Work Text:
The summer had been just dawning the last time Balon had knelt to Robert Baratheon. It was still at its highest peak now, dripping sweat down the men cramped in the war tent, down the swords and hammers, when he knelt to renounce his defection to the side of the Boy King Viserys Targaryen and rejoin the rightful cause of the rightful king against the pretender, renouncing all the bounties of his betrayal in exchange for his son’s safe return. He knew the men in the room knew that too, and that it amused them. He thought of killing them all, and didn’t.
When they brought him to the gallows, Theon was already out of his cage and dressed to ride, so much for Baratheon’s dithering on whether it was right for him to have the boy back after his transgressions and whether it would be safer for everyone for him to just remain a honored guest of House Baratheon until the war was resolved. He kept his rage to himself, though. He had enjoyed himself to make him squirm and haggle, he had enjoyed his desperation to be done with it: such was the winner’s privilege. He could not begrudge him that, so long as he had hope to take that from him some day.
At least the boy was in a better state than he could have hoped. The king's men had raised up the crow cage in full view of his fleet a fortnight ago; he had brought to the parley honeyed water and goat's milk and a length of rope to secure the child behind his back if he had found him too weak to keep onto the saddle. But Theon was waiting for him on his own two feet, and as soon as he appeared over the cliff he elbowed off the grim Stark lordling that was standing guard over him and ran to put his arms around him. Balon should have said something about this childishness, but he liked to see him defy the man in front of everyone, now there wasn’t going to be any consequence for it, and he liked that he would not let go when he tried to pry him off, even with his arms skinny as sticks and trembling in spite of the Western sun. Perhaps all this had been strengthening for him the way suffering was sometimes. Perhaps this was the one kraken of his accursed line that would be able to keep holding onto the leviathans he would grasp.
He lifted him up directly onto his own horse instead, eyeing lord Stark all the while to challenge him to have some opinion on his pardon, when he had not even bestirred himself to come at the parlay. He did look like Balon had just come to his house to claim one of his children for himself rather than the other way around, but whatever he thought he held his peace about it, ever the loyal wolfhound.
When he had moved his small escort far enough from the Usurper’s camp to be out of their sight, he made Theon take a long deep swig and tried to pass him off onto one of the young boys so he could be more at ease riding double, but he would not budge. Loren shared his bread and salt fish with him in spite of the refusal, but Theon hardly touched it. Balon realized they could not have starved him for all the time they’d kept in the crow’s cage - not if they expected to have a hostage to bargain with for long, and especially not as they would have been thinking of the resistance a child of their own people could give, and not one with salt and iron in his blood, born and weaned in winter. He certainly could have stood to have something more substantial than milk then, but the boy was exhausted and in a sullen mood and he had no desire to waste any further time in enemy lands. Theon laid his head over his chest as he rode on and would rub his head and complain of the movement of the horse once in a while, but he was light enough that it didn’t prove too difficult to manage.
They dismounted at the cove where they had left their rowboats waiting. Theon took a couple steps and stretched out his arms, and collapsed so suddenly that some of the boat guards looked around alarmed for some hidden archer, laying in the sand at his feet. Another stepped closer as if to help him carry the boy, but Balon waved him off. He shook him and raised the waterskin up to his dry lips, put his hand over his hot clammy cheek. On top of everything else, by now he was used to the North.
He felt the rage mount, even higher than in the tent. He tore open his tunic and trousers and everything other scrap of silk he found, turned him over, finding nothing but fading bruises and jagged streaks of sunburn and the small scrapes of ropes and chains, no sign of torture or even that they’d lost his temper and beat him more than once or twice. He pulled out his left glove to look at the place where his pinky finger had been, but that, too, was healing cleanly and well, leaving only a discreet hole. The sight still made him snarl.
Theon had been an archer since the day he had been first introduced to the contents of the armory. The Drowned God had given him the gift of aim, he’d explained to him once when he was small: the Drowned God loved to give such gifts to third sons, for in the olden times a father would leave his holdfast to the eldest and his ship to the second and the third would need the God’s blessing to make a name for himself as a warrior that would never want a place in the world. He wondered if lord Stark had noticed that, if it had pleased him to take it away. But all the same, he had known that: he had been sent a raven with the results. There was nothing to protest, nothing he had not known and accepted when he knelt for Baratheon’s truce.
He left the clothes lying on the sand like the outline of a small corpse, He wrapped Theon up in his sealskin cloak instead and walked into the sea to dip him in, feeling his small whimpers of protest, as he had the day he’d welcomed him into the world and given him his accursed name. Rise again, child, you who still can.
By the next morning, Theon had roused himself enough to wander the ship, and he took issue to being locked up in the captain's cabin, not unreasonably.
