Westeros 8/14
Everyone has a coping method. Sometimes it’s a puzzle, an unanswered question or a philosophical riddle; sometimes it’s stories made up in one’s own heads.
The Scott children have Westeros. It’s always there, in their imaginings, in their daydreams, in their nightmares. The game has a magnetism to it, a sort of sick darkness that pulls at one to play.
But now people are dying, one after the other, and some of the players are starting to wonder just what, exactly, that magnetism is.
Eliška’s nails lashed out, clawing at Robb’s face as she screeched in a language Theon had never mastered. Robb understood it, if standing there and looking repentant, and trying to calm her down could be construed as understanding. Her voice was high, her anger vivid. Robb just stood there.
He didn’t look at Theon, didn’t let the blame be placed on him as the woman screamed. Two years was a long time to be engaged. Eliška shouldn’t have been so surprised when Robb called it off.
Robb had thought it would go quietly, that Eliška would just let him part his ways. He always thought people would do the honourable thing. He was always so surprised when no one did.
Robb had only agreed to the engagement because of Cat. Some stupid mess that involved Eliška’s family, Cat, and outdated marriage practices. And Robb was going to go along with it. Theon had told him to just marry Eliška and have a kid on her. He and Robb could see each other in the summer or go on trips together. Robb could have it both ways.
But that wasn’t honourable, and Robb did not do the dishonourable thing. He broke the engagement in person with her parents and Cat there. Eliška attacked him, screaming obscenities in Slovak.
He should have moved faster when her father slipped a knife between Robb’s ribs. But he was. He rushed to Robb’s side as his mother did the same. They were too late. There was nothing to do.
The next time Theon saw Robb, he was a corpse. A cold, lifeless corpse lying in a morgue without a single stitch of clothing and the blood wiped from his face but not his chest.
They wouldn’t let Theon touch him, bury him until the police had a chance to see the body. Cat was in no state to do anything. Theon called the funeral home, had them arrange to pick the body up.
In the days following, Theon had to wonder whether Cat would have been better off dying that day. She was like a zombie, unresponsive and dull-eyed. Bran and Rickon were surviving almost entirely off Nan the nursemaid, her grandson and his girlfriend, Osha, the woman who had once played a cruel trick on Bran. She had repented for her actions (her friends had ended up with considerable bouts of compulsory unpaid work) and agreed to work for the Scott household in exchange for not being handed over to the coppers.
Really, Theon had taken a fancy to her and dealt out his form of “mercy”. Robb had frustrated him (Theon had been responsible for Bran not being badly hurt, which no one had ever thanked him for) so Theon had set his sights elsewhere.
That was how it was, how it had always been: Robb pushed Theon away, Theon found someone else. He never left himself enough time for pity. He would never show his vulnerability.
He cried after the funeral, when he left Cat at the grave. Bran and Rickon were in his car, all dressed up in suits and everything. It was hot out, sunny and muggy. Theon touched the tops of the tombstones as he passed them by, his skin dragging across the cement.
He would have to call Sansa and let her ken. Cat was in no shape to do so. Everyone else could read it in the obituaries, if they hadn’t already. Theon had written the obituary when Cat’s hand stuttered, paid the fee when she couldn’t sign her name properly on the cheque. He made sure she ate and slept, told her to go to bed and turned the lights off after her. He did the things Robb had been doing for years, ever since Mr Scott died and Arya disappeared.
ØØØ
“Oi, Scott!”
Jon stopped his press-ups, glancing at the private who hurried into his tent. Pyp was a short man, only two years older than Jon, thin and with unattractively large ears. He was one of Jon’s few friends at the post.
“Yes?”
“Captain wants to see you.” Jon’s heart sank. There were only a few reasons Mormont would want to see him in the middle of the day on a Tuesday. He raised himself to his knees and stood up.
“You reckon his family’s cursed?” Grenn asked. He and Pyp were never far off.
“Shut up, ya oaf.” Pyp elbowed him in the side.
Jon trudged towards Mormont’s tent. He was either being reassigned…or there was news from home. It wouldn’t be good news. They got to see their letters regularly without having to go through the higher ups.
This was bad, very, very bad.
“Scott,” Captain Mormont acknowledged Jon as the soldier stepped inside.
“Captain.”
“There’s been news from home.” Mormont dropped a slip of paper on the other side of his desk. Jon looked at it but didn’t pick it up. Mormont sighed. “Go on.”
“Sir, I’d rather not.”
Mormont nodded.
“Your brother has passed away.” Jon had several brothers. “His fiancé…” Mormont gestured helplessly.
