to rest on his shoulders, the other smoothing his hair from his forehead as she urges him to lie back down. 

He leans into the touch with a desperation that surprises him. It has been so long since he has been touched like this, so soft and gentle. His mother has been gone an age, and Theon…and he is so tired of being strong, of being stone, of being a king more than a man. His family is gone, torn apart, ravaged by the world. He is fighting a war that has no end in sight. And he is always so terribly lonely.

His hand comes up to cup the back of Jeyne’s of its own accord. He hears her sharp intake of breath. Looks up to see her lovely face, her pretty eyes. He does not feel alone here, with this kind girl and her warm hands, in this room far away from Winterfell and the rest of his shattered life. 

Robb’s other hand reaches up, to cup her face as she is his, and she does not shy away.

*

The night before Theon was executed, Robb visited his chambers. It likely was not wise for a king to do such a thing, but Robb wanted one last moment alone with his friend. They would not be alone tomorrow. And there were things he could not say before his bannermen.

There were guards posted at the door, who gave Robb respectful nods as they stepped aside. A few others had been to visit, he was told, but none had stayed long. Theon had requested nothing after dinner but another cask of wine. 

Despite this, Theon was not completely in his cups when Robb arrived. He was sat near the window, gazing out at the trees, goblet half full in his hand. He had no smile for Robb. Hardly even a greeting tilt of his head when he saw who had come to call on him, answering his inquiries about dinner and such in single words.

Theon had been fed but he had hardly eaten, his mostly-full plate left on the small table. There was a bottle of ink open, quill balanced atop it, a slip of parchment  unrolled and dotted with two drops of ink in the top left, as though he had been preparing to write a letter but never began. Two crumpled balls of parchment on the floor—he supposed Theon had begun a letter or two after all.  

Robb took these things in with a strange detachedness as he sat across the table from his friend. He knew not what else to say. Conversation had never been a difficult thing with Theon; even now that Robb was King, being around his friend often made him feel some semblance of normal amidst the ever-changing chaos of war. 

But now, Theon was silent and unsmiling, leaving Robb to flounder. He supposed he could not blame him for his mood. If Robb were to die at the hands of his closest friend tomorrow, he did not know if he would want to see that friend tonight.

“Do you remember,” Theon finally said, turning his eyes away from the window, “When we were boys, you once told me that when you became Warden of the North, I would be hostage no longer.” 

Robb remembered the day Theon spoke of in a blur: the two of them tucked into Theon’s bed to ward off the cold of night, fire crackling in the hearth, moonlight spilling across Theon’s face. News had come from the Islands, a rare occasion in itself, of one of Theon’s uncles nearly dying in a shipwreck and coming out of the water a holy man. 

It had struck Theon with an uncharacteristically somber sort of mood. He had confided in Robb, later that night, that sometimes he worried he would never see his uncle again, that he might never again look upon his home. 

Robb, with all the confidence of a boy unused to the burden of duty, had assured him that he would never let that come to pass. 

“You said you would send me home,” Theon continued. “That you would rule the North and I the Isles, and there would be a peace between our lands like never before. Do you remember what I said?”

Robb did. “You said it was cruel to offer my father’s hostage something I could not give.”

“And you insisted that you would give it. That you would send me home.” Theon took a long drink from his cup. “I should have just left regardless of the damn weather.”

Robb felt similarly, despite the fact that he shouldn’t—if Theon had already been gone when news of Balon’s attacks had come, Robb was not sure what he would have done. He was not sure what Theon would have done. But at least they would not be here, in this room, counting down the minutes until morning. 

“I’m sorry,” Robb said, “I wish things had not gone this way. I do not want to do this.”

“Then don’t,” Theon said flatly, unsympathetic. “You are a king.”

“You know I cannot be selfish in this.”

“What is the point of being king if you cannot make a selfish choice or two? It seems you are ruled by your lords, not the other way around.”

Robb felt a spark of irritation rise, but pushed it down. “I am not here to argue with you, Theon.”

“Then what are you here for, Your Grace? To demand my forgiveness while I am still alive to grant it?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. I have none to give.”

It stung, which is likely what it was meant to do. A few heavy moments of silence. 

“I am surprised you have not requested a woman with your wine,” Robb offered as a weak change of subject.

Theon’s mouth twisted wryly—more a grimace than a smile. “I considered it. But it seems death has put even me in too dark a mood to enjoy myself.” 

He cast a considering glance at Robb, eyes darting up and down the length of him, in that way that used to make Robb flush. Robb had not come here with the intent of sharing Theon’s bed on his last night in this life, but if Theon were to ask…

But Theon only sighed. “Perhaps if Kyra were here. Though it is for the best that she is not. She would have cried and cried when she learned I was to die, and I cannot stand a woman’s crying.”

He took another drink. Somber silence settled over the room once again. It seemed suffocating, to Robb, a heavy blanket of snow piling higher and higher atop them. Robb did not want to leave yet, for it would be the last private moment the two of them would ever share, but he did not feel very welcome to stay, either. 

Met with Theon’s chilly despair, Robb had the wild urge to take it all back. To declare Theon a free man, to keep him in his protection instead of his custody, or to set him loose entirely. It was a childish urge, and one he knew he could not succumb to. There was no way he could set Theon free. But if Theon were to set himself free…

Robb considered it. The window, the tree outside, the forest beyond the castle, the distance from here to the nearest port. If Theon managed to nab himself a horse on the way out, he could be in the wind come morning.

“Perhaps,” Robb started, voice a shocking clap in the silence. He resisted the urge to clear his throat. “Perhaps if the guards were distracted…your window is not too high, and there are trees right outside. The stables are near, and the forest is…”

He trailed off in the face of Theon’s bewildered stare. 

“You want me to run away?” Theon asked after a moment, sounding baffled and offended. “Flee and be called craven the rest of my days?” 

“Better craven than dead.”

“Says the man who will be neither.” Theon gave a scornful laugh. “Where would I even run to? The family who gave me up for dead? The slums of Essos, where I would have nothing and be no one? No. You will choose not to kill me or I will die as myself. I will not run to soothe your guilt, Your Grace.” 

Theon’s anger was something Robb rarely saw. Even rarer was it directed towards him. 

“Theon,” Robb tried, “I did not mean—”

“I changed my mind,” Theon interrupted, setting his goblet onto the table with a bang. “I think I do wish to enjoy myself. It is my final night alive, after all.”

Robb rose to his feet as the clear dismissal. “Shall I call for a—?”

“No.” Theon stood as well, leaving his cup discarded and taking a few lazy steps towards Robb, eyes dark and heated. “Tomorrow you will take my life as a king. But tonight, you came here to offer comfort as a friend. Right?”  

Robb swallowed as Theon drew closer round the table. Nodded. 

“I have not had you since you were crowned,” Theon mused, coming to a stop mere inches away. He looks Robb up and down the way Robb had seen him look at Kyra or the serving girls. “Not fitting for a king, as you say. But it is my very last night in this world. And you are my dearest friend. Would you do me this small, final favor, Robb?”

Robb should say no. Men grown should not continue the fumblings of boyhood. Wartime brought occasional exceptions to these rules—he’d had Theon in his bed a few times by now, always with excuses of the camp followers not being pretty enough for him—but since being crowned king, Robb found himself taking a lead in those matters as well. It did not seem fitting for a king to be had. 

But Theon was asking so nicely. And Robb was here as a friend more than a king. And it was his best friend’s very last night in this world. Robb could not set him free, but he could give him a final taste of it.

Robb nodded his ascent. Theon finally gave him a smile, though it was small and slightly sad. 

