Chapter Text
“Beg your pardon, Lord Commander… this – this man says he knows you.”
Jon slowly gets to his feet, staring at the man stumbling into the hall in between two of Stannis’ men. There’s nothing about the man that seems familiar, not the bent back, the bowed head with brittle wisps of snow-white hair. He’s wearing mismatched clothes several sizes too big for him, limply hanging from his thin form. He’s shivering, no cloak, but his hands are gloved and held in front of his body in an awkward position.
Jon shakes his head, already opening his mouth to tell them that, no, he doesn’t know this man, when suddenly the figure before him lifts his head, looking right into Jon’s eyes, and Jon almost forgets himself, gripping the edge of the table when the man starts to sneer in an all-too-familiar fashion.
“How quick they forget, eh, Snow?”
His voice is raw, hoarse, but it’s still the voice Jon remembers from so long ago. A voice from home. He can hear echoes of it in his mind, can hear it laughing, taunting, japing, badgering and tantalizing, never shutting up when Jon had desperately wished him to, when he’d wished to strangle him for the snipes and the desultory insults.
The images come flooding then, unprompted, one after the other flickering through his mind until he feels dizzy with the force of them. A roaring fire in the Great Hall, ale and mead and laughter. The rosy shimmer of the sunrise on drifts of summer snow, horses neighing and dogs barking. Training in the yard and play-fighting in all possible corners of the castle.
A feathered arrow resting against that smirking mouth, words of praise and sneers of contempt, a bitter taste of jealousy and a vague sense of admiration, a feeling of wanting to belong and never even trying, and above all of it there’s that one thing they once shared. Above everything there’s Robb’s smile.
They stare at each other for what feels like hours, a hundred thoughts shooting through Jon’s head, about betrayal and treason and naked fury, but for some unfathomable reason none of that seems to matter in this moment. All Jon can see is a tie, however fragile, to a life long gone.
“Aye,” he finally says, clearing his throat when it comes out a whisper. “Aye,” he repeats, firmer. “I know him. I know him from back home.”
Theon’s mouth twitches. It could almost be a smile.