Balon had never made use of the privilege of a cabin ever since he was seven-and-ten, and giving the final orders to reroute everything to join a war on the opposite side of the one they had started proved to take the better part of his day. But eventually he had to go see the boy, after he'd given up his knocking and pacing and curled up in a sweaty, tangled mess atop the blankets.
He put his hands in Theon's hair to knot them up, and he latched onto his arm like a babe, staring up at him with accusing, sullen eyes.
“You must quit this whining,” he said. “There isn’t a spot of shade all over the deck. You will kill yourself.”
If he had any complaints about being left alone, Theon kept them for himself, closing his eyes to think for a moment. He was always a sly one. “But I must know the crew, if I’m to sail east to war with you.”
"What gave you a notion like that? You're going home. This is a war at sea against the greatest mercenary company in Essos, not a little raid to give children their first blood."
“Maester Qalen told me Asha fights and sails,” he complained.
Balon gritted his teeth. He had written expressly to the Citadel for an elderly and sensible Maester of ironborn blood, when it had become clear he couldn't help replacing the wretch his stepmother had brought from Pinkmaiden, and never let him attend to any of his children without some supervision, and yet he still found ways to make him regret the expense.
“Your sister serves in your uncle Rodrik’s crew, back at home to defend the islands in case the war should reach them, that is entirely different, and she is not a green child of ten.”
“I am one-and-ten now,” he protested.
"At least Aeron came back from his cage more tractable,” he spat out. “That Stark's been torturing you until yesterday. Are you so eager to bear arms for him already?"
"No, Father!" The boy's eyes grew wide as saucers. Tears threatened to leak out, but he blinked them back easily. Balon was glad of that; he didn't think the boy had the strength to take a correction on that right now. "I want to fight with you as your loyal son, whomever it is you need to fight it. Whomever we need to fight with for the good of the islands."
Nothing good is left to come for the islands. He pushed that thought away - it was an old man's thought, unworthy.
"I'm bound to fight for them by oath. You aren't, and you won't. Someone in this house should keep their dignity, and not be known for a turncloak." He saw now it had been a madness to entertain an alliance with the Targaryen boy. He was a fool and a weakling, he had spurned his daughter's hand and pretended to offer his own sister for Theon without offering so much as a single man to save him. But Balon had met him high and hot on vengeance, thinking of his own so-promising though willful boys, and he had deluded himself to find the Young Dragon reborn in him. Of course if he had been Tywin Lannister he may have had the benefit of the doubt that he had only attended offered him audience to find out his plans for the sake of his rightful ruler of Baratheon, that a number of willful young captains had brought their ships to a rebel king of their own accord as it had happened with every Blackfyre. But he would have been forced to this indignity whether or not he had been disloyal before, he knew - they might only have continued to torment the boy in Winterfell rather than hang him in a cage atop his gathered fleet to taunt him.
“At least send me with Asha, then,” Theon begged, undeterred.
His sighed - he could not deny that outright as an insensible idea. He seized the boy's maimed hand and felt up his bony forearm, then turned it back and forth, poked at the scab underneath the new linen.
“Lord Stark said I would be able to still use a sword and a bow,” Theon said, smiling. He tilted his head to look at him better in the eyes, and added “So I should not whine about it, I mean.”
Bastard, I would love to see any of your endless stream of wolf pups in his place. For all one could say about Theon, he doubted he had been un-manly in his trial; had been untroublesome since he was a babe. Since the birth of his second son, Balon had prayed to the Drowned God for wisdom not to repeat whatever his father had done to make it so none of his brothers could muster a shred of love or loyalty for the other. He had raised them all with a strong hand, he had never spoken to them in riddles about what his mighty plans for the islands were and how their own fates fit in them, he had impressed in them how important unity would be to achieve what he wished, he had trashed them all equally according to what they could take whenever they came to him with some childish squabble. Still nothing - not the unity and glory of their house, clearly, but neither women, wine, anything - seemed to give them as much pleasure as tormenting each other. If they would have grown into more dutiful men, the Usurper had taken from him the chance to find out.
But he had least been succesful in one matter, that Theon had never responded to that as his younger brothers would. He was not weepy as Victarion could get long after he had grown too big for that, or prone to trying to fight back with some posture of wit as Aeron had been or, like Urrigon, under the delusion someone should come to his defense. He would simply smile and keep to himself and attend to his bow and his ponies and his little friends, and hold no resentment for the natural course of life.
He did not realise he had clenched his fist until Theon let out a small whine. But even then, he had not pulled his hand away.>p />
He let him go, and lifted up his chin instead so he would look straight into his eyes.
“You will go to Pyke, you will rest as much as is needed, and if your mother judges you’re strong enough, you will join a crew on the islands. Not Asha’s. I will not give them the occasion to kill you both in one swoop. Will you have that?”
Theon nodded, his eyes growing bright with tears.
He pulled him closer and let him curl up in his arms, just one last time before all must be back as it was.