The crown, they left on the table as Robb allowed Theon to take him to bed, strip the king away and press him into the sheets with a desparate sort of savagery that made Robb ache for hours.

*

The morning after Robb breaks his betrothal, he blinks awake to Theon sitting at the small desk across the room, fiddling absently with Jeyne’s discarded embriodery. 

He looks up briefly, eyes flicking disinterestedly between Robb and the still-sleeping Jeyne. “So this is my replacement,” he says. “At least she’s pretty.”

Robb pulls the sheets up to preserve Jeyne’s modesty, sitting up to shield her from Theon’s judgment. He winces slightly as the movement pulls at the stitches up his side. 

“Do not call her that,” he says, voice hushed so as not to wake her. He would prefer not to speak to Theon at all in the presence of others, but he knows his friend will not stand being ignored.

“Is that not what she is? Another hostage you can do what you like with? Will you fuck her and then take her head when her father misbehaves?” 

His words are cruel and cutting. Indignation burns hot in Robb’s chest. 

“I will not be taking her head,” he growls.

“Really? You took her maiden head just fine. You must be careful, lest you end up with as many bastards as Robert Baratheon.”

Robb is too caught up in reality crashing down around him to be bothered by the jab, because…Robb did take her maidenhead. Gods be good, but he did. 

His betrothal is ruined. He cannot marry Roslin Frey after defiling Jeyne Westerling’s honor. She is a Lady of lower birth than he, but she is still a Lady. And he has always vowed that he will never sire a bastard, not after seeing how the world treated Jon. 

Theon seems to realize what he is thinking, eyebrows raising. “Robb…” he starts, tone somewhere between concerned and mocking. “You cannot mean to—”

“I do,” Robb interrupts, “I will.”

Theon barks a bewildered laugh. “You will what? Marry her? Throw away your alliance with the Freys over some whore you just met—?”

“Do not speak of her that way,” Robb commands, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. 

“I will speak how I like,” Theon snaps, standing. The shadows stretch along the walls, fire flickering in its hearth. “And if you mean to destroy all you have built for some nameless girl, I will call you a fool for it.”

“Get out,” Robb points at the door. He feels Jeyne stirring behind him. 

“An honorable fool, who will get yourself killed just as your father did!”

“Get out!” Robb stands as well, sheets falling away. 

“And I will relish the looks on your lords’ faces when you tell them of your folly,” Theon snarls, and turns with a whoosh of his cloak, shoving the table aside. 

Jeyne’s embriodery clatters to the ground at the same moment that the fire goes out. The door flies open and bangs against the wall as Theon stomps out, startling Jeyne awake with a shriek of surprise. 

Robb startles as well. Theon has touched the world in small ways up until now, has left evidence of his haunting in puddles and whispers, but never with this much force.

“Y-Your Grace?” Jeyne stutters out behind him, her warm hands on his back. “What happened? Are you alright?”

Robb turns to her, only now remembering he was naked beneath the sheets. He shivers and climbs back into the still-warm bed.

“It was nothing,” he says, as a passing serving girl gives a few wide-eyed bows and closes the door on her way. News will spread quickly, then, he thinks with a sinking dread. “Only the wind.”

*

Theon does not apologize for his outburst; Robb was not expecting one. The deference, however mild, that Theon had shown him in life has long since washed away. He does not speak to Robb for a number of days, loudly keeping his distance, though Robb catches snatches of him at the court meetings. 

His bannermen, as expected, are not pleased with Robb’s decision concerning his betrothal. 

There is no need to call it off over something like this, he is told. A king is permitted his mistakes and his dalliances. There is no way to know if the seed even took. Their alliance with the Freys is worth more than the honor of some minor, enemy lord’s daughter. Their alliance with the Freys is necessary if they are to win this war. A king is permitted his mistakes and his dalliances.

“I have heard and considered your thoughts,” Robb says once they have all said their piece. “But my decision remains the same.”

He knows how this whole ordeal makes him look: childish, green, unable to control himself in the midst of his grief. But he will not sacrifice his values over this. He will not dishonor two women, and he will not bring a bastard into this world—especially not as a king.

He catches sight of Theon, standing in the back of the room, expression as stormy as his eyes. He rolls them at Robb when he catches him looking, and then he is gone. 

He haunts the Crag for a while, unseen to Robb’s eyes but presence felt regardless. 

Theon stays gone as Robb deals with the fallout of his broken betrothal, as he makes the arrangements to marry Jeyne and then does marry her, right there in the Crag. There is no godswood here, no heart tree to beg the old gods favor before, but Robb cloaks his bride with as much dignity and gravity as he would have back in Winterfell. Perhaps they can have another, smaller service once they return home. 

After the marriage is done and their marriage bed broken in, the Freys in Robb’s service leave in scorn, Black Walder even threatening to kill Jeyne himself. Walder Frey will know of this soon, if he does not know already. 

Theon stays gone as Robb arranges to have his army fall back towards the riverlands. He has no need to keep these enemy castles while the ironborn ravage the undefended North. No—he will return to Riverrun, deal with Walder Frey and then finally make haste for Winterfell.

“You are leaving?” Theon asks him a week after their argument, appearing in Robb’s study in such a sudden way that Robb startles, nearly knocking over the bottle of ink at his elbow. 

“Yes,” Robb answers, instead of making a comment about no longer being ignored. 

“And what of my body? Will you be leaving it here?”

“Of course not,” Robb turns around in his chair. “I do not plan to hold these castles.”

“Surely you do not mean to bring me back to Riverrun.” Theon’s voice is low and full of warning.

Robb sighs. “What choice do I have?”

“You can wait until you secure my passage home. Asha is willing to treat with you, but—“

“But she will not travel all the way out here,” Robb finishes for him. “I know. That is why once we return to Riverrun we will find a more suitable location for the trade.”

Robb had found time, as he had promised, to send a letter to Asha Greyjoy at Deepwood Motte to inquire about returning Theon’s body to the isles. She was not opposed to the idea, and was even willing to trade one of her hostages for her brother’s safe return, but refused to make the journey to the coast of the Crag. 

“She will not travel so far inland.” Theon argues. “Riverrun is too far from the coast.”

Robb barks a harsh laugh. “Aye, and I will not invite the ironborn into my mother’s home. We will figure out the best course of action when the time comes. For now, we must fall back.”

“We will figure it out,” Theon echoes. “You will have it done in time, eventually, someday. Tell me, Your Grace, do you mean to send me home at all or will you conveniently have other, more pressing matters to attend to until you are too dead to have it done?”

Robb stands, slamming his hand down on the desk. The bottle of ink rolls onto the floor. Theon does not move an inch, glaring hotly.

“Do not question my honor in this. I swore I would have it done, and I will. Have patience. You are dead —it is not as if you are in any hurry.” 

The contempt Robb saw the first time he spoke with this new, dead Theon is back, etched deep into the lines of his face and body. The shadows in the room grow darker, the air colder. Robb stares steadily back.

“I do not wish to be here anymore,” Theon says, an echo of that first encounter. “Bid me home when we reach Riverrun, else I fear what may become of me.”

With that, Robb is left alone in his study once again. 

*

The journey from the westerlands back to Riverrun feels longer and graver than the journey from. 

As they left Riverrun, there had been…not a festivity in the air, but a sort of swelling anticipation. A sense of purpose, a march to victory. Now, with Robb’s betrothal in ruins and Tywin Lannister still alive and at large, it feels like they have turned tail and run. They have not been defeated—Robb chose to abandon the castles they conquered—but the air around camp is bleak and dejected.

Part of that may, admittedly, have something to do with Theon.

