Chapter Text
Thea was nine when she first left the sea and landed on green ground.
The waves were crashing against the rocky banks of the Stony Shore, foam audibly seething on their crests. Sea gulls circled overhead, squawking. The salt smells of the sea thickened the air. The sky was a vast expanse of blue and the sun smiled mockingly down on them. It was better than the Storm God’s wrath. The sea does not forgive. The sea does not forget. What is dead may never die.
The Northmen escorted Thea out of the ship. A slim, dark-haired girl of nine years, there was an intractable glumness on her face, a brooding and near cynicism that misfit her youngness and girlhood. As a child, she should have been playing, frolicking, marveling at the world around her in her seemingly perpetual innocence. But innocence was frayed thin, for there had just been a war, and Thea’s father had lost it. She was the prize and booty, the goods the victors took home. She was the hostage, and the look on her face told of an understanding that far surpassed her young years.
The Northmen did not help. Even though she was just a child, and just a girl at that, they formed a guarded bloc against her. If she had been shorter, she’d have only seen their shields and armor, but she was a tall girl, so she saw the sky and the green and the seagulls circling overhead. She had never seen greener land in her life.
She voiced this out loud. “Is all land in the North so green?”
A handsome man with close-cropped brown hair turned to her. He had been kind to Thea on her journey, gifted her with pocket sweets and politely talked to her when everyone else preferred to pretend as if she did not exist. He smiled now, but even Thea knew that a smiling captor could still run a sword through her if her father showed the slightest pretense towards rebellion. What mattered wasn’t their smiles, but the power they held over her. I’ll make sure not to forget, she silently vowed. Yet, the sweets had tasted so good, and his kindness had felt even better to a girl-child taken from her family and voyaging on sea to a new, strange land.
“Not all of it,” said Robett Glover. His shield was a raised, silver-clad fist in the sky against a background of red. Pretentious and weak. What is silver to iron? “When you go up towards the Wall, it gets colder and snowier and the Haunted Forest is said to be barren. But that’s farther north than our lands. Here is the greenest you’ll find in the North, greener than anywhere on Pyke for certain.”
The Greyjoy girl nodded, sullen. Throughout the voyage, she had remained quiet and not asked Glover or anyone else the most basic questions expected from children seized by strangers. Where are you taking me? Where am I going? Will I ever see my family again? When can I go back? Why can’t I go back? Why is this happening?
Her silence disturbed the Northern lord, but he dared not say it out loud.
She let herself indulge in one question. “Where am I going now?”
“Winterfell.”
Her lips thinned and for a moment Lord Glover thought she might cry. “Will I ever see the sea again?”
Lord Glover parted his lips to answer, but he realized that the Greyjoy girl wasn’t looking for a genuine response or explanation. After all, how did you answer to a child of nine taken prisoner for the transgressions of her father?
He said simply, “I know not, my lady.”
And as she walked away from the sand and onto the green grass, as the sea stench faded and the sea gulls’ voices dwindled in the distance, she allowed herself to have her first cry since she boarded ship on Pyke. And she tasted salt on her lips.
-
They reached Winterfell at nightfall.
There were celebrations, worried women congratulating their men on coming back home alive and breathing sighs of relief, the younger boys embracing their fathers and pressing them for details of their exploits. Thea stood to the side, confused and sullen and never having felt more out of place in her life. I am on the losing side and my people are not here.
Lord Stark was her escort. At Winterfell, he had to finally face the girl he’d ignored the entire way from Pyke to the Stony Shore. They called Eddard Stark a brave man for singly leading the Northmen into battle against her father’s men and decisively winning the war, but Thea thought him craven for refusing to look a girl who was not yet ten in the eye.
Eddard Stark was younger than her father, but older than her dead brothers. He had cool grey eyes and an air of solid authority. He appeared to be constantly frowning in seeming anticipation for the winter referred to in his house words. Even so, he was less intimidating than Thea’s father.
