Chapter Text
Asha was pleased and not pleased. Pleased that she had talked some sense into her halfwit of a brother, but still not pleased that he’d done something so stupid. And really, she hadn’t so much talked sense into Theon as into his men, who’d turned quickly at the prospect of returning to the western coast to raid. That was what they were born for, after all. It was a pity Theon couldn’t see that.
She caught him throwing dirty looks at her as they rode along, but mostly he avoided her gaze and hung towards the back of the party so he didn’t have to listen to the men laugh at him.
“I hope you’re happy,” he’d grumbled sometime on the third day out from Winterfell. “You stand every chance of inheriting the Iron Islands now that you’ve made me the Greyjoy who ran.”
“You wouldn’t have had to run if you’d just followed our father’s orders.”
He looked away again. He was probably still smarting from being torn out of bed and carried away at his sister’s orders. He’d fought like a cat, saying that if they were all too cowardly to hold Winterfell then he’d simply hold it himself. A blow to the head had put a stop to that. For a few hours, at least.
Honestly, Asha didn’t care if he forgave her or not. She didn’t live for anyone’s approval, and the sooner he learned to do the same, the better.
On the sixth day, they crested a hill, and the breeze brought the scent of salt on the air. She’d never gone so long without it before. Down by the shoreline, the ship that would carry them home sat moored in the natural harbor there. Asha’s feet ached to have the movement of the ocean under them again. Maybe it was the lack of salt and sea that had addled her baby brother’s head. He’d been gone from this, his roots, for too long.
“Cheer up, brother,” she said, seeing his long face as she pulled her horse up to his. “We’re going home. I’m taking you back where you belong.”
She urged her horse onwards with the other men and was halfway down the hill before she realized Theon was not following her. Her frustrated sigh was lost on the wind as she wheeled back to see him looking out over the water pensively. It was a new look for him.
“Theon!”
He snapped back to himself and gathered the reins in his hands. But instead of urging the horse forward, he swung around. “I’m not going.”
Idiot! Was he really going to return to Winterfell to take his ill-advised stand there?
“I will have you dragged onboard.”
Theon’s horse whinnied impatiently.
“There’s something I need to do.”
“Theon, get down here now.”
He shook his head. “Tell Father I died. Tell him I made a stand against the Starks and that he’d be proud of me.”
Oh for—
“Get. Down here. Now.”
He dug his heels into the horse’s side and took off with a gallop.
“Theon!”
Rider and horse disappeared over the other side of the hill. Asha cursed and began to spur her own horse, but Dagmer Cleftjaw put himself in her way. “Best let him go,” the old raider said.
“Get out of my way.”
“Do you really think you can convince him to come back?”
“I’ll drag him back.”
Dagmer shook his head and didn’t move his horse. “Lad’s already made up his mind.”
“He’ll get himself killed.”
He gave a noncommittal shrug.
“Out of my way,” she repeated.
“I think he’d rather die on his own terms.” Dagmar scratched at his chin, the thick beard that just barely covered the axe wound on his face. She could catch flashes of pink, mauled flesh underneath. “Although, I don’t think he intends to die. That look on his face was not that of a man seeking out death.”
“No, it was the look of a clod who doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into.”
He smiled, making the horrible scar more prominent as it stretched. “No, miss. It was the look of a man with unfinished business.”