Things are not as they were on the march West. It is more difficult to speak with Theon now. The time not spent with his guard is spent with Jeyne and her brothers. Nights that he used to pass in hushed whispers in his tent are now full of Jeyne’s gentle words and soft touches. He cannot talk to Theon in front of her lest she think him mad. 

Theon does not take kindly to being ignored.

He makes his displeasure known. Robb does not see him as much as he feels him for the first stretch of the journey, his discontent a physical thing in the air. It hangs over Robb’s army like a storm cloud, muddying up the roads, spooking the animals, a perpetual chill in the air despite how far they still are from home. 

Worse still, Jeyne has begun to notice something is amiss. Theon has no love for her, Robb knows, and seems to delight in scaring her horse and putting out their fire at night. 

Although their marriage began as a necessity, Robb has quickly grown to care for her as a husband does a wife. The icey way Theon looks at her whenever he is present makes Robb’s heart heavy with trepidation. Theon would never hurt Robb’s wife, he knows, but…

When Jeyne asks, “Is there something troubling you, my lord?” one evening, as she often does, Robb should answer as he often does—with a yes, and the vaguest of explanations before changing the subject, so as not to trouble his wife with the boring, gorey details of the war he is waging.

Instead, Robb says, “Yes. There is…something I wish to tell you. But I fear you will think me mad if I do.”

Jeyne pauses in her stitching, placing her hand atop Robb’s own. “I would never think you mad.”

This is surely not true. But Robb must choose to believe it. 

He starts, hesitantly: “I have told you of Theon Greyjoy. The friend that I…that is dead.”

Jeyne nods. “You have.” 

Robb takes a breath. “I know not how else to say this. He has been…haunting me. And I do not mean in a grieving sense. I mean that he truly is still here, lingering after death.”

Jeyne blinks at him, politely baffled. 

“I know I sound mad. I thought I truly was going mad until the men began noticing odd happenings as well. Do you remember the morning after we…when the door burst open and I said it was the wind?” Jeyne nods. “It was not the wind—it was Theon.”

Jeyne seems to consider this.

“Why does he…that is, why is he still here? Why does he—haunt you so?” Jeyne says the word as though unsure of how to pronounce it. But she is not staring at him in horror nor declaring him insane. Robb takes this as a good sign. 

“It is because his body has not yet been delivered to the sea. At least that is what he says. His people must be returned to the sea in death, as ours must be buried.”

Jeyne nods slowly, taking this in. “I…I have often felt a strange chill in the air, even in the light of day. And I have noticed the odd spots of water, mud when it has not rained in weeks. I thought perhaps I was only nervous about the journey, but—”

“That is Theon,” Robb says, relief filling his entire body. “He was—drowned. He carries the river with him now, though I do not think it is on purpose.”

Jeyne hums thoughtfully. “Do you mean to send him home soon, then? So that he may be at rest?”

Robb looks into his wife’s big, loving eyes, so full of trust and belief that he has the best of intentions at heart.

“Yes,” Robb says. “That is the plan. It has been the plan. And yet, I cannot seem to have it done.”

“What do you mean?”

“He is dead, yes, but he is still here. It is terribly selfish of me, but…I do not want to lose my friend again.”

Jeyne takes one of his hands in hers. “I understand. It is a sad thing, to lose a friend. But if I may ask, my lord…” Robb nods. “Does he wish to stay here with you as well?” 

“…No,” Robb says before he can convince himself to lie or deny. “He does not. I fear he hates me more for it each day.”

Jeyne gently squeezes his hand in comfort.

“I know it is hard to lose a friend, especially one who meant so much to you. But you are not alone anymore. Perhaps it is time for you to allow your friend his rest.”

Robb swallows, staring down at their joined hands so that he need not look at Theon, standing in the doorway.

“You have the truth of it, my love,” he admits, bringing one of Jeyne’s hands up and pressing his mouth to it in a chaste kiss. She smiles at him, warm and sympathetic.

“Perhaps when we reach Riverrun, you can arrange to have it done.”

“Yes,” Robb agrees. Drip-drip-drip goes the river, pouring from the folds of Theon’s cloak and onto the floor beneath them.

*

When next they pass near a village with an inn, Robb takes a night off from camping and requests the nicest room. His bannermen assume this is to spare his wife the cot they share and to have a night of privacy. This is true—though the privacy is more what they seek than a respite from the tent.

The reason for this being that Jeyne wants to meet Theon. In whatever way they possibly can, considering both of their current…states. Robb would rather not navigate such an encounter somewhere his men could overhear. 

“He is your dearest friend,” she had said when he asked why. “I would like for us to be on good terms, even though I cannot see him.”

Theon had scoffed at the idea, but better Theon be here, sulking in the center of their rented room then out terrorizing his men. 

“Well then,” Theon says, outstretching his arms and flinging water across the floor. “I am here. Let’s get this over with.” 

Jeyne’s eyes catch the water droplets on the wood. “Is he here?” She asks Robb, sounding slightly nervous. He puts a hand on her back and nods towards the center of the room where Theon awaits. Jeyne follows his gaze.

“This is so stupid,” Theon mutters. Robb ignores him.

Deciding to treat this as any other courtly introduction, Robb clears his throat and stands up straight. He grasps Jeyne by the hand.

“Theon,” he says to Theon, who raises an unimpressed brow at him. “I would like for you to meet my wife, Queen Jeyne Stark, formerly Westerling. Jeyne--my dear friend, Theon Greyjoy.”

Jeyne gives a graceful curtsey, bowing her head in the general direction Robb had given her.

“My Lord Greyjoy,” she says with gravity. “My lord husband has told me much about you. I am honored to make your acquaintance.” 

Theon looks at Jeyne coldly, eyes full of disdain and mouth twisted in amusement. He looks to Robb, who gives an urging lift of his brows. Theon sighs, but he’s grinning now, and he mock-bows in return. 

“It is a pleasure to meet you as well, I suppose.” And then, because Robb had told him to make himself known in some other way, he rolls his eyes heavily, takes a few steps towards the bedside table and blows out the candle.

“Oh!” Jeyne exclaims, and then claps in surprised delight, as though Theon had just performed some very impressive sleight-of hand. “Hello!” 

Theon rolls his eyes. “Please inform your wife that I am not a court jester.”

“Theon says he is honored to meet you as well, Queen Jeyne,” Robb tells her. 

Theon rolls his eyes again. “Is that all, then?”

Though there is no way Jeyne could have heard the question, she answers: “I have something more I would like to say, if it please you both.”

“Of course,” Robb says.

Jeyne’s eyes search the empty room for Theon once again, landing somewhere a bit to his right. Theon crosses his arms imperiously. 

“I cannot imagine how it must feel to linger as a spirit after death,” Jeyne begins, “Though I can imagine it would be quite lonely to be seen by only one person in the world. As such, I would like for you to know that I have no intention of keeping Robb all to myself. You are very dear to him, and I believe he has enough affections for the both of us.” 

“Jeyne,” Robb says, startled and a bit embarrassed, but Theon barks a laugh. 

“I know this…situation is not what any of us ever expected to end up in,” Jeyne soldiers on. “I am a Queen now, and ghosts are real! I only hope that we may find some form of peace in this time we three share together, however short.” 

Theon considers her, walking a slight half circle around her, eyes sharp and cold. He looks her up and down, eyes flicking to Robb, and then back to Jeyne. Something in his dark mask cracks, and the ice melts back into the familiar stormy sea. 

“Very well,” he says. And then, to Robb: “I suppose you could have done worse in choosing a bride.”

Robb relays this to Jeyne, slightly more politely phrased, who smiles brightly. “Oh, wonderful! It should be nice to have another friend. I fear I am the most hated person in this whole army right now.”