He turned those cool grey eyes on her now. He did not trouble to bend down to meet her eye level. Thea was tall for her age, but Lord Stark was much taller. His perpetual frown was turned downwards, tinged with what could’ve been distress. The lines buried deep in his forehead made his otherwise young face look ancient.
“I trust you were not in want of anything on the journey.”
“I was fine.” Her voice was a faint whisper. She silently cursed herself for sounding so weak in front of her captor. Next time will be better.
“I am glad of that,” he said, but there was no greater displeasure on his face, and he seemed distracted.
He does not want to deal with me, she realized. I am a burden, a liability, a girl he’d hate to kill if Balon raised his banners again.
But would he flinch away from the deed? Eddard Stark was battle-hardened, practical, and above all dutiful to his king. She doubted she’d survive if her father rebelled again.
“Your room is on the second floor of the Great Keep,” Lord Eddard was saying. You mean my prison. “It is in the same corridor as that of my daughters.”
Thea raised her eyebrows at that. “You have daughters?”
“Yes.” A tiny smile played on Lord Stark’s lips. Thinking of them clearly made him happy. They will be joyful to see their father return home. Rodrik and Maron never made it home. Neither would she, it seemed like.“I have two, Sansa and Arya. Arya was born but a few months ago. You will come to know them during your stay here.”
Did Lord Stark mean for Sansa and Arya Stark to be Thea’s playmates? He was clearly more removed from reality than Thea had initially anticipated. She wondered, standing outside in the windy summer night, if Eddard Stark would be honest with her. If he’d name this farce as what it was, if he’d drop the empty formalities and address her as a traitor’s daughter, if he’d lock her in a cellar because she was a prisoner in Winterfell. ‘Twould be better that way, if he treated me like a hostage and prisoner and not a third daughter.
Look me in the eye, you craven. Look at me.
As if hearing her thoughts, Lord Stark finally looked Thea in the eye. “You will not be in want of anything, I promise you. I will treat you fairly and justly, as if you were my ward. You will attend the same lessons as my daughters, and we have tailors to make your clothing. You will eat from my family’s table.” Thea could scarce believe it. Her eyes remained transfixed on Lord Stark’s, craven no more, but no sound emanated from her wordless lips. “There is a godswood and sept, if you crave worship.”
Thea found her voice. “I worship the Drowned God, my lord.”
Lord Stark’s face looked grave. “Very well.” He nodded at one of his men. “Escort Lady Greyjoy upstairs, Desmond.” He gave orders for two other men to bring up her belongings, a scant pack of some clothes, letters, a couple of books, and memorabilia. What she’d really wanted to bring was her longbow, but that was forbidden onboard. She also knew the Northmen had scoured her belongings clean before taking it on the ship, and she wondered what remained, if the breeches and jerkin she liked to wear were in the same condition as she’d left them in, if they’d pulled it out and laughed at what she wore or cursed her for absurdity, if that accounted for the queer looks the Stark guardsmen gave her even now. She set her mouth in a flat line and did not flinch as the guardsman led her to her room. I will not be cowed.
Lord Stark had clearly meant to remove her from the festivity in the Great Hall, whether out of sensitivity or contempt, she knew not. But it made no matter because she had no desire to join the Northmen at their feast and endure their scrutinizing glare. Her room was made entirely of stone, but it was uncannily warm and insulated. Myrish carpets were laid out on the floor and tapestries depicting various legendary scenes draped the hard, grey walls. But the tapestries were colored green and white, showed snow and grass, all sights and stories on land. Not one of them showed the sea.
Her bed was positioned besides the window. The window was a huge, semi-oval thing, big enough for her to fit through if she bent her shoulders a little. She stared below at the grounds, blanketed in darkness. What would happen if she jumped out? It was not impossible to scale the wall from her window. She was only on the second story. But where would she go after that?
A maid entered her room once to bring her food, but after pushing a few mutton chops around, Thea lost her appetite. She had never been so far from the sea in her life. Granted, the sights were to be a change from what she knew, but even the smells were drastically different. Winterfell smelled woody, almost dewy, green. Opening the window did not help. Cool streams of air whipped through her dark hair, but no salt lingered on the wind.
