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He watches the shivering man with a smile. It’s nice to have company in his father's castle, it did get lonely sometimes. It's not like he couldn't find company. It's usually that the company he found was boring. And Roose had threatened to disown him if he dismembered anymore servants.
He's been here for a while now, and Ramsay has very much enjoyed making his acquaintance. Men will spill all their secrets at a glint and bite of steel and iron. And this man has some very interesting secrets.
Theon Greyjoy, bare-chested, dirty, tied to the wooden cross. There’s blood smeared across his upper lip and he smells disgusting. Dirt and urine. He snivels pathetically as Ramsay watches from the shadows and he enjoys the way the light shifts across his face, cheeks seeming to hollow for a moment before he pulls his head back up.
Theon is… interesting to Ramsay. They both have rebellious fathers, both want more power than they have.
The main difference, as far as Ramsay can see, is that the Greyjoy lacks conviction. He doesn’t believe himself when he gives orders. He doesn’t take joy in toying with others; he seems to despise it. He couldn't even handle the Stark children. Every good leader should know how to manipulate – how else are they going to come out on top?
No, power would suit him badly, like too much skin – he’d drown in it, like the seas he supposedly lives by. He’s much better here; here, Ramsay can make the decisions for him. Take away the agony of decision. Help him see the truth – hurt really tended to bring things into perspective.
And his screams were a melody to Ramsay. Theon should thank him; he's helping him to see who he really is.
Ramsay can’t say for sure what his first memory is.
He remembers his mother crying – a lot. She tells him later on he was a quiet baby – he never cried. Or laughed. Or anything really. Just watched the world around him with eyes a shade too clever for his dumb face. (He isn't overly fond of his mother.)
Sometimes, he remembers other people; an older woman rocking him by a window. Men – lots of men. Most of them were only ever seen once. Some were quiet, most were loud and angry. They never paid much attention to him. They were only interested in his mother.
If he thinks hard, he can remember other children in the very early days. They would sit around him and gurgle, dribble and speak stupidly. He’d bitten one of them once to see what would happen, a girl with a wide nose and frizzy blonde wisps of hair who had pinched him.
There had been blood. Then no more children.
He remembers running around in the mud with the older children. It’s a game he’s forgotten the rules for now. But the others don’t really want to let him participate. He’s younger than all of them, and they don’t really know him.
But there’s no one to talk to at home as his mother is staring off into space blankly, and the village nurse is visiting someone else.
He’s desperate for entertainment. Why should they talk to him, after all? He's not their friend. He isn't anyone's friend. And maybe he recognises that he's a little strange in the way he doesn't mind at all.
He gets bored of playing by the rules, and decides to make up new ones. The others can play his game instead. He sneaks away to the bushes at the nearby fence and snaps a branch off one of them before waiting for someone to run past.
He stabs with the sharp end of the branch as the boy runs with a happy smirk, and he falls, crying out in pain. Ramsay throws the stick away before anyone else can see. He doesn't really care, but it's a lot of hassle he can save himself. He looks at the torn clothes, the torn skin curiously. He did that. He had the power to do that. Not the Seven as the Southerners preached, not the Old Gods in the wide, frozen North. Him.
An adult hears the screams and runs over. “What happened?” She screeches, and Ramsay frowns. What a horrible sound.
The boy spits something out between his sobs, blood seeping from the wound in his side, and the woman calls for the town medic, before turning to Ramsay with a furious expression.
“Is this true?” She asks.
Ramsay shrugs. “The rules were boring.” He ignores the shocked look on her face at his nonchalance, walking to his mother’s mill instead.
He’s six when the other children start running away from him.
He finds he doesn’t really care.
When cats start vanishing from his village, the adults are too preoccupied with their own lives to care.
Only children care about their beloved pets, and they talk amongst themselves, busier than ants. Ramsay watches them scurry around in confusion with amusement.
He hears the rumours, he notices the way people look at him in the street.