Theon’s smile turns wry. “It seems you truly are my replacement. Robb, tell her that the Northmen are a bunch of frozen, humorless fucks and that she should care not what they think of her.”

“I am not telling her that,” Robb laughs despite himself. 

“Not telling me what?” Jeyne asks eagerly, seeming on the verge of laughter herself.

“She is their queen,” Theon continues, “And so they must show her deference and kiss her Southron ass, else you will stick Grey Wind on them! Tell her all of that, Robb. Word for word.”

Robb does not tell her all of that, word for word, but he does tell her most of it, bullied out of him gently by his wife and his best friend. 

Although Jeyne cannot hear Theon’s laughter, it feels as though she can. As though they are all here together, alive and well, sharing this night—as it should have been. Robb had never given much thought to what Theon might think of his future wife, but should it not have gone just like this? The two of them, finding peace as friends, sharing the space in Robb’s heart? Maybe it can still be that way, despite how things have gone.

Something deep inside him aches even as he smiles.

*

The rest of the journey to Riverrun passes in much higher spirits. 

The war rages on, bad news pouring in from all corners of the continent, discontent among his men, but in the evenings Robb finds solace among what remains of his family. He has lost Jon to the Wall, lost his sisters to King’s Landing, Bran and Rickon to the wildlings and Winterfell to the torch, but he has Jeyne now, and her brothers—Ser Reynald is an honorable banner-bearer and Rollam a dutiful squire. 

He has Theon, who Jeyne has taken to conversing with through yes or no questions and two corresponding candles for Theon to blow out. Sometimes, Theon will tell some great jape that he will then ask Robb to repeat to his wife; his delivery is never quite as sharp as Theon’s, but they are often able to make Jeyne laugh together. Jeyne fears Grey Wind still, so the wolf oft has to sleep outside, but they have slowly been warming up to each other. 

Theon seems to have settled down some as well. He goes through the occasional black mood, discontent with their pace or the weather or whatever else ghosts have to be upset about, but it is overall much more pleasant of a haunting.

As they get closer and closer to Riverrun, Robb’s anxieties begin to wax and wane with the light of the sun. He is nervous, once again, about what his mother might think of him and his choices—but there is nothing he can go back and change. He has done what he has done and made choices that he would make again. All there is left to do now is deal with the fallout. It feels like it will be okay, from the warmth and serenity of the bed he shares with his wife. All of it—the war, the Freys, the ironmen on the coast—feels surmountable instead of hopeless. 

As with all good things, the fragile peace does not last. 

Though the boy in Robb longs to embrace his mother when he finally lays eyes on her again, the king in him cannot do so. There is a meeting with the high lords instead, where everyone shares the news they bring—most of it bad.

Theon spends the first half of this meeting laughing to himself. And to Robb, the only other person who can hear him. 

The Kingslayer is gone—released by Robb’s own mother to be delivered by Brienne of Tarth to King’s Landing in exchange for Arya and Sansa’s lives. Rickard Karstark, who lost two sons to the Kingslayer at the Whispering Wood, is furious with her. Walder Frey is fuming over the broken betrothal, and every Frey this side of the Wall is speaking of the King in the North’s betrayal. 

When Edmure describes what he thinks is good news to a humorless Blackfish, Theon is no longer laughing. Robb waits until the other lords have left before he wipes Edmure’s smile off his face. The Blackfish is not happy with him, nor is Robb’s mother.

“Perhaps you should have told him of your larger plan,” Theon says to him later, eyes on Edmure’s hunched, retreating form. “Was he supposed to read your mind?”

He should not have acted on his own command, Robb thinks but cannot say. Instead, he puts Theon aside as he reunites with his mother, away from the eyes of his lords. Theon takes the hint and is gone when Robb pulls back from his mother’s embrace. 

“Karstark is not happy with your Lady Mother, nor with you for being so lenient with her.” Theon warns later, once Robb has retreated to his chambers. Jeyne is supping with his mother so that they might get to know each other a bit. “I think they will do something about it.”

“Like what?” Robb asks. Theon shrugs. “You did not stay to hear?”

“All they were doing was whining and complaining. I got bored.”

“Theon.”

“He has sent out a group of men to search the countryside for the Kingslayer and your mother’s Lady Knight. That is all I know.”

“You will go after them,” Robb orders.

“I will what?”

“You must. If they find the Kingslayer, they will kill him, and that cannot be. My mother set him free in grief, but she seems convinced that he will keep his word and return my sisters to us.”

Theon barks a bewildered laugh. “Sansa is a Lannister now. No one has seen Arya since your father lost his head.”

“I know this,” Robb snaps. “But if there is the slightest chance—they are my little sisters. They are your—”

“They are not my sisters,” Theon interrupts icily. “My name is not Stark, else I would still be living.”

“Theon, please.”

“What am I even supposed to do if Karstark’s men do find him? They cannot see me nor hear me. I cannot stop them.”

“You can scare them,” Robb says, sounding desperate to his own ears. “As you scare my soldiers and their horses. You can distract them so that Lannister and Lady Brienne can get away. They are like to kill her, too, if they catch her.”

Theon glares for a moment, but eventually sighs. “Fine. I will follow them for a time, or as far as I am able. But I truly doubt they will find anything.”

“Thank you,” Robb says, and means it.

“Whatever. Keep an eye on Karstark whilst I am gone. I fear he is more resentful than you know.”

*

Theon is right, in the end. 

Robb should have kept him here as his silent watcher rather than send him away—he could have discovered Rickard Karstark’s plot before it could be carried out. For all Robb knows, Theon was not even able to make it past the Tumblestone and has been wasting time splashing around his grave. 

By the time Theon returns to him, he has two dead Lannister hostages and a dead Karstark. The remaining Karstarks have abandoned him. His men have been defeated at Duskendale. Lord Hoster Tully is dead as well, and Edmure is now Lord of Riverrun. 

Problems from all sides, from enemies and allies alike.

“Wherever the Kingslayer is by now,” Theon says when Robb has relayed all of this to him, “it is far from here. Perhaps they are already halfway to King’s Landing.”

“I should hope so,” Robb says darkly, “Else I have executed a loyal bannerman for naught.”

Theon has nothing to say on the matter, no jape or witty little comment. Robb is grateful. He is not in a joking mood. 

The slightest sliver of hope comes in the form of a meeting with the envoys of Walder Frey, Lame Lother Frey and Walder Rivers. Lord Walder is not happy with him, but is willing to rework the proposal. Robb suggests Edmure as a husband for Roslin instead, to which the two Freys agree. 

That slight hope grows when he receives a raven from Asha Greyjoy, bearing good news: Balon Greyjoy is dead. She will return to the Isles so as to help decide on the matter of succession, and is willing to stop at Seaguard and make an exchange for her brother’s body before she makes for home.

Balon Greyjoy is dead. 

The terrible threat imposed by the ironborn along the coast suddenly feels lighter. Balon Greyjoy is dead.

“Many of the ironborn will retreat back to the isles for the matter of succession, no?” Robb asks Theon as he reads the letter unfolded on the table. “Leaving behind much smaller forces, or none at all.”

“Yes,” Theon murmurs in agreement. “My father wanted the North. Whoever is king next might not care to keep it. Euron certainly will not, though let us all hope he does not take the throne.”

Finally, a bit of good news, Euron Greyjoy aside. Once the mess with the Freys is sorted and Edmure wedded, Robb will be able to drive the depleted ironborn forces from the North completely. Theon is quiet, eyes still glued to his sister’s letter.

“I am…sorry, about your father,” Robb offers, though he is not.