It unsettled her, this distance from the sea, and she spent the night sitting upright on the bed, her arms wrapped tightly across her shoulders, holding herself together. She didn’t sleep a blink until the sun was rising in the sky.
-
Thea didn’t meet the Starks until two days after her arrival. The following days were busy with the aftermath of war and the spoils of victory, the celebration of the smallfolk and lordly meetings putting the people and places disturbed by war to rights. Thea dared not come out of her room lest the Northerners lynch her for being Ironborn in their zeal. Their festivity was neverending and her skin crawled when she heard their cheers and laughter through the thick walls of her prison-like bedroom. All joy bought from the blood and grief of the Ironborn.
She wondered if Lord Stark and the rest had forgotten her, but the meals were unfailingly sent to her room by the maid three times a day. The maid was a plain, middle-aged woman with a hefty bosom. Her eyes were flinty and she hastily dumped the tray of food at Thea’s door like it was the most cursory task in the world. Lord Stark had probably instructed her to be kind, for she held her tongue at least. Thea never inquired for her name, wondering since when mere servingwomen could make her feel so cowed and powerless.
The window beckoned to her, day and night.
On the third day, she ventured outside of her room. She decided to use the door, not the window. Bannermen were leaving more and more by the hour. She could see their banners and horses from her window and had taken a habit to watching them, speculating which one of them had loosed his arrows on Rodrik and Maron. One time an armored lesser lord spotted her and pointed, and she didn’t go by the window again for the next three hours.
The Northmen had no love for the Ironborn. Even before Balon’s rebellion, the reaving, raping and raiding were fresh in the memory of the Mormonts and the Mallisters, and the men were emboldened by their victory in battle, drunk on the blood they’d claimed in this war. Trekking outside her room meant a lynching or worst, which was why Lord Stark did not send for her and a guardsman stood outside her room at alternating hours. Thea had not inquired for his name either, greeting him with silent disdain whenever she was forced to face him.
It was the early hours of the morning and there was no guard stationed outside her door. Thea was dressed in breeches and a tunic, unladylike clothes, but they made her nimbler and quicker than the heavy dresses she’d brought to Winterfell. The breeches allowed her freedom to move her legs and the tunic was light and comfortable. If a vicious Northman put his hands on her, she’d be able to escape with quickness and ease.
She explored the floor. She glimpsed into the adjoining bedrooms. They had the appearance of nurseries, and Thea wondered if these were the rooms of Lord Stark’s daughters. Does he think me an infant? Surely Thea was too old to befriend infants and toddlers, much less those belonging to the Stark family. Too Ironborn for that.
Lord Stark’s intentions still mystified her. She had paced back and forth in her prison, trying to understand what was going to happen, what he was doing with her, what his words meant. But all sense and reason eluded her and she was inevitably seized by anxiety and alternating depressive moods. It was the worst when she thought of how she’d never see the sea again. Winterfell was so far away from the ocean, the farthest she’d ever been from the ocean. She was possessed by panic at the thought and her cries and gasps had been so loud that the guard stationed outside her door burst in and asked, “My lady?” in dire concern, but she moved back and tripped, falling onto the floor in her effort to get away from him. She scowled, her face sticky with tears, aggrieved and humiliated he’d seen her like this.
He was a funny guard, much older than her with russet hair and a mustache. His concern for her had been surprising, because before he had treated her with sole indifference, the stigma and disgrace of hostage, prisoner, Greyjoy underlying it. Thea understood that this was to be her future as Lord Eddard Stark’s so-called ward. Cold people with cold smiles and perfunctory politesse, who would subtly remind her of her inferiority. She would spend the rest of her life second-guessing herself. She was nine years old going on ten and she knew this.
Thea continued to wander the halls in the Great Keep on the second floor, not yet ready to test the stairwell. She was pondering the great stone steps when she felt something brush against her leg and jumped.