Jon snatched the paper up, glancing at Mormont in apology. He read quickly, though there was scarce little to be read. Robb. Robb was dead.
“I am giving you the rest of the day,” Mormont said in an undertone. “Use it wisely.”
Jon walked back out numbly, shoving the paper into his breast pocket.
“Jon.” Jon looked up. Sam, his friend and the resident translator, stood there, wringing his hands. He didn’t belong on the war front. He should have stayed a scholar, become a doctor or something equally ambitious. Instead, Sam had enlisted and aced the crash courses in Arabic and Pashto. He could talk to the locals as well as he talked to anyone else.
“Sam.” Jon unfastened his pocket and handed Sam the paper.
“I’m sorry.”
Jon nodded.
“I need to lie down,” he said, taking the paper back. He folded it and placed it in the same breast pocket. Sam wouldn’t tell anyone until after Jon had but leaving the paper lying around was a bad idea.
His cot was hard, the mattress thin and sour-smelling. He lay down, feeling nothing, folding his arms over his chest and staring upwards.
He knew more people who had died at home than in Afghanistan. This was wasn’t brutal; it was long, boring and hot. Jon had thought he was going to be doing great things and here he was, doing nothing, learning nothing, helping no one.
He should have gone home. He should have helped Robb when their father died. He shouldn’t have stayed here and done nothing.
ØØØ
Jon never came back. Theon kept expecting him to show up after Robb died. He didn’t think Jon would come back to see Cat’s grave but you never knew. Robb’s mother had died in a fit of grief, wasting away on her bed. She had forgotten her other children. Theon tried not to be bitter.
Uncle Ben’s wife, the woman he almost never saw, took Bran and Rickon in. The law wasn’t much of a one for caring about familiarity when it came to family.
Theon was left to pack up the rest of the things in the home. It had a mortgage, after all, one he couldn’t very well pay- and one he had no connection to, anyhow. The bank collectors would come around sometime. They could settle it then.
He did what he could in Cat’s memory. Mostly, he took things to a storage centre and paid for the year’s lot, leaving the numbers for Uncle Ben. He had no right to pick and choose among the furniture and the heirlooms. Finally, he sat on the steps in the empty house, looking around and thinking. Theon sat there for hours, until the carpeting dug into his arse and there was nothing left to think about.
Then he took what he could carry and headed home.
ØØØ
Arya didn’t find out until months after it happened. There was just a little section of the English-language newspaper, an article about the deaths of two British citizens in Slovakia. Gendry had seen it and bought her a copy.
She felt numb, huddled against Gendry’s chest as he dozed. They were in Turkey then, doing whatever they could to stay alive, still using the credit cards when they needed to, the cards her mother had never cancelled for some reason. What would happen to Bran and Rickon? Sansa? Was someone targeting them?
Arya had never gone back. She knew if she did, she might be wanted for murder. She had seen Mr Burton and her father die, she’d been right there when it happened. There was no way they wouldn’t want her for questioning, and if they did- she had fled Britain. No one was going to believe her after that.
Later, she wondered if she could ever go home again.
That night, she dreamed of Westeros, horrible, terrifying dreams of bloody feasts and wolf heads sewn onto human bodies.
ØØØ
Jon didn’t come to the funeral. He sent a note saying he hadn’t been allowed leave but he was very sorry to hear what happened.
That left only three family members at the funeral. Theon didn’t count himself as he stood listening to the priest. Cat had wanted a proper Catholic burial. The day was cold and sunny. Robb would have liked it.
In that moment, looking at Cat, her crippled son and her other, half-wild child, Theon lost his faith in God. Some would also say he lost his mind.
Mr Scott was dead, Robb was dead, Sansa was all but chained to an abusive fiancé and Arya was missing. Jon just hadn’t shown up. All the key players were missing.
ØØØ
In Westeros, Robb Scott’s murder was called the Red Wedding. Robb, ever gracious and kind, apologized for his infidelity…and was killed for it.
Theon blamed it on whatsername, that girl who used to play with them, Jeyne. In Westeros, it wasn’t Theon’s fault. Nothing was ever his fault in Westeros.
Jon wanted to come to the funeral. His superiors would not allow it, just like he’d said. Only in Westeros, that was the truth. If there was one person Theon had ever cared about, it was Robb. He couldn’t cope with the thought that Robb had been abandoned like that by his own brother, like Theon’s family had abandoned him. The Night’s Watch had an oath, what was it? No wife, no child? Something like that. In Theon’s mind, that extended to all family.
Jon was not ever coming back. Robb’s death wasn’t Theon’s fault. These were the truths to which he held.