Theon snorts. “No you’re not. Nor am I, really.” A thoughtful pause. “I have given much thought to what I would say when I finally met him again in death, but I did not think I would have to face him so soon.”

Robb has had similar thoughts of his own—what he would say to his father if he were ever to see him again, wherever the Old Gods take them. Robb’s are mostly apologies, promises that he tried to do what he thought was right. He imagines that Theon’s are of a different sort.

“My father and brothers await me in the Drowned God’s hall,” Theon continues, sounding not at all excited by the prospect. “What a heartwarming reunion that is sure to be. I will spend eternity mocked for being late.”

“But you will finally get to feast,” Robb offers. “Perhaps they will have some of those cod cakes you were always so fond of.”

The corner of Theon’s mouth curls in a weak smile. “Maybe so.” He does not sound excited by this prospect, either.

“Is there…something the matter?” Robb asks cautiously. “I thought you would be glad for this news.”

Theon gives Robb a shy sort of look, uncharacteristically uncertain. “I…I know I have spoken as if there are rules to these things, but…in truth, I do not know what will become of me when I return to the sea. Half my life I have spent inland, and now all of my death. Perhaps the Drowned God will not take me as I am now.”

“Theon,” Robb hears his own voice go soft, “Of course he will take you. It is not your fault you spent so long away. And you died fighting, as you must.”

“I did,” Theon murmurs. “And I was drowned. I have not done much praying in these past ten years, but it is hard to worship the sea in a landlocked castle. Surely he will understand that much.”

“Surely,” Robb agrees. “And if he does not, you could always come back. I do not mind your haunting so much anymore.”

Theon gives him a good-humored look. “I do not think that is how it works. Once I leave, I doubt you will ever see me again.”

Robb’s stomach sinks, though he has known this the whole time. “Never?”

“Not unless you somehow find your way to the Drowned God’s halls,” Theon says with a little laugh. “Maybe your Old Gods will let you visit from time to time.”

“Maybe,” Robb agrees even though he knows it is a joke. “But what if you are not there?”

“What?”

“What if you’re right, and the Drowned God will not let you in? If you are not there and you are not here, where will you be? How will I find you?”

Theon’s good-humor is gone. Robb knows he sounds raving, but the question rings true. He does not want to never see Theon again. His father dead and his siblings gone and his war effort falling apart, and he may never see Theon again, not even when he is dead himself?

These thoughts fill him with a selfish, anxious dread. And so he says: “Perhaps you could stay here.”

Theon stills. “…What?” 

“Not forever. But for now. You could stay in Riverrun, with Jeyne. Or I could bring you with me back to Winterfell. I could—”

“You could what? Bury me in the crypts?”

“Well perhaps not the crypts, but—”

“Oh, no, of course not. You can’t bury your Greyjoy hostage in the Stark crypts.” Theon spits. “Perhaps at the bottom of the hill my head never got to roll down! That would be the perfect place.”

Robb can hear the restrained fury in his voice. Knows it was another selfish offer he should not have made. “Theon—”

“Or maybe you can just keep me in the dungeons with the rest of your prisoners.”

“You are not my prisoner.”

Theon barks a furious laugh. “Am I not? You kill me and drag my body along with you until I am nothing but bone—I remain your hostage even in death!”

“Theon,” Robb tries again, “I—“

“No!” Theon shouts, swiping his hands across the table—to Robb’s shock, they make contact, and all the maps and papers and pieces go flying. “I will hear no more of your empty promises. I have waited long enough for you to send me home. I have waited and waited and still you will not let me go! I don’t understand why—you were about to send me home before that raven came.”

“I was,” Robb agrees. “I would have, if not for that letter, you know I would have. And I would likely never have seen you again—with your father rebelling, you would not have come back to me.”

“Instead you keep me trapped here in death so that I cannot leave at all?”

“I was never trying to trap you!” Robb argues, getting angry himself now. “I have no control over whatever god has tied you to your bones, but—but you cannot fault me for being glad to still have you.”

“You do not get both!” Theon shouts, voice wretched. “You do not get to kill me and keep me, that is not how it should work!”

But it is. How it works. At least it seems to be. If Theon could leave on his own, he would be long gone. Robb has kept him so far. He could, assumedly, keep him forever. 

How terribly unfair, Robb thinks. For a moment, he sees himself through Theon’s eyes: captor and killer, in life and in death. How much worse must it be, coming from someone who once promised to set him free?

Father would have sent him home by now, Robb knows. Father would not have been haunted at all.  

“But of course you get both,” Theon continues over Robb’s startled silence. He paces round the room like a caged animal, a wild thing, a dark gleam to his eyes like Robb has never seen. The river pours off of him in streams, spreading across the floor in every direction. Robb feels it soaking the bottoms of his boots. “Of course you get what you want—a crown and a wife and a war and I get to be dead. I have been dead from the start, and you have been king.”

“I never wanted to be king,” Robb says. “You know I did not want this war.”

“It has always been this way,” Theon continues as though Robb hadn’t spoken at all. He shakes his head, water droplets flying from his damp hair. “All our lives. You liked to play as though we were equals but we were not, and you knew that, you always knew. I taught you how to kiss and how to fuck and how to string an arrow, and still you chided me as though I was a child.”

“What? I never—”

“You never? I saved your brother’s life, if you recall, I saved his life and you told me I ought to be chained up in the yard and used as target practice!”

“I did not mean it! I was scared for Bran, I spoke in anger—but you know I never would have done that to you. I did think us equals. Everyone tried to warn me that you were dangerous, that you were not to be trusted, but I never thought of you that way. You were never a hostage to me.”

“Then why am I dead!?” Theon demands. “Why did you not set me free when you became king? I would not have left. I marched to war for you, not the North. I likely would have died for you of my own free will, if given the opportunity. I must be the greatest fool in the seven fucking kingdoms, to love my captor so.”

He spits the word like an insult—love. Like it is a vile thing, a shameful thing. There is such rage in his words. Such heavy, ancient sorrow. Words long-held inside, locked away and buried. How long has Theon felt this way? How could Robb not have noticed?

The river has reached the door by now, flooding out beneath the crack. The maps on the floor are waterlogged and ruined. Robb feels strangely as though he might cry. He has not cried since Father died.

“I did not want to kill you, Theon,” he says, voice pathetic and small, like a child’s. “You must know I never wanted to kill you.”

“And yet you did.”

“I did. I did. I have trapped you here and I am sorry, but—you must understand. I am losing this war. My brothers are gone, my sisters are lost. My father is dead. You are all that is left of home, you and my mother. I need you here, Theon. You are my family.”

“I am not,” Theon says, and his voice wobbles in a way Robb has not heard since they were children. “If I was your family, you would not have fucked me. And you certainly would not have killed me.”

And that is the truth, cold and hard as ice. If Theon was Robb’s brother in truth, Robb would not have held him below the water until he stopped moving. Theon would not have been condemned to death by his own father, because Balon Greyjoy would not have been his father. Robb would not have spied on Theon kissing serving girls outside the kitchens, would not have asked Theon to teach him, would not have climbed into Theon’s bed as boys and as men. 

They have been together half their lives, grew up alongside each other as lord’s son and ward. But they were not brothers. They were not family. Robb has always known this, as every soul in Winterfell knew: Theon was ward in name but hostage in truth, there to be killed if his father stepped out of line. 

Did their happy times together count for nothing, in the end? Did the affection they shared for each other only make things worse? Would it have been easier if there was no love between them? Have they always been headed for this moment: captor and hostage, executioner and ghost, standing in a storm-torn study and screaming at each other like boys?