A little boy with red hair and stunning blue eyes was staring at her. “Who you?”
Thea hesitated. “I’m Thea Greyjoy,” she said quietly.
“What you doing here?” The child was elegantly attired in a white doublet and velvet grey surcoat. He had the bluest eyes Thea had ever seen and they were unblinking, penetrating.
Thea laughed, and it was the first bitter laugh she tasted since landing on green ground. It signaled the end of her childhood. “I don’t quite know myself.”
The little boy cocked his head to the side. “Then why you here? In my castle?”
“This is your castle?”
“Yes.” The boy glowed with pride. “My lord father’s castle.”
Thea bit her lip. This is Eddard Stark’s whelp. Whatever amusement she felt for the boy’s toddling mannerisms evaporated and she only felt sick, very sick inside. But this was the only individual she’d met at Winterfell in the last three days who was disarmingly honest and sincere. He was the only person she’d met whose eyes were not clouded with judgment, who treated her like an actual person. That’s because he’s a child. That’s because he doesn’t know any better. But even children learned hatred at the knees of their mothers, and this lordling had not turned away from her when she revealed her disgraced Ironborn name.
“What’s your name?” she asked the boy.
The little boy straightened his spine. “I am Robb Stark of Winterfell,” he pronounced, saying each word one by one as if he’d rehearsed it.
She gave a small responding smile, a frayed twist of the lips. But his reciprocating grin beamed with radiance. He was thrilled to have even slightly pleased her.
“Where you from?” he pressed on.
“You know, you ask too many questions for such a little boy.”
He got angry at that. “I am not little!” he cried. “I’m very big.”
Thea drew herself up to her full height. “Well, I’m bigger than you.”
True enough, Robb came up to her shoulders, but he remained undaunted. “I’ll grow bigger soon. That’s what Jory says.”
“Who’s Jory?”
“The cap’n of guards,” the child slurred his words. “The guard. He’s so tall.” Robb raised his hand to show just how tall. “Taller than you even!”
The blue eyes that had left such an impression on her glinted with mischief. Thea was suddenly exhausted. Was this the same guard who stood watch at her door, the same guard who’d escorted her to her prison that first night at Winterfell, the same guard who’d thrown dirty looks at her on the voyage to the Stony Shore?
“I don’t like guards,” proclaimed Thea. “They scare me.”
“They’re supposed to protect you,” affirmed Robb. “At least that’s what my lord father says.”
Your lord father can be wrong, she wanted to say, but she didn’t want word to reach Lord Eddard’s ear and have the whole household know she was poisoning the little heir’s mind this early in her captivity. He was her enemy by all rights, but she felt a budding affection for the little boy. I only crave company because I’ve been confined in my prison for days, she rationalized.
“Why you look so sad?” Robb’s pink lips were pursed in concern, his eyes wide at the notion of her sadness.
Thea did not think her vulnerability was so apparent. She thought she sported an indifferent disposition. Her forehead crinkled. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes I do,” said Robb. “You look sad.”
“No, I don’t,” persisted Thea stubbornly. “You can’t tell. You’re only a child.”
Robb stepped back, as if slapped. “Children know things,” he pouted, hurt.
Tenderness unexpectedly swept her heart. “They do,” she conceded. “I’m sorry, Robb. Let’s not talk about my sadness though. It’s not important.”
He sidled up to her. He touched her cheek. “Can I make you happy?”
Her words caught in her throat, but it was useless saying them anyway. The clipped footsteps of a guardsman advanced towards them, and Thea saw his dark russet hair and recognized him as the guard who’d caught her in her fit of hysteria.
“Look, this is him, this is Jory I was telling you about!” Robb started jumping up and down in his excitement.
Jory’s expression was stern, doubtlessly to find the heir of Winterfell in the kraken’s clutches, but he had no choice but to humor the little lord. “Jory, look. I made new friend. Her name is Thea.”
