Chapter Text
Jon jolted awake with a start. The room was dark. It was still night. Why had he woken up?
The dream was still fresh in the trembling of his limbs and his sweat-soaked skin. Usually, in his dreams, he was the wolf—running, chasing, hunting. But tonight, he was the one being hunted. He could still hear the low growling in his ear, could still feel the bite of teeth as the beasts had grabbed his wrists and pulled tight enough to tear his arms from their sockets. He remembered the helplessness of being forced onto his back, face and belly exposed, and how he’d kicked out.
His leg twitched. Had he woken himself up? It hardly felt like he had woken up, it was so cold. Except he was no longer wading through waist-deep snow, but in his room at Castle Black, in his bed. The fire had burned out, and somehow he must have managed to throw the blankets off in his tossing and turning. The nights were getting colder. And darker. He was lucky he hadn’t frozen half to death already.
As he waited for his heart to slow, something moved. A shadow at the end of his bed. His heart clenched at the realization he wasn’t alone. When he tried to sit up, he was jerked back onto the bed, a strange stinging in his wrists. Images of blood-soaked teeth came unbidden to his mind. He couldn’t feel his hands, couldn’t move them. They were bound to the headboard by coarse rope. Too tight. Far too tight. His fingers twitched uselessly, and a creeping numbness began to take hold of his arms.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
The figure jolted and receded back into the shadows.
“Who are you? Show yourself.”
A bit of moonlight filtered in through the narrow window, just enough to reveal the figure who stepped forward into its beam, cautiously, hesitantly. Theon Greyjoy looked like a ghost, the moon silver against his white hair and white skin. He didn’t say anything, just reached for Jon’s foot and pulled his leg taut towards the footboard. Jon heard the hiss of more rope being uncoiled.
“What are you doing? What is this?”
Theon made quick work of tying his left foot. For a man with half his fingers missing, he was surprisingly adept with a knot. No matter how much Jon struggled, he couldn’t work his ties loose, not on his wrists and not on the ankle now bound to the bedpost.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Jon repeated.
Without answering, Theon went on to the next foot, pulling it to the other bedpost. Jon kicked out, knocking Theon’s weak grasp away. Theon stepped back with an odd look on his face, part fear, part frustration.
“I gave you a second chance,” Jon barked. Now that the initial surprise had worn off, white-hot anger began to build. “Gods help me, I could have let Stannis execute you, but I let you take the black. You swore an oath. This is treason. This is—”
“Quiet,” Theon hissed.
“I’ll see you hanged for this, Theon Greyjoy.”
The slap was unexpected. It didn’t hurt, because Theon had no strength to put behind such a gesture, but it still startled Jon into silence. He watched in some mix of confusion and horror as the ruined man climbed up on the bed and straddled his remaining free leg, forcing it down with what little weight he had. He resumed his work of tying it.
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand, thousand times,” he said as he worked. His voice was strange, high and lilting and mocking. “There’s nobody here who answers to that name.”
He slid off the bed, and Jon realized he had been tied spread eagle, arms and legs wide. Unable to fight back or protect himself. Of course that was the only way Theon could hope to take him—by surprise and in the dead of night.
“Listen to me,” Jon hissed. “You are a brother of the Night’s Watch. I am your lord commander. What you’re doing—”
His breath caught as something glinted in the moonlight, something in Theon’s hand. A knife. Fairly blunt. Not a weapon, then, or at least not meant to be a weapon. Had Theon smuggled that out of the dining hall? How long had he been planning this?
“Satin!” Jon cried. “Someone! Help, I’m being attacked!”
Theon raised the knife and held it against Jon’s throat. He could feel its rusted blade. Blunted, but sharp enough to cut meat. Sharp enough to cut flesh.
“Go ahead and scream,” Theon continued in that voice, with forced mirth behind it. “Yell. Cry out.” He pressed harder on the knife, and Jon winced. “See who comes. They know you’re here. They know what I’m doing to you. They don’t care.”
Jon’s throat constricted. The other brothers knew? Was this another mutiny? Why would they send Theon to do their dirty work?
“The fact is,” Theon continued with an awful grin full of broken teeth, “your daddy left you here to rot.”
It was a punch to the gut. “What?”
“Nobody wanted you back home. They were glad to be rid of you. Who’d ever want something so…useless? Stupid, ugly, and useless?”
Jon searched for something to say, some rebuttal. He couldn’t find it.
“And Robb? You must have some delusions to think you were ever a brother to him. You were a charity case…until you weren’t. Now, he’d thank me for this.” The knife pressed harder. A sharper blade would have drawn blood.
“Theon—”
Another slap, no more powerful than the last.
“There’s. Nobody here. By that name.” His voice broke and lost that mirthful, high-pitched edge. “How many times do I have to teach you this? How many times do I have to carve it into your skin before your thick brain understands? Reek. It rhymes with weak. It rhymes with don’t speak.”
Understanding did dawn on Jon then. Was Theon sleepwalking? Acting out some nightmare?
“You’re not in your right mind,” he said in his best level voice. “Untie me now, before you do something you regret.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.” Theon took a step back, but before Jon could feel relief at having the knife gone from his throat, the other man was climbing back onto the bed. He was so light, the mattress didn’t even dip as he landed a knee of either side of Jon’s prone body, straddling him. His pupils were merely pinpricks as he stared down from above. “I’m the one giving the orders now. I’m the one with the knife.” He brandished his weapon. “You’re the one on the cross.”