No, Robb thinks. He cannot believe that. Things did not have to be this way. The happy times could have continued, if only Father had not gone South, if Balon had not rebelled, if countless other things had gone differently. They were not destined for this, but they are here all the same.

“Theon,” Robb says, after time enough has passed that he can hear the faint sounds of Theon’s water streaming down the stairs. It sounds to Robb like the river had, babbling and splashing, the day that he killed his friend. “There is nothing I can say that will change what has happened. But…you are here, despite it all. You are still here. Is there not some miracle in that?”

Theon does not look angry anymore. Mostly, he just looks sad. Washed out, faded, like an ancient map or a blurry childhood memory. 

“There is no miracle here, Robb,” he says, voice softer than Robb has heard in a very long time. He steps towards Robb slowly, boots sloshing in the water.  “I have no place here, nor anywhere. I am dead. You killed me. And now you must let me go.”

He lifts his hands to cup Robb’s cheeks, hovering an inch away from his face. And then, impossibly, the slightest brush of wet palms against Robb’s skin. 

Robb raises his own hands to grasp at Theon’s, but they meet only empty air. Robb feels his eyes sting, vision blurring.

“If you bring me back to Winterfell with you, I will never leave it.” Theon says and Robb knows it in his bones to be true. “You have to let me go.”

Robb wonders if ghosts can cry. He closes his eyes so that he does not have to find out, and so that Theon will not see him cry. He feels the phantom touch of Theon’s hands on his cheeks again. Basks in it instead of trying to touch in return.

“I will send a letter to your sister,” he says, voice wobbling around the words. 

Neither of them have much to say after that.

*

Seaguard stands tall and solid against the shoreline. 

Robb has never actually been to the castle before today. Jason Mallister is not happy about hosting any number of ironborn, even just Asha Greyjoy and a small number of her crew, but he did not refuse Robb’s request. 

They meet on the beach rather than inside the castle walls, Robb and the small guard he has brought with him—his mother and the rest of their forces at Oldstone, his wife left safely back in Riverrun—which feels appropriate, wind whipping at Robb’s cloak and an ironborn ship in the harbor. 

Asha Greyjoy is a short, fierce looking woman, with dark hair cropped short and her brother’s lean face and sharp, Greyjoy nose. Her chosen men stand behind her, none of their faces friendly. 

“Stark,” she says, after introductions have been made, no title at all. Robb would have once bristled at that, but he is too weary to take offense. His bannerman does it for him.

“That’s Your Grace to you,” Smalljon Umber snaps. Asha Greyjoy does not even deign to look at him.

“I know no king but the one who sits upon the Seastone Chair. I certainly will not bow to the boy who killed my brother.” 

“Your father killed your brother,” Robb recites, the words as familiar to him as breathing by now. “He knew Theon’s life was forfeit if he attacked again, and he did it anyway. As did you.” 

Asha’s expression flickers minutely, but gives nothing away. “It was Eddard Stark who made that promise, to a king who is long dead. Not you. Ten years you spent with my brother, and you killed him without a thought.”

“It was not without a thought,” Robb says, a warning and a promise. “But I did my duty.”

“How honorable of you.” She says the word like an insult. “All your talk of duty and still it took you near a year to send him home.”

Robb carefully does not look at Theon, who is standing beside his sister with a strange, delicate expression. 

“Yes,” he agrees. “Though not for lack of trying. I am glad this opportunity to meet arose, though I give my condolences about your father.” 

Asha snorts indelicately, as Theon did when Robb said the same to him. “Aye, I’m sure you do. Now will you invite us inside or are we to spend all night on this frozen beach?”

“Of course not,” Robb says, “We have bread and salt and supper being made. You are guests here, and will be treated as such.”

Asha Greyjoy shows no gratitude for this, but Robb was not expecting any. The castle’s men stand at the ready as they pass through the front gates, casting unfriendly eyes upon the ironborn. Asha pays them no mind, though her men glare back. 

They eat the bread and salt and then discuss the terms of the trade: Theon’s bones for Lady Glover’s youngest. Last born son for last born daughter. It is a quick and formal affair. Dinner is less so, but Asha Greyjoy seems to have little interest in the polite small talk that has been ingrained into Robb from a young age. Robb spends much of the meal listening to Asha and Patrek Mallister exchange sailing-related stories.

After dinner, Asha asks to see her brother.

Robb shows her. Theon is no longer in his wagon. His casket has been placed in a room near the maester’s quarters, where it can remain undisturbed. The casket was replaced, due to Theon’s...decay, and Robb requested that his bones be cleaned and laid out appropriately. 

They sit there, white and nondescript, when Robb pops the casket’s top open. Asha stares down at them.

“When you did not send us his head as proof of his death,” she says after a few long moments, “I thought perhaps you had not truly killed him. Perhaps he had escaped and you were lying to cover it up. But time passed, and news of his return never came. And then I got his letter. And I knew he was dead after all.”

“I did not want to send him home in pieces,” Robb explains. “The last thing he ever asked of me was to bid his body to the sea.” 

Asha is silent for another long moment, staring down at her brother’s bones, unaware that he stands beside her now. Three brothers gone, with she now the only one of Balon Greyjoy’s children still living. Robb thinks of all his siblings, lost or missing or certainly dead, and feels deeply for her.

“My brother was a boy of ten when your father took him from us,” she finally says, tearing her eyes away from the casket. “I never got to know the man he grew into. What was he like?”

Robb considers the many things that Theon was. His smiles and his japes and his long-buried rage and sorrow pouring off of him with the river. He thinks of Theon as a boy of ten, shivering and unused to the cold. Thinks of him as a young man, declaring the weather in the riverlands much more habitable.

“He was…he was my friend. A sort of elder brother at times. One of my closest confidants in this war.”

“I did not ask what he was to you. I want to know who he was.”

“He was Theon,” Robb says simply, as though it were obvious. “He was…hard to pin down. He acted in such a way that people thought they knew him, but there were depths to him that he rarely showed even me. He was the greatest archer I’ve ever known, and good with a sword. And funny, he always had some jape or story to tell.”

He looks at Theon’s bones so he does not have to look at Theon or his sister, who are watching him steadily with their dark, Greyjoy eyes.

“When we were children, I thought he was so exciting. This older boy from a far away land who talked funny and could string an arrow better than our master-at-arms. He was so proud of being ironborn, even when he was shamed for it. I think he…missed home, more than he would show. Once, when he was drunk, he told me longed for the sea.”

Asha is quiet for another moment, throat bobbing as she swallows down whatever swell of emotion that might have risen. Her brows are furrowed in something like thoughtful sadness. He wonders what kind of man she is picturing in her head, if it resembles Theon at all. 

“Did he ever see it again, before you killed him? The sea?”

“No,” Theon says, unheard by his sister. Robb remembers catching sight of him down on the beach behind the Crag, but that was long after death. 

“No,” Robb echoes. “He squired for my father, but I do not think he ever took Theon to the sea. Perhaps he thought it would be too painful a reminder of home.”

Asha scoffs indelicately. “He did not get to sail on his ten-and-forth nameday, then. Your father deprived him of more than you know.”

Robb remembers with a sudden clarity, of Theon’s ten-and-fourth nameday. He had braided his hair in the ironborn style, a small, golden hoop in one ear, full of a restless energy as he bounded down the stairs. He had lamented about not being able to sail his first ship as he would have on the Islands—Father had made vague promises about a trip to Deepwood Motte or Sunspear, but it had not come to pass—but hid his disappointment well. 

Still, he feels the automatic need to defend his father’s choices. “Theon was not treated badly at Winterfell. He took lessons alongside us, trained and played with us and sat at our table at mealtimes. He was treated as my father’s ward more than his hostage.”

