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It was very good soup.
It really had no right to be, not when it was just a jumble of whatever ingredients they had in the stocks of Winterfell, the only thing feeding the meager army shivering in the cold as they waited for doom to sweep down on them. But then it also had every right to be, to give the people stationed in Winterfell any modicum of hope before the dead were at the gates; keep the flame of life alive and burning in every single one of them like pockets of warmth in the dark, even if it was just the thought of wanting to live so that they may have a taste of the soup again.
Theon felt that alone might have been enough for him.
Or so he told himself, even as his eyes wandered to watch as Sansa brought her spoon to her lips. He had spent the last few minutes in blissful silence with her, away from the suffocating presence of the crowds. Her very presence was enough to ease his weary soul, and he knew that she sought the silence of him, who expected nothing from her but her companionship. With Sansa, he curiously found that the world fell away and he only ever saw her; only his salvation, one he hardly deserved but wanted so desperately anyway. She was the reason he was here. He wanted to protect the living realm, sure, but he wanted to protect Sansa more.
As if she sensed him staring, Sansa raised her face to meet his eyes across the top of her bowl. The torches lighting the courtyard cast a golden glow across her face, igniting her hair into a wreath of flames. There was a hollow, dull ache in his bones that he distantly knew was from the cold, and yet his body was burning. Time froze around him under her attention, enough that he could forget for a moment what they were doing, what was coming; but that was all just a child’s fancy, the wishes of a child who thought himself a man, one who had died long, long ago. The look on Sansa’s face, he thought, was as close to a smile as she could manage, and he knew the one he gave her back was the same.
It was dark, and it was snowing lightly; both of which were probably due to the monster that was leading the army of the dead their way, but Theon found the scene comforting. He watched the drifting snowflakes, like cold soft kisses, swirling around her, landing in her red hair, catching on her eyelashes. How lovely it would be, to sit here forever and count each one. Unfortunately, the dead were on their way to steal this moment from him.
“How are you feeling?” Sansa asked him, softly.
Theon considered her question for a moment as he ate more of the pottage. It had been a long time since he had wanted to taste something so warm and good. “There’s no fear,” he answered, then added with a lighter tone. “And not even a lick of cold.”
She made a noise that sounded like it could almost be a laugh. “That’s probably because of the soup.”
Theon hummed his agreement as he brought the spoon to his lips again. It could be the fire that he saw in her hair, or the smile playing at the edge of her lips. The same lips that had given his name back to him, the same hands that had held his face and given him back his soul. His thoughts from that terrible night came rushing back to him suddenly, a cold hand twisting around his mangled heart.
Not her. Anyone but her.
He had wondered, for the longest time, what it must have been like for her after her anger had died away. Once she had learned he hadn’t killed Bran and Rickon, she stopped looking at him with hatred. She couldn’t have ever trusted him fully - not after he’d betrayed her first plan to Ramsay - even after he tossed Myranda off the battlements, pulled her along the outer wall, offered his hand to her, and jumped. Not at the very least until they had landed in the snow drift, and he’d wasted no time in pulling her to her feet and running as fast as he could limp away from Ramsay Bolton.
‘Light a candle in the broken tower,’ she had begged of him, when she had already done it herself.
For years he’d been with that monster of a man. It took a full year before he broke, before Ramsay created Reek from the shattered remains of Theon Greyjoy. He had tried to save himself in the beginning, the very, very beginning, but in truth he had given up long before Ramsay ever let him down from the cross. The weight of his betrayal, the weight of what he’d done to the farm boys, had been too much for him. He lost the strength to save himself. But the moment she had arrived, Theon found the strength to make himself save her. Even if it killed him. He was the broken tower.
He thought it wouldn’t mean a thing if he survived the battle for the dawn, but she didn’t, that a Winterfell without Sansa was just a castle made of snow. She breathed life into its halls. She carried the same memories he did, and corrupted as his were, she made them whole again. He realized it as soon as Maester Wolkan brought them both to greet him and his men upon his arrival. Daenerys may have been the queen he swore allegiance to, but that was for the Ironborn; he had barely spared her a glance the moment she entered the room as well. Sansa was the one he wanted to fight for.
Theon could have said more. He could have said a million things to her at that moment, sitting and eating their soup together. Things that would hurt; things that would make her smile, or cry, maybe even things she knew already. They both knew what he had volunteered for.
The horns of Winterfell rang into the night, drowning out the words he hadn’t realized had been rising in his throat.
Sansa gathered up her skirts immediately, her face steeling over as she took on her role as lady of Winterfell once again. Panic was setting in amongst the courtyard around them, and he knew just as well as she did that she had to be the one to organize the elderly and the children into the crypts. She met his eyes suddenly, a blue fire lit by the torches and by a ferocity he had grown accustomed to.
“Come back alive,” she told him, and Theon knew he couldn’t make that promise. He would be in the Godswood, protecting Bran. He would be where the Night King would be.
But he couldn’t help himself. “I will, Lady Sansa.”
If only to find out why you would want me to.
He could swear he saw the way he felt mirrored in her eyes as they separated. A warmth spread across his chest, the feeling light and airy when her gaze lingered on him. It filled him with a strength unlike any he had ever felt before; crashing and surging through him, the strength of the sea finding purchase in an Ironborn. All for Winterfell. For Sansa Stark.
Theon thought he might love her. He thought that he ought to tell her so when the sun rose again.
But it was probably just the soup.