“I didn’t say we were friends,” muttered Thea.
“Is that so?” Jory said to Robb, but even his tone towards the little lord failed to be friendly. He nodded curtly at Thea. “Lady Greyjoy, please come with me to your chambers at once.”
He put a protective arm around the five-year-old boy. Robb looked confused, glancing from his new friend to the captain of the guards. Thea sulkily stood up and made a show of stretching her arms. Lord Stark’s men seemed too honorable to manhandle nine-year-old girls and she wanted to make this as difficult as possible for Jory.
“I only wanted a breath of fresh air,” she said nonchalantly.
Would there come a time when she could converse with a child without being considered a threat to him because of the ignominy of her name and place? No. You are a hostage. Best get used to it.
She began to walk down the corridor in the direction of her chambers. Jory kept step with her, holding her elbow. They left Robb in the wake of their footsteps, staring at their receding figures in bewilderment.
-
Robb probably told his father of Jory’s conduct, because she was assigned an older, gentler guard for the rest of her week. And then she wasn’t assigned a guard at all, and she was allowed free movement in the castle, and she broke bread with the Starks for the first time.
Lady Catelyn was Lord Eddard’s wife, a stately woman with eyes as blue as her firstborn son’s. She nodded warmly at Thea when she joined them for breakfast. “You are welcome to eat at our table, Lady Thea.”
“Thank you.” The girl nodded, not knowing what else to say.
Arya was still in the cradle and Sansa was a toddling little thing, her coloring the same as her older brother’s, only her hair was redder than even his. Lord Eddard presided over the table, commanding unspoken respect, but he was familiar with his wife and gentle with his son in ways Balon had never been. Another boy with a long face and dark hair who was the spitting image of Eddard Stark ate with them. Thea would later learn that was Robb’s bastard brother Jon Snow. Lady Catelyn’s eyes were cool on him and she treated Thea better than she did Jon, whom she was loath to even look at.
Lord Eddard Stark did not break any of his promises. He was a man of honor, Thea learned. Time eroded and the Greyjoy girl became accustomed to her new life in Winterfell. She was well ahead of Sansa in her studies, so she took her lessons with Jon and Robb. Being four and three years older than the boys (though no one really knew Jon’s exact name day), she became impatient and frustrated with the material she was taught, material she’d been taught before. That and more since Rodrik the Reader’s wealth of reading superseded that of Maester Luwin. But surprisingly, Luwin accommodated her and gave her the books she asked for and taught her separately in history, science and literature.
But what she yearned for, what she wanted from the aching limbs of her body was to practice with wooden broadswords and ringing steel in the yard with Jon and Robb. She wanted to join the boys in their training with the master-at-arms. She wanted to shoot the longbow and never miss a target.
She practiced and tussled with Robb and Jon casually. Whenever any of Ned Stark’s whelp mentioned that she was a girl, she shrugged as if it made no matter and said, “So?” and attacked them with broadsword in hand.
She knew the rest of the household thought it unseemly. She was growing older too, years printing their shape on her. She was no longer just a girl, breasts were budding and she was becoming softer where she used to be lank and narrow, but she did not care. Broadswords were nothing, what she really wanted was longbow and steel. One day after a particularly fierce assault on Robb, which left the boy on his knees saying, “I’m dead already! Why are you still attacking! I’m dead, I’m dead!”, Eddard Stark asked for a word with her.
Thea was clad in breeches and tunic, both matted with dirt from where she’d fallen and rolled on the ground. When she first came to Winterfell, she’d been able to look at Lord Eddard Stark in the eye, but now she lowered her eyes in respect of her liege lord.
“You are quite good with wooden swords, Thea,” commented Lord Eddard.
“I used to play with them all the time at Pyke,” she blurted out.
“Who did you practice with?”
“My sister Asha,” the Greyjoy girl explained. “And sometimes my brother. Maron. But my talent was in the longbow.”
Ned Stark’s black eyebrows shot upwards. Is he disgusted or impressed? “That’s impressive. What do you think of the boys’ training with Ser Rodrik?”