“Using a kinder-sounding word doesn’t change the truth of it. But I suppose it is good to know he was not wasting away in the dungeons as our mother feared.”

“Of course not. We are not savages, no more than you are.”

“I suppose not,” Asha murmurs, looking at what remains of Theon once again. “Theon told me in his letter that you agreed to have him drowned instead of beheaded.”

“I did,” Robb agrees. “We did it in the Tumblestone river. He died fighting.” He hopes it is a comfort.

Asha’s expression wavers, a flicker of almost-grief, but there is iron in her voice when she says: “Good. I hope he made you work for it.”

“He did.” And then, unbidden: “I did not want to kill him. I know it does not change things, in the end, but I want you to know that I took no pleasure in it.”

Asha looks at him, dark eyes searching. She nods, once, and then closes Theon’s casket. 

“You should know that I plan to put my claim in at the kingsmoot,” she says, turning to Robb, suddenly all business. “If I secure the throne, I have no desire to hold the North. In fact, I would like to broker a peace between our people, if possible. Establish truce and trade instead of relying on my father’s dying Old Way.”

“That—a peace?” Robb repeats, words shocked out of him. 

“Yes. Unless you are not amenable to it?”

“No, I—I would like that very much. Peace between us was always my goal. Before Balon rebelled, I was going to send Theon home as an envoy for our cause. I wanted to give your father a crow in exchange for his fleet. We had a plan. It…did not come to pass, obviously. But Theon—he believed it could work.” 

“As long as our father lived, it would not have,” Asha says, not unkindly. “No matter how sweet the offer, he wanted to take his crown, not accept it. He was a proud man who could not see past his own bitterness. He lost two sons and killed another so he could attempt to seize lands we cannot hope to hold.”

She looks at the casket again, a deep well of emotion in her eyes that Robb does not know her well enough to read. She looks to Robb again

“I loved him, but I do not wish to be like him. I will make peace with you, Robb Stark, if you will help me secure my hold on the isles when the time comes.”

Asha Greyjoy holds out a hand to him. Robb looks at it. Looks to Theon, who is standing beside them. He is not smiling. He looks devastated, almost, as he had when he was first handed that damned letter from the coast— but he looks between Robb and his sister, and nods.

Robb grips Asha’s forearm, feels her strong grip in return,

“I have a wedding to attend,” he says. “But after that I plan to make my way home. If you will call off your remaining forces, we will see about building this peace.”

“Very well,” Asha says, and shakes his hand once before letting go. “This is a night of good news! We both have long journeys on the morrow, but tonight we should celebrate. I hope you have more than wine in this castle, for my men prefer the taste of ale.”

“I am sure we can find something that will suit their taste,” Robb says good-humoredly. He catches Theon’s eye—his friend looks oddly delicate, sad, as he watches his sister smile. 

Robb is struck with the urge to do something about it. To give them both whatever peace he can. 

“Lady Asha,” he says impulsively before she can leave. “There is one more thing I must tell you before you depart. It will be…strange to hear, but all I ask is that you hear me out.”

“Robb,” Theon says warningly, but Robb does not look at him.

“I will not marry you, Robb Stark,” Asha says—likely a jape, from the amused curl of her mouth. “You have already botched one proposal as it is, and I will be no man’s saltwife.”

Robb smiles weakly back. “There is no proposal. I would not deign to insult you like that.”

“What is it, then?”

Robb takes a moment to consider his words. He remembers his stilted confession to Jeyne, who took it in loving stride. Asha Greyjoy does not seem like she would react the same way. 

“Theon…” he starts, and Asha’s smile drops away. “He is dead, that much is certain. But he is not… gone. In fact, he is here with us in this very room.”

A beat of silence. And then: “What?” Asha asks, sounding slightly too off-guard to be angry—though the anger is certainly present.

“I know I sound mad,” Robb says, holding up placating hands and feeling absolutely foolish in the face of this woman’s bewildered anger. “I thought I was, for a time, but I am not the only one who has experienced proof of his presence.”

“His—presence?” Asha looks around the room in an exaggerated gesture. “This room is empty save for my brother’s bones. Is this supposed to be funny?”

“No, no, I—Theon is bone, yes, but his spirit has not left. He is not able to—he was too far from the sea when he died, we think, and is somehow bound to his body in death.”

Asha’s confusion has been overtaken by offense and anger, her dark eyes bright with it. “You would insult me like this after I offered you peace? Insult my brother’s memory?”

“It is no insult,” Robb insists, “He is here.” 

Asha just shakes her head, turning to leave.

“Tell her I am sorry I did not try to run away like we planned,” Theon says in a rush. Robb does, stopping Asha in her tracks. “The sea was too rough to swim to shore, and then I was afraid Lord Stark’s Old Gods would punish me if I broke my father’s oath.”

Robb relays this information quickly, for once word-for-word. Asha turns and stares at him as though he has stabbed her in the gut. 

“Whatever cruel jape this is…”

“It is not, I swear it. Theon is here, he is right here,” Asha follows his gaze to where Theon stands—empty air, to her. “I only thought…if you wanted to say anything to him, he can hear you.”

Asha shakes her head disbelievingly, searching Robb’s face for some proof of a lie. Looks to the space where Theon stands. Theon is dry, today, and Robb so wishes he was not, that he had solid proof of something amiss. But it is not so. 

She surely thinks me mad, Robb thinks wryly. And yet, she looks at Theon’s closed casket, looks at the empty air, takes a breath and plays along.

“I suppose…in answer to the question in your letter,” she starts slowly, eyes darting to Robb, who nods encouragingly. “I did not much enjoy my time at Deepwood Motte. The very trees hated our presence. I was glad for an excuse to leave it.”

Theon’s mouth curls queerly—a nervous smile. “I have—tell her I have been there several times. It is a wooden pisspot on a hill."

Robb tells her this, word-for-word once more. Asha huffs a tense, nervous laugh. Possibly at Robb’s obvious discomfort in repeating Theon’s words.

“They…let you travel, then?” she asks. “Stark said you squired for his father?”

“Aye. Though it was only up around the North. And never by the sea. Perhaps Lord Stark thought I would make a swim for it if given the chance.”

“Why didn’t you?” Asha asks in a rush, with the air of a question long-held. “Run? Or try for an escape? I know you were a child, and I do not fault you for it, but…”

She looks sharply at Robb, as though fearing his judgment. He has none to give. 

“I told you,” Theon says, and Robb echoes. “I was afraid. I thought of running often, my first months in Winterfell. I missed home terribly. The North was so different, and I was alone, and everyone hated me for bearing the Greyjoy name. But the longer I stayed…it hurt to think too much of home, when I was sure I would never look upon it again.”

And I never did, hangs heavy in the air after Robb repeats Theon’s words.

Theon hesitates, and then continues: “Did Father…did he give any thought to me, before he attacked the North? Did you?”

Robb relays the questions carefully. Asha’s face wobbles, mouth twisting with emotion.

“Of course I did,” she says. “I did not know you, but I did not want you dead. I thought, perhaps—you had lived in the North half your life. You fought in the Young Wolf’s vanguard. I had hoped that maybe he would spare you. That maybe you would escape. I…”

She trails off, taking a deep, steadying breath. Robb fears for a moment that she might cry. Theon must share his fear—he steps towards her, looking uncomfortable and slightly panicked, and reaches out to grasp her arm.

Asha gasps, jerking back. She looks between Theon and Robb with wide eyes. 

“Is that…?” she asks, voice small. 

“Yes,” Robb says softly. 