Jon looked up at his hands, down at his feet. Spread out. Tied down. On a cross.
He cocked his head. The voice. The smile. It was beginning to make sense. “Who are you?” he asked, suspecting the answer.
“You know my name. Or do I have to teach you that again too?”
A beat of silence. Theon’s breathing was ragged, and Jon’s was no steadier.
“Ramsay,” Jon answered at last.
“Master,” Theon corrected with another feeble slap. The handle of the knife in his clenched fist, the bones jutting out from his knuckles, hit harder than anything. “Master Ramsay. Master Ramsay Bolton.” He punctuated each name with another slap. It was clear he was putting as much effort as he could into his strikes, because his limbs were shaking and a sheen of sweat had appeared on his sallow brow. He was trying to hurt Jon. Trying and failing. “Stupid. Useless. Ugly.”
Jon understood. He wasn’t going to play this game.
“Theon, untie me.”
“No one here by that name.”
“Theon, I’m serious. Untie me this instant or I’ll have you beheaded come first light.”
“Stop. Using. That. Name.” Theon dropped the knife. It rolled off the bed and clattered on the floor, and Jon was glad to be rid of it. Then Theon’s mangled hands were around his throat, and though he was weak, he was able to squeeze enough that Jon began to choke. “You don’t get to argue with me. If I tell you to crawl in the dirt, you crawl. If I tell you to bark like a dog, you bark.”
“Theon…” Jon croaked out.
“If I tell you I’m going to flay one of your fingers, you tell me which one and thank me for the privilege.”
“The…” It was getting harder to breathe. Jon’s legs twitched uselessly in their binds.
“If I tell you I’m going to stuff you with my cock, you…you get on your knees and…and ask which hole.”
Jon gasped as the room began to go white. The world was only Theon’s face above him, gaunt and hollow, silver in the moonlight. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His bottom lip was twitching. He seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. Or maybe Jon just wasn’t hearing right.
“If I tell you to hurt Lady Arya…you…don’t question…” His eyes shimmered wetly, and Jon felt his own eyes prickling in response. “You get her on her knees and ask…which…”
“Oh…Theon…”
It came out as hardly a whisper, and yet the other man’s eyes went wide, as if Jon had screamed it at him. His hands fell away, and he laid his head on Jon’s chest. “…no one…by that name…”
“Theon,” Jon repeated. “You’re Theon. Theon Greyjoy. That’s your name.”
Theon looked up. His eyes had overflowed, thin tear trails making their way down his cheeks.
“I know he tried to take your name away. I know he…did things to you. Horrible things. I know he made you feel powerless. But this isn’t the way to deal with it. The only way to beat him is to be Theon Greyjoy.”
“Reek. Bleak. Sneak. Eke.”
“Theon!” Jon shouted, bringing his attention back. “If you untie me, I won’t punish you. But you have to do it now.”
Theon’s eyes went even larger and tears began spilling over in earnest. He slid off the bed and fumbled in the dark for the knife. He came back, and for a split second, Jon thought he might actually go through with his initial plan. Instead, he began sawing the ropes binding his legs. Between the blunt knife and Theon’s weak arms, it took some doing, and when he was done, he approached Jon’s hands like a timid rabbit. He cut the rope holding his left hand and jumped back out of reach, as if expecting Jon to attack the moment he got free.
Jon grunted in annoyance and reached across to undo the last bit of binding. Then he sat up, slowly, rubbing his wrists to coax feeling back into them. Theon stood in the far corner, still gripping the knife. Jon wondered if he was thinking of using it on himself.
“I meant it,” Jon said, breaking the awkward silence. “I’m not going to punish you. I’m willing to overlook this…one time. But if you try anything like that again, you’ll force my hand. Do you understand?”
Wordlessly, Theon nodded.
“Good. Come here.”
Theon eyed him mistrustfully.
“I just said I wasn’t going to punish you.” Jon patted the spot beside him on the bed.
Theon dropped the knife and shuffled with agonizing slowness to the bed. He climbed up and tucked his spindly legs against his chest, curling in on himself. “I’m sorry.”
Jon nodded. “If anybody asks, I’ll tell them the truth. You had a nightmare and came to find me.”
Theon leaned his head against Jon’s shoulder, and Jon allowed it.
“Tell me about your dream, Theon.”
Theon turned and buried his face in Jon’s chest, hands fisting in his nightshirt like mangled claws. His shoulders began to shake as he cried, and it felt like he was trying to burrow inside to hide. Jon put his arms around his shoulders and lowered the both of them back onto the bed, sitting back up to grab hold of the sheets and heavy furs. He cocooned the both of them in what warmth he could and cradled the fragile body close.
He couldn’t say why. He’d allowed Theon to take the black, but that didn’t mean he’d forgiven him. Maybe he never would, but he still couldn’t bring himself to hate the man. Maybe because he no longer looked like the Theon he’d known growing up in Winterfell, or talked like him or acted like him. Or maybe he had seen too much suffering to take joy in this pitiful creature’s misery.
Whatever the reason, when he finally felt Theon relax in his arms and heard his breathing even out, he hoped the young man’s dreams were untroubled.