ØØØ
The last time Jon had come home, Theon had sneered at him when he suggested they play the game. He was too old for games when he could go out drinking instead. Robb had punched him in the arm, told him to suck it, Jon was on leave, and share his weed.
Well, if Robb was playing…
Robb was very affectionate when he was high. He liked to crawl up next to Theon and put his head on Theon’s shoulder, mumbling barely coherent things like how comfy Theon was and could they sxhgit later? It made Jon laugh or maybe that was the marijuana. Jon was a dick sometimes.
Jon announced he was tired. Robb had nodded off long ago. Theon left Jon to take care of his brother since he was horny and his curfew wasn’t one like the babies. Rosie would be sure to welcome him on short notice.
All Theon ever had to do was tell a girl his sob story of a life and he had an instant feel. Some of them tried to back out after that but it wasn’t that easy to do with a hand down one’s shirt and a tongue in one’s mouth. Theon didn’t have to work very hard to get what he wanted.
It made Robb all the more frustrating. Robb wouldn’t take any of his bullshit. He’d push Theon away, tell him to shut up and stop being such an arse, then go right back to laughing with him. It was confusing…and it was tantalizing. Feisty, Theon liked to call him. Dick, Robb liked to call him.
Still, it was Theon he clung to when he was high, Theon he felt up, Theon whose shoulder he laid his head on. Whatever he really thought, Robb let Theon smooth his auburn hair down when it got too far up Theon’s nose without a word of protest.
ØØØ
He couldn’t let Cat ken the truth, couldn’t let her be disappointed in one more son, however tentative a title that was. Cat was old-fashioned and deeply religious; she would be better off hating the Freys and having them leave her father’s company than hating her own son.
Theon was in so much pain. He didn’t want one more person to alienate him. He was an adult now and he was as lost as a child.
So he went to the only home he still had.
The Iron Islands were a cold, desolate place. Northern Ireland wasn’t much better.
At first, Theon barely understood a word anyone was saying. Everyone was laughing at him, everyone. Even his uncle, who told him he could stay with him, looked at him with open disdain. It stung.
He had no friends in Northern Ireland. Turned out his father was barely tolerated now he’d gone religious. They didn’t look too fondly on Muslims there.
There was also that awful, humiliating first meeting with his sister. There Theon was, trying to show off for these Irish girls and one of them turned out to be his sister. He was, apparently, the only one who didn’t find the whole thing funny.
They mocked him at every turn. Theon had never realized how good of an education Mr Scott had given him. These people heard three words and called him a spoiled pansy. He threw out his clothes and got new ones. They laughed. He tried his hand at ploughing. They snickered when his palms blistered. The only thing he could do was outshoot them. He’d always been excellent with a pistol.
Theon spent six months in Northern Ireland before he gave up. He found work in Suffolk, where people could speak like human beings and writing was considered important.
Eventually, though, he longed for Northern Ireland.
So he went back and was laughed at again.
A year later, he ran into Ramsay Bolton.
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The Scott children have Westeros. It’s always there, in their imaginings, in their daydreams, in their nightmares. The game has a magnetism to it, a sort of sick darkness that pulls at one to play.
But now people are dying, one after the other, and some of the players are starting to wonder just what, exactly, that magnetism is.
Eliška’s nails lashed out, clawing at Robb’s face as she screeched in a language Theon had never mastered. Robb understood it, if standing there and looking repentant, and trying to calm her down could be construed as understanding. Her voice was high, her anger vivid. Robb just stood there.
He didn’t look at Theon, didn’t let the blame be placed on him as the woman screamed. Two years was a long time to be engaged. Eliška shouldn’t have been so surprised when Robb called it off.
Robb had thought it would go quietly, that Eliška would just let him part his ways. He always thought people would do the honourable thing. He was always so surprised when no one did.
Robb had only agreed to the engagement because of Cat. Some stupid mess that involved Eliška’s family, Cat, and outdated marriage practices. And Robb was going to go along with it. Theon had told him to just marry Eliška and have a kid on her. He and Robb could see each other in the summer or go on trips together. Robb could have it both ways.
But that wasn’t honourable, and Robb did not do the dishonourable thing. He broke the engagement in person with her parents and Cat there. Eliška attacked him, screaming obscenities in Slovak.
He should have moved faster when her father slipped a knife between Robb’s ribs. But he was. He rushed to Robb’s side as his mother did the same. They were too late. There was nothing to do.
The next time Theon saw Robb, he was a corpse. A cold, lifeless corpse lying in a morgue without a single stitch of clothing and the blood wiped from his face but not his chest.