It’s interesting to him, the way the animals scream and kick and fight so desperately to live. He likes seeing how long they last, where the most sensitive areas are, how they inevitably give up and accept death towards the end, tired limbs slumping to the ground and fur matted with blood as the eyes glaze over listlessly.
He returns the suspicion with a careless smile.
It’s not like they’re wrong.
He’s fourteen when his mother looks at him, disgust on her face.
“Why can’t you be more like your father?” She wonders aloud, and Ramsay feels interest. Not disappointment or sadness that she wants a different child. She doesn’t care for him, he doesn’t care about her. She’s useful for food and shelter. Apart from that, she’s just another pile of flesh. He wonders what’s inside sometimes.
He shrugs at her question. He doesn’t even know who his father is. He wonders sometimes; are they alike? Or is his father weak as well, like his mother?
She continues, a drunken note of hysteria in her voice. “He’s a lord, in a castle. And he thinks he can…”
Ramsay ignores the way she trails off into sobs, far more interested in her few broken words. His father’s a lord?
“Who is my father?” He asks, laying a hand of fake sympathy on his broken mother, mimicking the way he's seen other adults show concern for each other with the softness in his voice.
She looks at him, something in her eyes. He isn’t very good at reading emotions; maybe it’s because he doesn’t really care about the people feeling them. They’re interesting, but meaningless – what do humans accomplish? They bicker and eat and shit. They die. Just like animals.
She whispers, “Lord Bolton,” before passing out on the kitchen table.
Ramsay smiles, something rising in his chest. This is too good.
He’s fifteen when a clean, iron-brown horse trots into his village. The rider is slim, his clothes are unassuming but well-made. The horse is toned and healthy, the saddle subtly embroidered.
Ramsay knows immediately that the rider is well-born.
What he doesn’t know until that evening, however, is the identity.
“Is this the residence of Ramsay Snow?” The man – teenaged boy is closer – asks his mother at the door.
She frowns. Ramsay listens from the shadows. “What’s it to you?”
He knows she isn’t saying it to protect him; she could care less. She’s doing it to be awkward. Life’s dealt her a bad hand, so she’s going to deal everyone else one as well.
“My name is Domeric Bolton. I came to meet my brother.” The boy looks around, trying to see into the gloomy house.
Ramsay finally leaves the cover of darkness at that, curiosity growing. Why would the trueborn son of his father come and visit the unwanted bastard? He examines the boy - his brother - from head to toe. Slim, not muscular. Healthy, but not a born adventurer. There's a pale cast to his skin that Ramsay recognises from the town maester from not going outside unless strictly necessary.
His mother grudgingly moves away, offering him an invitation for dinner. He accepts and Ramsay smiles. His grin only widens on seeing the way the boy is unnerved by him.
He’s cordial to the boy – of course he is! This is his brother! He offers to get them both a drink after his mother has wondered off from the table, muttering to herself.
He knows where his mother tries to hide the ale, and pours two mugs. He crushes three small berries from the garden into one, humming absent-mindedly to himself as he does. He’s never really wanted a sibling.
Ten minutes later, he watches the thrashing and foaming of the boy with amusement; it’s almost like his brother’s dancing for him. Dancing with joy that Ramsay is the sole heir.
A day later, the village raven flies to the Dreadfort as the smell of thunder fills the air, a message of loss and condolence from the town maester. Dark wings, dark words, so the saying goes.
Ramsay tries not to smile as his brother is packed into a box soon after. He keeps the horse.
He rather likes being an only child.
His mother dies, weeks later.
He returns home from hunting in the forest with his bow, dragging a deer with him. The eyes are glazed; he’d watched the light fade away with curiosity. His first arrow had hit the front leg, halting movement, and he’d followed it as it tried to stumble away, refusing to fire another to put it out of its misery. No point in wasting good arrows.
