Chapter Text
They found Robb’s jerkin and empty swordbelt first, thrown haphazardly and half-covered in the light summer snow. The younger men gasped and swore and elbowed each other, talking of wolves and wildlings and pointing at innocent smears of dirt that looked like blood in the grey predawn chill, but Eddard had seen enough winters to know better, and let his heart sink quietly.
Sure enough, it didn’t take them long to find Robb, stripped down to just his half-laced tunic so the only thing that stood out against the snow enough to prevent them from trampling him was the bright red patch of his hair. His fists were still nestled into a thin rag of a sealskin cloak, so forcefully he didn’t let go when Eddard turned him around. Maybe it had helped some - the tip of his nose had turned black and there were deep purple smudges on his cheeks, but his fingers were just red and very stiff, and didn’t bleed too much when he rubbed them.
One of the lads knelt to start a fire, but Eddard stopped him. "We need to make haste for Winterfell," he said, and couldn't manage to add that the violent heat was likely to kill him. Pretty much anything they could do was likely to kill him, but if It had to happen he wanted his son to fade away in his own bed, in his mother's arms, not terrified in the cold dark woods, crying out as his skin blistered and cracked open. He bundled him up in his own fur cloak instead, tucked in like a newborn baby, took off his gloves, rubbed his hands together and placed them on his cheeks to warm them. He could feel the very faint stirring of his breath, but no warmth in it.
He met Jory's eyes as he helped him lift Robb onto the saddle once he was mounted, and the pity in them made his stomach lurch. Robb began to whimper as he spurred the horse to a trot, but he didn't dare slow down, shifting him about slightly so he could rub his back without completely taking his hand off the bridle. He was so light - he remembered telling Cat how odd it was that his firstborn didn't feel like a little child anymore, now that he was the age Eddard had been when he'd left for the Eyrie, training with blunted steel and always lugging about his tiny brother on his shoulders, but now he wondered how he could ever have thought that.
“Easy, Robb, we’re almost home, you’re safe now,” he said, and jumped with elation when the boy mumbled something indistinct in response. He shifted back the edge of the cloak and cupped his cheek to encourage him.
“Daddy,” he felt him distinctly whimper this time, and he couldn’t help but slow down a little and pull him tighter against his chest, pressing his lips atop his cold forehead. He hadn’t called him that since he was three. “Why’d Theon take so long?”
“What about him, Robb?” he said gently, trying to hide his bafflement. Had Robb met him somehow? He had not seen the child since they had split up, and he was definitely regretting allowing a cocky overeager lad of three-and-ten to such a delicate mission, but he couldn’t help it, seeing how genuinely worried he had looked when the search parties had departed, and at any rate he had meant to worry about his whereabouts later.
Robb looked thoroughly unsatisfied with his response. He shifted restlessly and let out a tearful little gasp, clinging at Eddard’s hand. “Isn’t he here?”
He swallowed his unshed tears with the lie, forcing himself to smile. “He’s only waiting for us at Winterfell. What are you so worried about?”
Robb only frowned in response, blinking fast as if he struggled to stay awake. He pulled him to sit up and wound the cloak about the both of them, so he was pressed against the heat of his body. His voice came out in a barely audible whisper. "Jon?"
"Him too, him too." He stroked Robb's hair, wincing as the boy sobbed and nuzzled against his warm hand. He prayed that the children would still be asleep when they returned - he feared he couldn't prevent Jon from blaming himself, but he was inconsolabile enough without having to see his brother in this state. “Was this all some stupid idea Theon talked you boys into?”
Jon had already told him the likely truth of how things had gone - the children had had some squabble over the existence of unicorns, and neither him nor Theon could imagine Robb would find it necessary to wander away in secret to prove his point - but he hoped that was something he’d be more eager to talk about than the current predicament. It was soon obvious that he just couldn’t follow anymore, though, no matter how he prodded him. By the time they reached Winterfell he was too weak to sit up either, hanging awkwardly half-out of his grasp, his eyes glazed over.
Catelyn cried out in horror when they crossed the gates, and through the veil of tears he wasn’t sure for a moment if he had just handed her a corpse, but Robb shifted a little in her arms to move towards her warmth and closed his eyes, and a brief scrap of hope taunted him again.
Robb was unwrapped, placed in Catelyn's heated room with his legs raised and his injured ankle bandaged up and then bundled in dry furs again, until the maids came with buckets of warm holy water from the springs. They washed him and rubbed him dry over and over, until Eddard joined into the carrying to make it quicker and Catelyn's hands had become as cold as the child's, if he wasn't any warmer.
Robb cried furiously at first, turning his face against the uncomfortable burst of heat, whined and begged for Theon and for Jon again, quieter and quieter. Exasperated, Catelyn sent for Bran to be bundled up with him to comfort him, but when Robb tried to hold him he slipped between his numbed arms like water, and the babe burst into sobs at the touch of his skin.
He returned him to his crib himself, so he wouldn’t cry in front of Robb and frighten him more. He wiped his tears in the hallway, breathing in the lingering baby smell of milk of his little Bran’s hair to bring himself back to reality. Yet it all felt like a nightmare, like it couldn’t be happening. They'd bathed him in the springs the day Eddard had returned from the wars too, before setting him before the great heart tree, just as he had been anointed in Riverrun's brightly-colored sept - the most blessed babe to be born this side of old King Baelor, the men had japed, yet now neither gods would bestir themselves for him anymore than if he'd been welcomed in the world with nothing more than a harsh quick dip of seawater.
