Chapter Text
Sansa couldn’t stop shaking. The chill crept from deep within her bones and snaked outward, wrapping around her lungs, her muscles, her heart. This wasn’t the cold of the Dead Army’s storm, nor even the icy shock of plunging into the river during her escape from Winterfell. It was the cold of her father’s greatsword, slick with his own blood. The cold of a raven from the Twins, carrying dark news of her brother.
Theon.
A trail of dried blood ran from mouth to chin. His eyes stared at the sky. They were the color of sea glass, and just as empty. She barely noticed when Jon threw himself around her. She heard someone wail. The sound came from her own body, but she was far away. She was lying dead in the snow, impaled on a broken spear.
Theon.
After everything. She had put her hand in his once, and joined their fates. When they jumped, they survived, together. When they ran, they escaped, together. Now, suddenly, there would be no more together’s. The next time she’d jump from a rampart, she’d jump alone.
“Theon,” she choked.
Jon said nothing. What could he possibly say? Bran, with Arya behind him, was as silent as the weirwood tree. But while the tree wept red tears, her little brother sat stone-faced.
A wave of exhaustion swept over Sansa, and the shaking of grief gave way to the shaking of muscles no longer capable of bearing the strain. But she needed to stand tall. Lady may be her title, but in the past months, Sansa had learned to play the queen.
“Pick him up,” she ordered. “He should rest in the crypt, with Robb and Rickon.” Sansa thanked the gods her voice betrayed only the slightest tremor. No one moved. Her eyes narrowed. “Bran’s alive because of him. We’re alive because of him. He was our brother.”
He was something more than a brother, she thought to herself. She tried to push the thought out of her head. Whatever he was, she wanted him close when it came time for her own bones to rest in the ancient catacombs.
“Sansa…” Jon started, uncertainly. It was an awkward moment. There was no tomb in the Stark crypt set aside for a Greyjoy.
“He was our brother,” Sansa insisted through gritted teeth.
“He was.” Everyone jumped when Bran spoke. “But he can’t stay here.”
“Bran! He died to protect you!” Sansa exclaimed.
“He did. But nevertheless...,” Bran’s eyes grew glassy, as though focused on a scene far away from the bloodstained godswood where they gathered. “Nevertheless, he came from the sea. And to the sea he must return.”
Sansa tried to meet Arya’s eyes, seeking support. Her sister was uncharacteristically quiet, eyes fixed on Theon’s body.
“Arya, Jon. What would Father do?” said Sansa, shifting tactics. “What is the honorable thing to do?”
Jon frowned. “I suppose-“
“We must return him to the sea,” interrupted Bran, with more force in his voice than Sansa had heard him muster since he first returned home.
A bit of the old Bran peeked through his eyes. They were alert and present. “Trust me,” he continued in a softer, yet no less intent voice.
Trust me. Sansa felt another shiver race up her spine. She could have sworn she heard the weirwood behind Bran echo his words. Sansa released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and her shoulders, raised in battle, dropped. Pressing her lips together, she slowly nodded.
“To the sea, then,” she said.
………
They couldn’t carry Theon all the way to the ocean. It was too far from landlocked Winterfell, and they had skant time to prepare for the southern battle to come. Not for the first time, Sansa cursed the dragon queen and her insistence to start another war before they had sufficient time to recover from the last.
So instead, they brought him to the White Knife. The river waters would bear Theon to White Harbor, where he’d join with the Narrow Sea.
Sansa gazed out at the river. It charged past them, its rapid white current earning the river its name.
The group gathered at the riverbank was larger than Sansa had expected. Most of the North had paid their respects to the fallen earlier, in Winterfell, and she knew many would have conflicted feelings about the man whom they once named Theon Turncloak. So when a good several dozen smallfolk joined the Starks and their southern company at the shore, Sansa felt a rush of relief. Theon told her once he didn’t want to be forgiven. But at least some of his people would mourn for the Hero of the Godswood anyway.
Theon lay on a simple raft, the Greyjoy banner draped over him. A rather menacing funeral shroud, Sansa thought, as she eyed the golden kraken. But maybe it will protect him beneath the waves. She swallowed the lump that had risen in her throat. With his body buried in sand instead of encased in stone, they’d be parted forever.
Jon came up from behind her and placed a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. He gave her a squeeze and then turned to address the crowd.
“Theon Greyjoy came to us when he was but eight years old. A young kraken with a crooked smile and far too much confidence for his own good.” Sansa’s upper lip quirked slightly, remembering.
