Work Text:
Alannys
Theon didn’t tell his mother before he was shipped off to Winterfell.
He was at once too young and too old. He was practically a babe still, and didn't understand what was happening, not really.
He was going off on an adventure! And everyone knows adventurers return home to their mothers. That’s what the stories all say. His mother would read to him by candlelight, of heroes and pirate princes.
Theon was too young to understand. Life was not a story. It would take many years and many more mistakes before he’d learn. Right then, he was just too young to understand that boys shipped off on adventures do not always come home again.
Then again, he was too old to tell her, so he thought, as he embraced his mother on the dock. She clung to him as though some unseen force, some storm god, was dragging him away.
He was sailing off to wolf-infested woodlands. And bold adventurer-pirates don’t cry and tell their mother they love her before they turn the bow toward the wide open sea. Especially not in the presence of their stern father and a cold crew of foreigners from the mainland, their clothes still stained with blood. His brothers’ blood, Lord Balon told him bitterly.
No, Greyjoy men do not kiss their mothers goodbye with words of love upon their lips. With his brothers gone, Theon knew he had to be the best Greyjoy man around.
He squirmed out of Alannys’ arms and affected an air of embarrassed coolness. He did not tell her he loved her. He did not know he’d lost his chance.
Ned
Theon didn’t tell Eddard Stark either. He couldn’t. Not the grim lord with his grim sword and its ever-present shadow above his neck.
There were times Theon hated him. For the sword, yes, but also for the Stark-dark hair and Stark-dark eyes Theon lacked. For the chilled voice when Theon misbehaved, as though the lord could spot a glimmer of the dread kraken in his future.
Yes, sometimes Theon hated Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell.
But other times, the man would teach him to ride and would kneel to clean his scraped knee when he fell from the saddle. Sometimes, Ned would spar him with wooden swords, along with Robb and Jon. Often, there’d be a kind word. Once in a while, a smile, even. Ned Star was not known for smiling, but he’d spare a few for his children. For his children and Theon.
In those moments, Theon loved Ned. Ned, who was not his father, but nearly. Of course, a father wouldn’t hold a sword to his neck. But then, would a father have sent him away in the first place?
And now Ned was gone, both sword and smile with him. Strange, how bitter it tasted. Strange how the feel of it made his stomach roil.
As Theon watched Robb ram his sword against a tree, he felt a deep sense of wrongness. He hadn’t wanted freedom to come at the price of Ned Stark’s head. Ned, who wasn’t his father, but could have been, if the gods had been kinder.
Theon had yearned for freedom, yes, but freely given, in a smile, in an embrace. He had dreamed of freedom at a Stark’s hand. Sansa’s hand, perhaps, if the gods were kind. But the gods of the mainland were as cold and wild as their domain. They would not be kind to a pirate prince a thousand leagues from the sea.
Yet, as Theon watched Robb crumble a part of him felt relieved. The sword over his neck was finally gone. The guilt of the contrast clawed in his chest. He wanted to laugh at his newfound liberty and rage at how he came by it, and above all, weep for losing another would-be-father. Another parent, getting smaller and smaller in the distance as the words wilted on Theon’s tongue.
Theon didn’t tell Ned Stark he loved him. He couldn’t. Not with a cold steel blade between them.
Now that the sword had lifted for good, his voice free at last, well, it was just too late.
Robb
Theon didn’t tell Robb he loved him when he left for Pyke.
Not in so many words, anyway. Why bother, when he could show it?
His knees professed his love when they bent. His eyes, blazing pride, when he pledged his fealty and named Robb king.
Why bother with “I love you” when “Am I your brother, now and always,” was even sweeter, and just as true?
And now, Theon would show it again. When he would return from Pyke triumphant, with a fleet behind him. When he would raize Lannisport and take Casterly Rock in the name of his king, in the name of his brother, the king.
Theon would disprove once and for all the whispers behind his back, that called him a kraken on a leash. A kraken that would turn on his master at the first whiff of blood in the water. Well, this kraken was tethered no longer, and soon they would see him for what he was. A kraken who loved a direwolf. Two legendary beasts of a kind.
Much later, Theon would remember that wolves drown. That a kraken’s embrace could drag a man down.
And when news would come of the wedding and the wolves it drowned in blood, Theon would hate himself. For his follies, yes, and the horrors they brought, but most of all for leaving without telling Robb he loved him. In those words, those three precise words, as clear as day.
If only he knew, as he rode off from Robb’s camp, a letter of alliance tucked beside his breast. If only he knew that Robb would die thinking him a traitor, a hateful, false friend. A man who named himself brother and lied.