The light had glistened on blood that had wiped onto leaves. He found it beautiful, the deep red against the dark greens of late summer. Nature in the most natural state.
He drops the carcass in the field and approaches the corpse just outside the back door. The hair has fallen across the familiar, sun-burnt face, the clothes ruffled from where she’d fallen.
There’s a dog sniffing at her leg, and he watches it as it begins to growl at the dead meat that used to be his mother. It locks its jaws on her calf and wrenches its head, a chunk of muscle tearing away with a wet ripping sound. Blood oozes from the wound slowly. Her body isn’t even cold.
He regards the dog coldly. He doesn’t try to stop it; he isn’t going to risk himself to save his mother’s stinking excuse for a body. She doesn’t need her worthless pile of flesh anymore. At least the dog is able to eat.
The dog returns three days after, when his mother is nothing but a pile of bones. There’s something desperate in the bared canines, the wrinkled nose of a snarl, which Ramsay can’t help but admire. Here is a beast who’ll do anything to survive.
He throws it a bone from his dinner and the creature gnaws on it like tomorrow won’t come. It doesn’t leave when it’s done; rather, it sits in the garden and stares at Ramsay hopefully.
There’s a laugh in his chest when he realises – the dog is relying on him now. It needs him. He has power over another living creature. But he doesn’t want to destroy this one, he doesn’t want to watch as it struggles and cries out for something, anything to come. He doesn’t want to know that nothing will.
The dog shows up every day after that. He feeds it every day too.
Eventually, soldiers show up on his doorstep.
He doesn’t question it, only smiles gleefully when he sees the banners of House Bolton billowing in the wind, the flayed man whipped about in the breeze.
He climbs onto his horse, the one he’d rescued from his “brother”, and follows them back to the Dreadfort, never looking back.
This is where he’s supposed to be. Upholding the noble name of Bolton, being raised as the heir to such a family line. Who else, in all of Westeros, had the nerve and determination to flay a man and expose him beneath all of his secrets? To rebel against power for the sake of advantage? Why would he want to be a Stark or a Lannister and get dragged into their petty squabbles? Here was a legacy that was brutally unafraid of itself.
(He wonders about that dog sometimes, whether it survived. He forgets, when he walks into the kennel to be greeted with ten stronger, faster, meaner hounds; hounds which are trained to rip animals to shreds.
Hounds which are much more sympathetic to him than some starving creature in the shithole of a village he grew up in.
But still – sometimes he wonders.)
Roose takes him hunting one day.
It’s nothing affectionate, not meant as a bonding exercise between them. His father simply walks into the dining room as he’s eating one morning, and tells him:
“We’ll be going on a hunt later.” Before leaving again. There’s nothing subtle in his words, nothing caring in the way he says things, and Ramsay finds him fascinating. After everything he sees in others, Roose doesn’t fit the puzzle. He’s apathetic where others reach out, he’s cold where everyone else huddles together for warmth.
Finally, someone Ramsay understands. He wonders how he managed to turn out so similar to his father, despite never having known him. They both see more; in the long winter nights, humans mean nothing. A frantic scramble to steal and kill each other. They’re worthless. Toys to be moved about.
On his horse later on, in the forest, he watches the way his father sits in the saddle, straight back and straight face in front of his men. The hounds are the ones who do all the work in these hunts, and Ramsay thinks it’s wonderful; the beasts do the dirty work while the hunters get to watch and enjoy the bloody struggle for life that ensues.
They bring down a deer, and Roose tells two servants to get it packed up.
He only has to say it once, and they just do it, fear plain to see.
Ramsay tilts his head to the side as he watches. He longs for such power over people, to see them quiver and obey him at his slightest breath. He wants what his father has. And he’ll do anything to get it.
They skin the deer back at the castle, and Roose calls him over to help. Flaying men is banned by law in the Seven Kingdoms, but skinning is a Bolton tradition. They get by with what they can, and the noble art is kept alive in the family, passed from father to son.
