game of thrones vampire au ficathon

[bronson]

game of thrones
vampire au ficathon
a ficathon. for game of thrones. but they're vampires. plot twist!
anything goes.
except sparkly vampires, because that's not cool.
yay have fun.

Comments

[the_stark_words]

They're in a cold room full of pretty things that he is far too scared to touch, full of finer things than he had ever seen in his father's house, or even when he was a ward at Winterfell. They are dusted, though, with grit, so that when he looks too long at any of the chairs of candelabras or even the fine fur mat before the fire, they seem dingy and too old and all wrong. Theon looks down at the stones beneath his knees, rigid and rough. Outside, it has begun to rain; a fierce, Northern rain that reveals itself to be mostly ice with each drop that pelts the window.

Ramsay unfolds himself from his chair by the fire and crosses to Theon, who has been kneeling there for hours while the other man ate his dinner and drank his wine. The grimy room is rank with the smell of it; eaten food and discarded bones and alcohol, which makes Theon hungry and nauseated all at once. He closes his eyes and holds his breath to keep from vomiting.

As Ramsay bends to his own knees and reaches for Theon's hand and breaks each of his fingers one by one. Theon cries out on the last one, a lame, choking sound that wrenches itself from his throat. His entire body shakes. Though his eyes are closed, he knows that Ramsay is smiling, that his teeth are bared; he can smell dead animals and blood. And though he has been expecting it, he shudders when Ramsay's breath hits his neck, and stiffens when his teeth meet skin. There's pressure, and then a pop.

It's immediate. It fills him up like nothing he has ever felt before. It rushes to his fingers, and there is no greater ecstasy than that of his body healing itself all at once. It's warm, like summer. Behind his eyes everything is amber and auburn. The room is thick with a thousand different scents and they're sickening to him, but none of that matters. He's hungry. Ramsay is smiling, feeling along the repaired bones of Theon's fingers like he wants to break them again. Theon almost asks him to.

It's dizzy. Everything is dizzy, spinning, bright. He hardly feels it when Ramsay reaches out to snap his neck. Before he sleeps, the last thing that he thinks of is home.

-

Sometimes home is hard to come back to. Sometimes, no matter how much you've missed it, no matter how little it has changed from what you remembered, things are different. Like outgrowing a pair of breeches, the thing that has changed is you.

Theon knows this. Knows it as surely as he knows that Robb doesn't smile as much at him anymore, that there is hesitation and trepidation under his skin when they touch. Knows it as surely as he knows that Robb no longer loves him, that a piece of him will always belong to Ramsay. That his fingers ache when it rains. That Robb Stark's regrets are as cold and hard as he is. Colder and harder even than the North.

That as a vampire, no one will ever take advantage of him again. But his fingers ache and Robb turns away from him and Theon is afraid to let himself wonder whether someone already has.