Asha, slowly, holds out her hand. Theon tries to take it—his hand slips right through hers, but she still inhales sharply. Theon’s touch is cold, Robb knows, cold and damp. Asha stares down at her hand for a long moment, unable to see her brother’s hands curled around it. She steps back, shaking her head.

“I’m—this cannot—I cannot do this,” Asha says, voice trembling, and then turns and storms out of the room before either of them can see her break. 

Robb does not follow. Theon does. 

Robb lets them be, lingering in the room beside Theon’s bones until he decides he should go make sure that his and Asha’s men have not yet killed each other.

*

Theon does not return to him until later that night, when Robb has retired to the quarters Lord Mallister provided him, pouring over maps by the fire in his smallclothes.

“I am fairly certain Asha thinks you mad.” he says in place of greeting. He looks wrung out and weary, as tired as Robb feels. “And her lover wants your head for making her cry. Why did you do that?”

Robb only shrugs. “If Father or any of my siblings were here in spirit and I could not see them, I would want to know. Even if it hurt, I would want to know.”

Theon’s face does not soften, but he nods. “She thinks you mad, but she truly does want peace. I do not think the former will affect the latter.”

“I will apologize in the morning,” Robb says. “Just to make sure.”

Theon crosses the room to sit beside Robb, giving Grey Wind an absent pat on the head as he passes him. He gives the map in Robb’s hand a brief glance, the letter from Roose Bolton on the bench beside him. He is set to arrive at the Twins a little over a fortnight before Robb’s forces get there.

“I still do not think you should go to this wedding,” Theon says, as he has cautioned many times on the journey here. “I do not trust the Freys. There is something rotten in the Twins. Something rotten in your camps.”

“I must go,” Robb says wearily. This is an old argument by now. “I need to bring half my army home, and soon. This is the quickest way to do that. You know this.”

“I am not asking you to route another way North. I am saying you need not go to the wedding yourself.”

“I cannot blatantly insult Walder Frey again, Theon. Once was quite enough.”

“Bring Grey Wind with you, then. Keep him with you at all times. Do not let him leave your side.”

Theon’s eyes are dark and serious, a pleading slant to his brows. After tomorrow morning, Robb will likely never see him again, in this life nor the next.

“Alright,” Robb promises. “I will see that he haunts me as faithfully as you have.”

Theon’s smile is small and shaky. It makes Robb feel like a boy again. He opens his mouth to speak but finds that the words will not come. There is so much inside of him, so much hanging in the air between them, and no time to convey all that he wants to. 

It is worse even than the night before the execution. Back then, Robb had thought that the worst thing he could do to Theon was kill him. That at least his friend would be at peace. How little he had known. How little he knows now.

Theon is leaving tomorrow. Theon will never be coming back.

Perhaps it is better this way. Theon was never meant to come back at all. Father is dead, and he remains so. Arya is lost, Bran and Rickon gone, and they remain so. All men die. All men remain dead, no matter what the ironborn like to say. 

“I will miss you terribly,” Robb says, carefully measured so that his voice does not break.

“As will I,” Theon answers softly. “But you will be alright without me.”

I will not, Robb wants to argue. But he knows that Theon has the truth of it. It will hurt to lose his friend again, but he will survive it. He will carry on, as he has done so far, in the face of all his loss.

“Will you…stay with me tonight?” Robb asks, voice small and shy as it was the very first time he asked Theon this question. 

Theon cracks a smile, tilts his head a little, silently teasing. “Aye,” he says, and the warmth in his voice matches the heat rising from the fire. “Though this bed is much smaller than the last one we shared. I am like to keep you cold all night.”

“That’s okay,” Robb says. “I do not mind the cold.”

They spend their final night together curled up in Robb’s bed—as curled around a ghost as one can get. Robb finds no solace from the fire, Theon pressed close and chilling him down to the bone, but he truly does not mind so much. It feels like home, those cold and icy Northern nights. 

Few words are passed between them, no banter or stories or do you remember when’s. There is little need. Theon is leaving tomorrow. He will not be coming back. And so Robb does not pretend. There is no room for it here. The man in his bed is a ghost. They are boys no longer. They will never be boys again. They will never go home again, Winterfell burnt and broken as the Stark family itself.

These thoughts that once filled him with such terror offer a strange sort of comfort to him now. There is nowhere to go but forward. He knows what he must do and who he must be. The last remnants of his boyhood, Theon will take with him when he leaves. Robb the King will remain. 

Robb keeps his eyes open, trained on Theon’s own, until sleep slowly pulls them shut. The last thing he feels is a cold touch on his cheek and the slightest brush of an ice-cold kiss upon his forehead. 

*

Asha Greyjoy makes no mention of the previous night’s…encounter. Her face is set in stone, her shoulders squared, and it is intimidating enough that Robb does not attempt to apologize for upsetting her and insead also acts like nothing strange happened. 

“Your Grace,” she dips her head briefly. They have met near the castle gates; her men have long-since headed back to their ships to prepare for departure. Theon’s casket has been safely loaded onto Asha’s Black Wind, and Lady Glover’s youngest eats in the dining hall.

“Your Grace,” Robb echoes, doing the same. It makes her mouth twitch slightly, which he takes as a good sign. “I wish you luck at your kingsmoot.”

“I wish you luck with your wedding,” Asha says. “Or—sorry, your uncle’s wedding.”

Robb lets the barb roll off his shoulders. It is the least he deserves, after last night. 

“It will surely be a joyous occasion.” Robb says politely. “I pray you have a safe journey home. I will await news from the islands and prepare to secure my hold on the coast.”

Asha nods. Shakes his hand, once, and turns to leave. 

Robb watches her stalk towards the shore, where her ship awaits. Theon, at Robb’s side, laughs.

“She definitely thinks you are mad,” Theon says with great humor. 

Robb does not rise to the bait. He is too sad, and there is no time for a lengthy argument.

“Shouldn’t you be following her?” he asks. “The ship is set to leave within the hour. You might get left behind.”

Theon shakes his head. “I can feel the ship around me. The sea moving below me. I thought that if you’re planning to stand out here all morning, you should at least have a bit of company.”

Grey Wind huffs as though offended at the implication that he is not company enough. Theon pats his head a little. Robb feels like he might cry. He swallows it down.

“I would not mind some company,” he says. Theon smiles, a terribly sad and beautiful thing. Robb burns the image into his mind, for he knows it is the last time he will ever see it.

He sits down on the beach, Grey Wind putting his head in his lap. Theon sits beside him, tracing nonsense shapes in the sand.

They pass the better part of the hour that way: Robb watching the shoreline until the Black Wind finally lifts anchor and begins to make its way out of port. He sees Theon out of the corner of his eye. Sees the shape of him begin to blur and fade as the ship sails further and further away.

Finally, when the Black Wind is nearly out of sight, Theon sighs. It sounds far away, muffled as though Robb is underwater.

“It is time for me to go home,” Theon says. “The sea is calling me, and I must answer.”

“Yes,” Robb says, voice wobbling dangerously around the word. He keeps his eyes on the ocean so that he does not have to watch Theon disappear. 

“Goodbye, Robb,” Theon says. “I am—”

But Robb never gets to hear what Theon is. 

When he looks beside him, Theon is gone. The Black Wind has disappeared over the horizon. He is alone on the beach.

*

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Robb spends the rest of the day expecting to see Theon pop up somewhere. Expecting to hear his laughter or some witty complaint. Expecting to see wet bootprints up and down the corridors and to shiver through the night.

But he does not. Theon is gone. Robb has finally fulfilled the promise he made, and delivered him home. There is a grim sort of satisfaction in knowing this, but no comfort. He truly is alone now. He is alone. 

He holds his head high, the crown a heavy weight against his temples.

*

They depart for the Twins two days later.