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i. alannys
Alannys will not sleep. Sleep means dreams of the greenlanders taking away her baby boy. They may have taken Rodrik and Maron (though she still hopes, still calls for them, asks just in case), but they will not take Theon, not this time. They will not take her little girl either, but Asha does not need to be held so tightly. Theon is her baby. And they don't have him. Can’t have him. She cradles him in one arm, her candle in the other, singing soft lullabies as she wanders the halls of Ten Towers.
But he never sleeps, never even blinks—his eyes only stare into hers, longing. She will not sleep because she must watch him. And she must not let anyone take her baby boy. In the dreams he is sullen, sad and sweet, outwardly resigned to his fate, but his eyes are shiny with tears. Without any brothers to mock him for such a display. Rodrik and Maron were good boys, they really were, just at an age to poke fun, that was all. Alannys would scold them at the time, wanting to protect her baby from their japes. Now she sees they all needed protecting.
She hopes for grandchildren, hopes for Asha to bring her Rodrik and her Maron back to her. Take an axe for a husband, a different, distant Alannys once told her daughter. “What have I done?” she cries softly. “What have I done to all of you? Rodrik...Maron...where have you gone?” She clutches Theon closer. “My baby boy...”
“Lanny,” says a sharp voice. Alannys almost screams, but thinks better of it, so as not to startle her baby. ”What are you doing? You must take your sleeping draught and get your rest.”
Standing before her is Rodrik, her younger brother, not her son, and they are different, so different—her brother reads day and night—but the name now haunts her.
“Can't sleep,” she says. “They'll take Theon...my baby boy...”
The look Rodrik gives her makes her uncomfortable. The looks everyone gives her always feel wrong. She’s a mother, she's an elder sister—they are all her babies, and yet they all look at her this way. She wants to hold them all, and still she knows, this Alannys has lost something, this Alannys is unfit to care for them—that must be why they've left her.
Rodrik steps closer, surveying her in the light of his own candle, and he gasps, ”Lanny...you'll burn yourself.”
She looks down, sees the way her candle drips wax all over her arm, how it seeps into her nightgown sleeve and solidifies in seconds. It's kind of beautiful, really. The heat is gentle, the pain is nothing, because really, what is a bit of candle wax? They fuss over her, and it's so twisted, so wrong.
Rodrik takes the candle from her, and he can have the candle, she doesn't care. He leads her to her chambers, helps her into bed, and holds the sleeping draught to her lips. How did she become so frail?
“This will keep you from dreaming,” says Rodrik. It never does, but she surrenders, takes slow, small sips, feels the world getting warmer and fuzzier. Her grip loosens, but Theon remains in her arms. As she lightly strokes the yarn of his hair, sleep carries her away, and she is helpless to resist.
ii. theon
"If our lady mother wanted to see me, she should have come to meet me here at Pyke!" Theon insisted.
Asha wasn't having it. He'd only been in Pyke a few days and yet Theon found himself surrendering to Asha at every turn, starting with her grabbing his cock, that horny wench. He hated her for it. Almost as much as he hated his mom for not caring enough to welcome him.
"I could tell her you're a bitch and not worth seeing anyway, but you're her baby boy. You're lucky she's gone half-mad. She won't see what a little shit you are. So go visit our mother and make her happy. She keeps trying to guilt me into giving her grandchildren."
He didn't think much on Asha's words, but now he sees his mother and thinks "half-mad" was a kind way of putting it. His mother looks downright batty. That's cruel, and he feels bad for thinking it. She's curled up in her bed, wrapped in furs, her big green eyes peering from behind her thin pale hair, clutching something to her chest for dear life.
"Who are you? Have you come to take my baby boy?" she says.
So little of the woman he remembers remains, but then again, his memories are so fuzzy and distant. At Winterfell, he kept a picture of his life on the Iron Islands in his mind, and it doesn't match anything he sees.
"What happened to you?" he blurts. "What are you talking about? It's me, Theon!"
"Theon?" she says. What she's holding is a worn-out doll with black yarn hair, and she stares at it strangely, not making eye contact with him.
"Mother?" he says. He feels like screaming. He was her favorite when he was little, he's sure of that, and if she weren't mad, she'd be fussing over him. He would swat her away, inform her that he's a man now, but he'd be pleased about getting attention and he knows it. At this point he's desperate, and he hates to admit it, even to himself, but so much has gone wrong for him.
"This is a trick, you're not Theon, Theon is my baby boy, and you're some northman, here to take him!"
"They did take me away, but now Lord Eddard is dead, and Robb Stark sent me back. I'm here!"
She says nothing, only fixes her doll's hair. "Theon, what should we do about this impostor?" she says to it.
Asha did not prepare him for this. Did she take some sick pleasure in sending him here, knowing their mother has replaced him with a fucking doll? She was the only one who gave a shit about him, and she still is, so she can't be too mad to recognize him. He won't allow it.
"He's the impostor!" he says, pointing at the doll. "I'm Theon! Your son! Your baby boy!" He finds that phrase so embarrassing, and he wants to yell at her more for forcing him to say it.
"Theon?" Her gaze moves between him and the doll, her expression blank, her motions hesitant.
"Please," he begs, trying to lock eyes with her, to make her see. I was once your favorite son. Because this is all he has left.
iii. alannys
She trusts nothing and no one because never again will they catch her with her guard down. Never again will they take what is hers.
The baby boy before her is separate from the baby boy in her arms. And she knows, she knows, he’s not really in her arms.
He’s gone.
Her baby boy standing before her is too good to be true.
Because Rodrik keeps telling her, Lanny, he’s gone. Lanny, look at me, please try to see reason. And today he said something—what was it? He said Theon was coming back, but he can’t have meant it. She must have imagined it; he told her she sometimes imagined things. She did and she knew it. She kept her head in the clouds because down on the ground, her sons were all gone.
And if this isn’t really Theon, maybe she doesn’t care. Maybe she will keep her head in the clouds.
Her baby boy was like that too.
“Mama,” he says.
That may be enough to melt her.
“Come into my arms, my baby boy,” she tries.
He’s bigger, no longer a boy of ten, as she wanted to believe, but when he leans into her and her wanting arms grasp to hold him tight, it feels right. She engulfs him and swears she will never let go again.
iv. theon
He has sought solace in the bosoms of serving wenches, but Kyra is nothing compared to his mother. Her breasts are not substantial; like Asha, she is lithe, firm, almost without curves. But when she holds him, he is home.
“Why is it you must leave me? What is Balon sending you to do?”
“He sent me to go reaving on the Stony Shore. He only gave me one ship! But not Asha, Asha gets—“
“Shh.”
His mother continues shushing him, halting the words he wants to sputter about how unfair it all is, while rubbing calming circles into his back.
“You’re my baby boy,” she says, “and you don’t need any ships, because I’m not letting you leave me again.”
She’s mad, Theon reminds himself.
He doesn’t protest.