Work Text:
morning
The Drowned God calls his uncle back to the ocean, wading deep into the water. When they were younger, they would swim for pleasure, splashing and shrieking. Boys, they were, both of them. It is peaceful, going back to the ocean. Theon must tread carefully, down the rocks on the beach, but in the water he swims as well as he did once with ten fingers, ten toes. He floats on his back, rocking with the quiet waves. Dawn comes with only the sound of Aeron praying, the sound of his own breath, the sound of the waves.
noon
Some days, when the tide goes out and the little pools of water come peeking out of the rocks, he and Jeyne climb from pool to pool with a bucket, looking for scallops. He had always thought this a game for children, or a task for thralls, but when she had first come to the Iron Islands Jeyne had been fascinated by the tide pools. She was shy of the ocean then, still learning how to swim well, and she had wanted Theon with her to make her brave and show her what was good to eat.
Today, there are not many scallops, just whelks and little crabs, skittering over the rocks into the waiting cages of their hands.
“Can you even eat these?” Jeyne asks dubiously, wrinkling her scar-tipped nose. “They’re tiny.”
By now, she’s used to the big crabs that fishermen catch further out in the ocean, steamed in hot salt water in the Kitchen Keep.
“Not a lot of meat,” Theon says, with a crab dangling from his thumb, shaking it off into the bucket. “But if you get a lot of them, you can boil them down and make a stock, and that makes a fine soup. We used to have it for special occasions, because it’s rich.”
“How many is a lot?” She asks, curious.
“More than you and I can gather together, I think.”
Once, he and Asha and both their brothers had spent most of a morning combing the pools looking for little crabs, until the tide had come in and they’d dragged their heavy buckets back up to the castle. They’d had crab soup with their supper that night.
“What’s in the soup?”
“Well, the crab stock, for one, and goat’s milk cream, and black pepper. Oh, and a little firewine, I think. Maybe something else, I don’t remember, and I certainly never cooked it. But it was good.”
He used to sneak into the kitchens sometimes, to snatch little cakes or pies or other treats, but he’d never paid attention to how they were prepared. The head cook used to threaten him with a wooden spoon, saying she’d tan his little rear, lord’s son or not, but he was fast then and she’d never catch him.
“I want to try it,” Jeyne says. “We can get other people to help look.”
“You can,” Theon says. “You’re the lady of the household.”
She is--his lady wife, even if he’s still getting used to calling her that, even if it is different from a true marriage. They have never shared a bed, and they will never have children, but she is a Greyjoy now, and they are family in the eyes of gods and men.
She smiles when he reminds her, and drops her own crab in the bucket next to his. It is full spring now, and the sun is warm on the back of his neck.
“Yes. I am.”
evening
There’s a fire lit in the drafty solar that used to be their father’s, and it warms him through to his bones. They work together, Theon and Asha, mostly in silence, reading letters and adding up sums--how many sheep are there on Blacktyde? How many shepherds? How much wool can they expect at the next shearing?
He had never thought his father or Eddard Stark would have given much thought to such matters, but perhaps they had, and he’d been too young and occupied with his own dreams and schemes to notice. Scribes or maesters can help them, of course, especially when his hand cramps up and he has more trouble than usual holding the quill and can no longer write, but he likes it when it is just him and Asha.
She hums to herself while she’s writing, sometimes. She’s never been much of a singer, certainly no sweet-voiced maiden, but he finds the sound of it comforting. They used to howl along when the men sang in the hall on feast days, whispering and giggling at the bawdy bits. When they’d marched in the North during the Long Night, Asha would clap her gloved hands together and sing under her breath, half-hiss, half-chant. Keeps me warm, she’d said.
He’d joined in on one of the bawdy bits that used to amuse them so when they were little, grinning at her even though he was still self-conscious about his teeth, and Asha had given a surprised little snort of laughter. She was right--that had made him feel warm.
night
The stars are coming out, bright in the sky. Theon sits on the windowsill near his mother’s chair, by her side, and tries to count them all.
She is sewing, and counting her stitches. One, two, three, four. He thinks the counting helps her keep her place, keep her grounded, keep her here.
She didn’t know who he was at first, when he had come home for the second time. Now, she always knows him, even if she sometimes talks to him like a child.
She likes to brush his hair, the way she did when he was small. The parts that grew back in black, and the parts that are still white and gray and withered.
“I look like a badger,” he’d joked, once.
“You look like my little boy,” she’d said, and meant it, even if he knew he didn’t.
“Look, in the sky,” he says now. “Look how bright the Coracle is tonight.”
She looks, and nods.
“In the greenlands they call that one the King’s Crown, but the wildlings call it the Cradle. I learned that when I was at the Wall.”
His mother laughs softly.
“I never knew that. The Cradle...it was bright the night you were born. I remember.”
She remembers, even if she forgets some things too. Theon knows what that’s like.
The stars are bright in the sky, and they sit by the window and count them all.