Ramsay watches intently, picking up every trick and detail, every flick of the wrist that his father uses to get the job done cleanly, storing it away for later use.
This is the life he’s always dreamed of.
He dips a toe into the bath, before wrenching it back in pain. He doesn’t make a sound, but he’s angry. The water is far, far too hot.
He calls in the servant who was responsible for the water, a fat, balding man. His look of disdain as he walks in quickly becomes a mask for fear as he sees Ramsay’s calm smile. Ramsay sees straight through it though; he sees past the surface, to the blood and truth below.
“Could you explain to me why the water is so hot?” He asks politely, watching for any sign.
The man frowns, puffing himself up. “M’lord, I told you to wait.”
Ramsay let his smile drop an inch. Insolent peasant. “I’m not in the habit of waiting. Go and fetch me some more.”
The man looks like he’s about to argue, but keeps his mouth shut and bows, heading for the door. As he leaves, Ramsay catches one muttered word from his mouth.
“Bastard.”
He frowns. That wouldn’t do at all.
When the man returns, he doesn’t see Ramsay behind the door. He doesn’t notice him at all.
He does notice the tip of the longsword protruding from his gut. He manages a slight grunt before the knife slips across his throat.
Ramsay looks at him disappointedly as he slumps off his sword to the floor. Where was the fight he’d seen in all of those small animals? Where was the kicking, the screaming, the desperation to live that had been so prominent?
Maybe it’s hidden inside, he ponders, examining the sharpened edge of his knife.
Roose hears what he’s done from the maester. He finds Ramsay in the gardens, and stares at him coldly. Ramsay looks back, pretending to look pleasantly surprised. He’s trying not to be too proud of himself. The servants haven’t looked him in the eye since they found out.
Much better.
“You’re a hazard.” The words are crisp, and not what had Ramsay has been expecting. “You’re unrefined, a blunted sword. You’re dangerous. If you expect to live under my roof, with my name, you’ll get yourself under control.”
His father walks away without a second glance, leaving Ramsay feeling rather... irritated. He’d been in such a good mood. Maybe it was because of the mess he’d left behind that Roose was angry now. He’d thought they were on the same wavelength. He wants Roose to look proud of him, he wants everyone to look at him with fear and respect.
He wants power. And he’s damn well going to get it.
And years later, that’s how he sees Theon.
Someone who wants their father’s respect, someone who thinks they want power at the very least. Theon Greyjoy is interesting to him. He wants to know more. He wants to see his secrets, what pushes him to this goal that he so clearly isn’t ready for.
Ramsay wants to see what’s past those secrets – what’s inside. But not in a completely bloody way. He just wants to understand this scared little boy, who’s playing at being a man.
Maybe he wants to know Theon.
“The prisoner has escaped!” The cry echoes down the corridors of his father’s castle, and he looks up, annoyed. He thought he’d broken the Greyjoy. He thought he’d figured out his limits, what made him tick. Made him scream for mercy. (Of course he hadn’t given it; who did Theon think he is?)
He rises from his chair and puts down the report he’d been reviewing. He picks up the sword belt and buckles it before ordering his horse to be readied and the hounds to be prepared.
He smiles widely at the trembling woman in front of him who had delivered the news. He’d have to get to know her better. Myranda would be jealous; he knows she tries to hide it. He loves watching her struggle. She's fun though, in a way that most people aren't. She'll go to any lengths to keep him happy, lengths which he hasn't encountered from other people before.
But he can still appreciate a pretty face, and the woman certainly has one. He keeps smiling.
“I’m going hunting.”
He leaves the room, heading for the stables, smile still firmly in place. So, Theon thinks he can run? Let him see how he fares against a pack of bloodthirsty hounds.
Even in that moment, Ramsay knows he won’t let the hounds kill Theon. There’s still far too much to discover about him. And he’s far too much fun to lose so soon.
(Maybe he just likes having him around.)