Iron and Blood: a Theon & Sansa Story

Chapter 14

Theon
Theon sat still on the edge of his bed long past midnight, hoping that Sansa might still knock on his door and join him in his chamber again. Even when he knew she would not come, he waited.

The kiss they had shared still lingered on Theon's lips. His tongue ached for the taste of her—ached to trace her breasts and hips without fear that she would soon be taken from him.

Maybe she had only wanted one night. Maybe the tenderness was his and his alone. It seemed impossible. Still, Theon had never spent a night with a woman without fucking her. And when he did fuck her, he usually shooed her from his chamber before the sun came up. He did not pay them for sweetness, so they did not complain.

At dinner, Theon knew something had gone wrong. He had stopped others from sitting down beside him so that there would be room for Sansa when she arrived from her sewing. She must have noticed it, and yet she chose the bench opposite him, where her siblings sat.

His ale had sat mostly untouched all evening, since he did not want to dampen his senses if Sansa came back to him that night. But as he sat solemnly at the edge of his bed, Theon wished he had downed it all.

Sansa was probably back at the Godswood, bloodying her knees and praying for salvation from Joffrey. Foolishly, maybe, Theon had thought all the night before that he might be that salvation. Now it felt impossible.

Eventually, he slept, though his dreams were harrowing. In most of them, he was tearing the clothes off a tavern wench while Sansa screamed his name from far away. Perhaps the wind had carried her voice from King's Landing, but Theon, in his hunger, pretended he did not hear it.

He woke with a headache. Bran had asked for the morning off from practice, so that he might stay up late at the feast with his older siblings. Theon agreed, but his body still drew him from sleep at the usual early hour.

As he pulled on a doublet, a crow's voice rang outside his window. Theon winced at the sound of it. Nothing felt quite right anymore. While he had kissed plenty of women in his lifetime, none had prodded his iron heart the way Sansa did.

The most beautiful woman in the North, he thought, and I hoped to call her mine.

It made him feel foolish as he descended the castle steps and headed for the practice yard. To his surprise, an arrow whirred towards the target across from him, but it was not one of the boys who had shot it.

She lowered her bow and looked at him.

"Arya?" Theon called over. "Your Lady Mother would have my head and yours if she knew I found you out here alone."

The sun had only just crept into the sky, though the pocketful of arrows Arya had already notched in the straw target were precise and consistent. Theon smiled: the best shooters could find their target as easily in the dark as they could in the light.

"I'm just practicing," Arya replied, drawing back another arrow. "If Bran and Rickon can do it, so can I."

The next arrow lodged gracefully amongst the others. "Aye," Theon agreed, "so you can."

Arya let the bow fall back to her side, and she turned to face him fully. "I thought I wanted to kill Joffrey like this," she remarked, her voice soft and sad, "but he doesn't deserve a quick death."

Theon stepped forward, and took the bow gently from the girl's hands. "An arrow can make for a slow death," he told her, "as long as you know where to put it." He extended his hand for an arrow, which Arya produced from her belt. With one swift motion, he nocked and loosed it, sending a shot through the straw-man's groin. Arya giggled as Theon returned the bow to her. "Show me your form," he instructed.

She obeyed, drawing an arrow back too slowly and loosing it at the target. It slipped through the legs of the straw-man, though only narrowly missing the area Theon had struck. "What am I doing wrong?" she asked.

"You're thinking too much," he replied. He motioned towards the target, where Arya had lodged a dozen arrows at the straw-man's chest. "It's as simple as the first batch. You have to know what you're aiming for and commit to it."

Arya furrowed her sharp brows. "I know what I'm aiming for," she grumbled. "It's Joffrey's stupid cock."

Theon could not help but laugh. He said, "And yet all you got was the air underneath his cock." The straw-man gazed back at them dutifully.

"I didn't let him put it in me," Arya murmured into the wind. "He hurt me a lot, but not like that. He tried to a couple times. I had to fight him off."

While the letters sent from King's Landing had detailed Arya's abuse, it was good to hear that Joffrey had not managed to rip away her innocence. Theon knelt to meet her face. "You didn't let him," he echoed. "That takes a courage that not many people in the Seven Kingdoms have."

She glanced at him and then back at the bow in her hand. There was a sadness in her that Theon knew he would never understand. She was a Stark of Winterfell, and the Lannisters had made every attempt to break her. "I don't want him to do it to Sansa," she remarked to the dirt. "I bit and scratched to stop him, but Sansa wouldn't do that."

"You don't know that," Theon tried, but even he knew it was a lie. Sansa was too gentle, too eager to please her family that she would not risk offending the prince of Westeros—nor anyone else in the Realm, for that matter. "The good news is, your sister is safe right now," Theon assured her. Those words felt like lies, too. He was the one who was meant to keep Sansa safe—at least that was what he had wanted. But he had ruined it somehow, and now there was nothing.

A raven cried overhead. Instinctively, Theon tore the bow from Arya's hands, slipped an arrow from her quiver, and brought the bird down in one shot.

Arya looked down at it, wide-eyed, almost frightened. "Why did you do that?" she stammered.

The bird had fallen close to the straw-man, so Theon went to pick it up. "For this," he declared, holding up the rolled parchment so that Arya could see. "I don't want Sansa to get hurt, either."