“We didn’t get on well, when we were boys. We competed for Robb’s attention. And for Father’s. Plus, while I hate to admit it, he was a better shot than me.”
“But, archery skills aside, we were more alike than not. Two boys with the wrong name who wanted nothing more than to run with the wolves. Now, we’ve both made terrible mistakes, and paid for them dearly. We’ve both been trapped between allegiances, and we’ve both had pieces of ourselves ripped away.”
Sansa grew rigid, the hair standing up on her arms. She didn’t want to recall the horrors Theon suffered at the hands of Ramsey Bolton. Nor was she prepared to contemplate her brother’s death, even if he had managed to return.
“But in the end we both came home. Because a wolf belongs with his pack. The North calls me the White Wolf, though my name isn’t Stark. Well, his name might be Greyjoy, but Theon was every bit as wolf as I am.”
Jon paused, as though calling up a memory. Then his body language changed- he seemed to grow taller and older, his face as calm and deep as frozen lake. For a moment, Sansa saw her father.
“The lone wolf dies but the pack survives,” he said.
In unison, he and the rest of the Starks repeated the phrase, like a mantra, like a prayer. The words rose from them effortlessly, automatically. How many times had her father uttered them?
“Theon might have fallen, but the pack survives because of his sacrifice. We live because this wolf came home.”
Jon curled his right hand into a fist and pressed it over his heart. “To Theon Greyjoy, the Sea Wolf.”
The sound of a hundred fists thumping against a hundred chests reminded Sansa of a battle drum. “To the Sea Wolf!” the crowd cried out.
Jon took a step backward and nodded at Bran. Surely their brother would want to speak. But after a long look at Theon’s body, Bran said nothing but, “What is dead may never die.” That was all.
Sansa gritted her teeth. Her mind flashed to the blood trailing across Theon’s face. The weeping wound in his gut. His red hair dusted with white snow.
Arya walked up and clapped Bran’s shoulder. He retreated.
“Valar morgulis,” Arya said. “Theon died with honor. The North will remember.”
Father would be proud, Sansa thought. She wished her sister would speak for longer though.
It was her turn and she was not ready. She would never be ready. But she’d speak all the same.
She never had the chance for her Father, who was never supposed to die. Nor for Robb or her mother, murdered leagues away. Or even for Bran, who still breathed but had truly fell beyond the Wall. So before Theon slipped beneath the waves, she would speak.
“My brother Jon named Theon ‘Sea Wolf.” A Greyjoy, a Stark. In truth, he has had many names. Brother and Turncloak, Prince and Servant.”
She paused, thinking of another name. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with ‘weak,’ she heard him utter furiously to himself.
She swallowed hard, and continued.“I have had many names too. Little Bird, Queen-To-Be, Alaine, Lannister, Bolton. With so many names, it can be hard to remember who you really are. What person lives behind the titles? Somewhere along the way, the names bury you.”
“Theon dug me out, just when I thought I’d never see sunlight again. I’m not sure there’s anyone else who could have done so. He knew what it was like to lose your name. So I reminded him of his, and he rescued me in kind.”
Sansa fought to keep her voice steady. She remembered that last night, the firelight flickering across his face. The warmth in his eyes. Her hand on his. Her lips on his. That last night, when they chose each other, over anyone else in the world.
“I stand now at his grave. It’s up to me again to remember his name. As for my name, I know it well. He made sure of that. I am Sansa Stark. Who loved a man named Theon Greyjoy, of Pike and Winterfell.”
The world was silent but for the river’s chatter as it hurried toward the sea.
Before anyone could stop her, she waded into the water, soaking her skirts up to the knee. She remembered another time, in a river just as frigid. She thought she would freeze. She thought she would die. But he took her hand, and he held her in his arms. And they survived.
She reached the raft where Theon lay, and brushed a hand to his cheek. Despite the chill, her hand remained steady. Then she pulled a direwolf brooch from its place above her heart. She had wrapped a lock of her long red hair around it. Just like in the old stories, she thought. Neatly, Sansa placed the pin on Theon’s breast. The lady sends her handsome prince off to his next adventure with a favor… and a kiss.
She tenderly brushed away an errant red curl and kissed Theon’s lips. A few tears dropped onto his face, but she didn’t wipe them off. Salt from Winterfell, she thought. Add that to your sea-salt, my pirate prince.
Sansa took his hand one last time and gave it a squeeze. “Goodbye, Theon.” She took a shuddering breath. “I love you.”
Sansa gave the raft a shove and watched as the river current caught hold.