In his nightmares, Theon would try to tell Robb he loved him. But when he’d open his mouth, saltwater would rush in.
Yara
Theon didn’t tell Yara he loved her, when his sister came to rescue him.
Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t Theon. He was Reek. Reek, Reek, Reek, it rhymes with leak. A creature with a hole in his heart, all the love it once held drained away.
He was empty, dry as bone, as straw, as a desert. Theon had died so very far from the sea.
Theon had loved his sister, though he didn’t know her very well as an adult. He hadn’t even recognized her when she had met him at the docks. But he had loved her, still. For her eyes that were their mother’s eyes, eyes that had once peaked down at him in his cradle. The memory was hazy, but still, he’d know those eyes anywhere.
He had loved her for her stories, tales he took with him across the seas to the land of wood and wolves. Stories he had passed to the Stark children when night fell and the firelight beckoned for good old yarn.
Stories he would have told to — well, that didn’t matter anymore. That future ended the day Reek was born.
Theon had loved his sister, but Reek feared his own. Reek’s family ran on four legs and had terrible jaws and suffering in their eyes. His sisters were just as frightened and just as broken as he. But they were here longer, and the horror had already driven them to madness.
How long before Reek joined them? Perhaps he already had.
Reek screamed and snapped and cringed away from Yara Grejoy. He did not tell her he loved her. Reek must not tell lies.
Bran
Theon didn’t tell Bran he loved him when he returned to Winterfell with a host of brave ironmen in tow.
At first, he couldn’t manage to say anything at all. He had heard of Bran’s miraculous return, but to see him in the flesh...it was too much. The relief, the guilt, the rush of every emotion in between, it was far too much. All he could do was drop to his knees and press his forehead against the boy’s — the young man’s.
All Theon could do was hold him and let the tears fall.
Later, he volunteered to guard Bran in the godswood.
“I took this castle from you. Let me defend you now,” he said. In front of dragons and lions and bears, he claimed he needed to repay a debt. He said he owed it to him.
But the wolves knew better. The wolves knew it for the lie it was.
Another man had owed the Starks, and he had already paid in kind. Oh, how he had paid, in phantom limbs and phantom heirs and a phantom spirit that would only be restored by the grace of a woman and the love of a man, who, for her sake, would refuse to die a ghost.
So no, Theon would not stand between Bran and the Lord Death for the sake of a debt. When it’s family, there is no price. When you love someone, you do it for free.
Theon would defend Bran, he would die for him, because Bran was his brother, and he loved him, as brother loves brother.
Theon didn’t tell Bran this. Not when he sank to his knees during their reunion in the godswood. Not in the makeshift war room where they schemed to thwart death itself in its tracks. Not even when he wheeled Bran into the godswood as the night fell.
He didn’t tell Bran he loved him. Bran already knew. What was left of Bran already knew. Of course he did.
Sansa
Theon told Sansa he loved her over a bowl of soup.
He had spent his whole life missing chances, his whole life with the words trapped in his throat.
Not this time. Not with her.
When Theon left his mother on the docks, he had thought he was heading on an adventure. This time, Theon knew he was. He also knew there’d be no coming home.
He hadn’t told Ned, because he wasn’t sure how he felt or whether it was right to feel it in the first place. But with Sansa, there were no doubts, no confusion, no guilt twisted with envy mixed with fear. There was just Sansa, and the fire she inspired in his eyes.
He hadn’t told Robb because he thought his actions would prove it. But with Sansa, he’d leave no room for error. He knew now how quickly fate could twist your brightest plans to ruin.
Theon hadn’t told his sister, because he hadn’t been Theon at the time. But with Sansa, Reek was banished to an unpleasant memory. With Sansa, their places had switched — Reek to ghost and Theon to flesh once more. He would tell Sansa, because he knew who he was, and Theon Greyjoy loved Sansa Stark. It was as simple as that.
He hadn’t told Bran because Bran already knew. But Sansa? He wasn’t so sure. He had thought she might have known, back when he took his hand and jumped with him, back when he pledged his life and service in the halls of Winterfell. He thought he had glimpsed...something in her eye.
But Theon worried he had seen naught but an illusion born of hope and his own wishful thinking. A ghost of his own love of courtly tales.
No. Soon, he would be gone, and Sansa needed to know without a doubt. He needed her to know.
The sea was calling and Theon Greyjoy, adventurer pirate-prince, would wish his love goodbye before he set sail.