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Dagmer studied him mournfully, corners of his mouth downturned.
"It's not right, the way you look," Dagmer said, shaking his head. "This isn't you at all."
Theon gave him a little closed-lipped smile, head lowered.
It was true, it was true. Everybody said so. Men who had fought at his side failed to recognise Theon from how bleached and wasted he now looked. Theon's own sweet sister could barely endure his sight, averted her eyes in disgust at his ruined mouth, his white hair, his fleshless grey skin.
Dagmer though...
maybe Theon had hoped that Dagmer Cleftjaw with his own hideous face might gaze at him differently.
You and him are not the same, he reminded himself. Dagmer had earned his hideous face, wounded like a man. Reek, though... Theon shuddered, tried to squeeze his memories right back out of his mind. Crying and begging and raving. Reek rhyming with leak rhyming with weak...
"C'mon, boy," Dagmer said. "Let me see what I can find to fix that."
Dagmer turned to rummage through one of his chests.
"How 'bout this?" he asked, holding up a golden chain encrusted with heavy chunks of garnet, then shook his head.
"Well, maybe that's too clunky for you. The lordling had refined tastes, I recall." He winked, mouth widening into a smile, scars twisting, threw the chain back into his pile of riches. "Take this ring in the meanwhile, that one's like made for you."
Dagmer held out a golden ringlet on his broad calloused palm. It was a slender gold band, worked to look like snaking tentacles, set with a fine cluster of black dragonglass where the tentacles met.
"Mine own fingers are too fat for it anyways," Dagmer added.
He must have noticed Theon's stunned impression, then misinterpreted.
"Don't get your lord father all tangled up in your mind now, son. I know he was special about all that. The price was paid by me and I get to gift it to whomever I like."
He dropped the ring into Theon's mangled hand.
"This isn't you at all," he said, disapprovingly, studying him him and down. "Looking all black and grey and drab like that. We need to put some glitz and twinkle back into that boy. Come on, come over here and chose on your own, I know you'll complain about my bad taste."
Dagmer's own rings were glimmering on his thick fingers, hanging from his hairy ears. The necklace he wore around his muscled neck was indeed as clunky as they come, befitting his ugly face, shining and sparkling all the more for it.
Theon started smiling for real now, flashing his smashed teeth.
Miseries were piling up around them higher than anyone could see. Theon hadn't slept for days, felt extremely unready for any of the many challenges yet to come. He was a villain and a wretch and a broken little toy. And here Dagmer stood with his outrageous chest full of blood-soaked pirate loot, offering him jewels as a treat like one would a sweet stick to a child. Everybody was going to hate this, each for their own different reasons. It was hilarious.
"Bedeck myself like a whore, I think my late lord father called it," Theon recalled.
The jewels would look even more disgraceful hanging from his skinny little old man's neck and his bony little twisted fingers, Theon knew. The thought made him smile. Give them something to look at, he thought, since they already like to stare.
Theon limped over to where Dagmer stood, bent over to take a closer look.
"I call it finding some joy in this miserable life."