“I want part in it,” she said bluntly. “I want to practice with steel sword and I want to shoot the longbow. It has been so long since I felt it in my hands. I would like nothing better.”
Lord Eddard nodded reflectively, rubbing his brown beard. Thea waited in anticipation, but when it was clear he was not going to say anything else, she waited to be dismissed. “Thea, come back and fight!” Robb was yelling, and Ned smiled and nodded at Thea, granting her permission to rejoin the boys in their broadsword battles.
The next day, Lord Eddard inducted her in training with Ser Rodrik alongside Robb and Jon. She tried not to gloat at the people scandalized by the notion of putting a weapon in the hostage’s hand. Others still misliked that she was a girl. She simply rolled her eyes at them. Are all greenlanders so pathetic? Even by their standards, this is not so shocking. Have they never seen a Mormont?
Ned Stark kept all his promises. The only thing Thea lacked was worship, but you could not worship the Drowned God faraway from sea, not for long. But Eddard Stark had never promised her the sea, he had only promised her the godswood and the sept, and she had need for neither. She grew up an irreverent and agnostic woman, doubt dominating her worldview, even marring Lord Stark’s pithy conceptions of honor.
She knew in the back of her skull that she was still a hostage, she knew it in the deepest recesses of her heart. She knew it from the whispers that trailed her, she knew it in the biting jokes of which she was the butt, and she knew it in the brusqueness people dealt her with. She spent her entire life second-guessing herself. Did they treat me like that because they genuinely don’t like me or because I’m Lord Balon’s daughter? What did I ever do to them?
And yet, it became harder to hate the Starks. They treated her like a person, they treated her like a ward fostered in their castle. They honored her with respect she would have never anticipated the day she landed on the Stony Shore so many years ago.It became more and more difficult to remember who they really were, that Lord Stark would slit her throat when Balon rebelled again, that she was a piece of meat to barter in politics and war. She watched Arya and Sansa grow up into spirited young girls. Lady Catelyn taught her wisdom and sewing and even commiserated with her on exile in Winterfell, hailing originally from the Riverlands. “It takes time to become accustomed to this castle, but you have all the time in the world.” And Robb became something indescribable, not a friend, and not quite a brother, but a synthesis of both, and maybe something else, something she could not quite put her finger on, something strange and unnerving.
She forgot who they really were, her captors and enemies. And in corollary, it became easier to forget who she really was.
It would have been better if the Starks had been cruel with her and kept her locked in a tower or cellar. It would have been easier that way. Instead with their kindness, they destroyed her memory and identity in ways cruelty would have never accomplished. They made her forget who she was. Ned Stark may have given her a longbow, but she only had it because he allowed her to have it. She was forever subjugated to their conditions. As Thea grew older, her pride strengthened. It had smarted so often in her life that it only increased to compensate for the compromises, to protect her against the world that aggressed on her, to proclaim see, I don’t care what you think.
But that question lingered in the back of her mind, a question that she was not quite ready to confront headlong, because it scared her that much. Who am I really?
She tried to keep the memory of her lost homeland alive. She wondered if her father ever thought of her, and she doubted it. But sometimes she pretended because the idea of Eddard Stark supplanting her father was imminent and dangerous. It scared her. She kept an array of seashells on the sill of the window she’d contemplated jumping out of so many years ago. She’d brought them back from Pyke. The shells were eternal. Her body still missed the sea. It was this loneliness and bereavement that drove her to seeking acceptance from the Starks. But what she really wanted was to stretch on the sandy banks and be swept away in the ocean’s icy embrace. She wanted to drown. What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.
She waited for the day Robb would learn who she really was, what purpose her so-called wardship actually served, and he would look at her changed. But that day never came, and a tiny sliver of hope leached in.
That little piece of hope devastated whatever last vestiges of life remained to her. It swept over her like the sea, torrential and violent, and washed her anew.
What is dead may never die, indeed.