When he returned Catelyn had pulled him into her lap, holding his hand and rubbing circles over his frozen chest with the other, as Maesters Luwin held a cup against his lips with little success. He was decisive about it, but the old man was no soldier, and Eddard could feel the hopeless terror in his eyes as vividly as a sword in the gut.
"I'll go fetch something stronger, my lord." Eddard nodded dully, sinking on the bed like a stone. He took Robb's free hand to dip in the water, wincing, trying his hardest not to burst into tears. He had stopped shivering.
"How did you happen to take all night?" Catelyn said, her words stony and resounding in the silence between them. She had unlaced her dressing gown and Robb's head drooped against her bared breast, almost blue against the rose flush of her skin and the bright red of her eyes.
He swallowed, although his mouth felt dry as sand. He hated the feeling he knew she was sharing too - the anger, the guilt, the frantic search for someone who could just be blamed for the incompetence and ejected from the garrison, when the only one he had to blame was himself. "I'm not sure. There were wolves wandering around, after dark - Jory thinks he might have hidden somewhere and blacked out there so when they searched that area they couldn't find him. Or that he climbed on a tree and fell down later - he did hurt his leg."
Catelyn nodded, her fingers threading gently through Robb's hair.. A chill went through him when she replied, hoarse as winter wind. "Or maybe someone pushed him."
His hand jerked and clutched around the cloth, squeezing rivulets down Robb’s half-open tunic. “Why? Why would anyone want to do that?”
“I didn’t see the little Greyjoy among the men who returned.”
“Don’t.” He dropped the cloth and pulled her closer, sinking his face in the thick of Robb’s hair, his arm wound around him. “I’ll go look for him tomorrow. I can’t put anyone through another search right now, and it’s not cold enough for him to freeze if he can walk.”
“And what will you do when you find him?” Her fingers found the back of his hand, cool and soft despite the hardness in her voice. “Robert should never have asked this of you, when he knew you had little children to think about.”
“Robb may have met him,” he admitted, no longer caring about the tears starting to fall freely. “He asked about him, and why he wasn’t there. He had his cloak, and I don’t think he stole from him in a scuffle. He loves him as a brother, Cat, we shouldn’t be speaking of such things when he could hear.”
She ran her fingers down Robb's cheek, smacked him, wet his lips in hot mulled wine. "I don't think so," she said softly, the tears starting to drip into her voice. He had not truly stirred since they had brought him in, but it struck him how he wasn't reacting at all now, no small winces against the touch of warmer hands, even though his skin had to feel terribly raw, none of the sighs and blinks and indistinct soft murmurs he had been clinging to so desperately.
"It will not help him to be upset," he said even as he was praying for him to grimace or bristle or burst into heartbroken sobs at their words more than he had ever wanted anything. "There will be more time for this…"
"Did he sound upset when he asked for the Greyjoy boy, then?" she interrupted him sharply.
It was no pain to answer that, at least, those few words were etched into his memory as if branded in iron. "He sounded frightened."
She pulled Robb closer, shuddering. “I see.”
“I told him he was waiting for us here. I think he was scared for him. Maybe he went to look for help and got lost, or Robb thought so at least. We can’t know anything until…” He trailed off. The idea of doing anything about this, chasing some child through the woods to bring him back in chains and break his son’s heart, seemed unthinkable, revolting, the idea Robb would soon wake and explain everything awfully far away.
Catelyn shook her head in despair. “I’m sure the poor child really agreed to follow you out in the cold in this search out of his gratitude for us.”
His head felt about to burst. “Are you going to say that he lured him out in the woods? Forced him? Him and Jon, maybe?”
He regretted it as soon as he spoke. He took Catelyn’s hand and pressed it against his lips, any apology failing him, but she slipped away delicately. “I will not say anything I cannot be sure of. Your bastard’s tears seemed sincere enough, but you can't think it's a coincidence that the Greyjoy boy is not here for us to verify the same about him."
"Was he plotting this all along, then?" He shook his head. "I've done everything to prevent this, everything right. I checked all his letters - even if the ironmen have devised some ink invisible to mortal eyes, none of them had the room to plot as much as a fishing trip. He was never left alone, I treated him as my own son, Robb was attached to his hip - and he was planning to kill him all along?"
"I won't say I'm sure this was planned. You've done nothing to provoke such open treason." He could see the flash of the gentle lie through her eyes, lovely and hateful as he had first seen it the day she first had come to Winterfell to find a crib too many in the nursery. "He is only thirteen, not terribly a thinker. It might be he had no idea of what he was going to do anymore than you do. But if you say he met him, if that boy was alone in the forest with a horse at his disposal and the people distracted, the possibility of going home before him, do you think he wouldn't want to give himself the best possible headstart? Making sure he couldn't go back on his own, perhaps?"
He sobbed, hiding his face in his hands.
Catelyn moved closer to him, laying her head on his shoulder. "It's not your fault. It's the boy's, it's Robert', might as well be it's all Balon Greyjoy's fault for starting all this to begin with, but it was never yours. You've done your duty, and you will again."
The words only brought him terror. Robb laid still and heavy between them as the weight of guilt. "I cannot do this again. I can never leave our babes again." He couldn't find his heartbeat anymore, but his hands were shaking.
Cat''s weren't, though, as they were clasped around his and joined in silent prayer. Tears ran down her face like gaping wounds. "I know. But this time I swear I'll be by your side at every step of the way, until we are given our justice."