They wouldn’t let Theon touch him, bury him until the police had a chance to see the body. Cat was in no state to do anything. Theon called the funeral home, had them arrange to pick the body up.
In the days following, Theon had to wonder whether Cat would have been better off dying that day. She was like a zombie, unresponsive and dull-eyed. Bran and Rickon were surviving almost entirely off Nan the nursemaid, her grandson and his girlfriend, Osha, the woman who had once played a cruel trick on Bran. She had repented for her actions (her friends had ended up with considerable bouts of compulsory unpaid work) and agreed to work for the Scott household in exchange for not being handed over to the coppers.
Really, Theon had taken a fancy to her and dealt out his form of “mercy”. Robb had frustrated him (Theon had been responsible for Bran not being badly hurt, which no one had ever thanked him for) so Theon had set his sights elsewhere.
That was how it was, how it had always been: Robb pushed Theon away, Theon found someone else. He never left himself enough time for pity. He would never show his vulnerability.
He cried after the funeral, when he left Cat at the grave. Bran and Rickon were in his car, all dressed up in suits and everything. It was hot out, sunny and muggy. Theon touched the tops of the tombstones as he passed them by, his skin dragging across the cement.
He would have to call Sansa and let her ken. Cat was in no shape to do so. Everyone else could read it in the obituaries, if they hadn’t already. Theon had written the obituary when Cat’s hand stuttered, paid the fee when she couldn’t sign her name properly on the cheque. He made sure she ate and slept, told her to go to bed and turned the lights off after her. He did the things Robb had been doing for years, ever since Mr Scott died and Arya disappeared.
ØØØ
“Oi, Scott!”
Jon stopped his press-ups, glancing at the private who hurried into his tent. Pyp was a short man, only two years older than Jon, thin and with unattractively large ears. He was one of Jon’s few friends at the post.
“Yes?”
“Captain wants to see you.” Jon’s heart sank. There were only a few reasons Mormont would want to see him in the middle of the day on a Tuesday. He raised himself to his knees and stood up.
“You reckon his family’s cursed?” Grenn asked. He and Pyp were never far off.
“Shut up, ya oaf.” Pyp elbowed him in the side.
Jon trudged towards Mormont’s tent. He was either being reassigned…or there was news from home. It wouldn’t be good news. They got to see their letters regularly without having to go through the higher ups.
This was bad, very, very bad.
“Scott,” Captain Mormont acknowledged Jon as the soldier stepped inside.
“Captain.”
“There’s been news from home.” Mormont dropped a slip of paper on the other side of his desk. Jon looked at it but didn’t pick it up. Mormont sighed. “Go on.”
“Sir, I’d rather not.”
Mormont nodded.
“Your brother has passed away.” Jon had several brothers. “His fiancé…” Mormont gestured helplessly.
Jon snatched the paper up, glancing at Mormont in apology. He read quickly, though there was scarce little to be read. Robb. Robb was dead.
“I am giving you the rest of the day,” Mormont said in an undertone. “Use it wisely.”
Jon walked back out numbly, shoving the paper into his breast pocket.
“Jon.” Jon looked up. Sam, his friend and the resident translator, stood there, wringing his hands. He didn’t belong on the war front. He should have stayed a scholar, become a doctor or something equally ambitious. Instead, Sam had enlisted and aced the crash courses in Arabic and Pashto. He could talk to the locals as well as he talked to anyone else.
“Sam.” Jon unfastened his pocket and handed Sam the paper.
“I’m sorry.”
Jon nodded.
“I need to lie down,” he said, taking the paper back. He folded it and placed it in the same breast pocket. Sam wouldn’t tell anyone until after Jon had but leaving the paper lying around was a bad idea.
His cot was hard, the mattress thin and sour-smelling. He lay down, feeling nothing, folding his arms over his chest and staring upwards.
He knew more people who had died at home than in Afghanistan. This was wasn’t brutal; it was long, boring and hot. Jon had thought he was going to be doing great things and here he was, doing nothing, learning nothing, helping no one.
He should have gone home. He should have helped Robb when their father died. He shouldn’t have stayed here and done nothing.
ØØØ
Jon never came back. Theon kept expecting him to show up after Robb died. He didn’t think Jon would come back to see Cat’s grave but you never knew. Robb’s mother had died in a fit of grief, wasting away on her bed. She had forgotten her other children. Theon tried not to be bitter.
Uncle Ben’s wife, the woman he almost never saw, took Bran and Rickon in. The law wasn’t much of a one for caring about familiarity when it came to family.
Theon was left to pack up the rest of the things in the home. It had a mortgage, after all, one he couldn’t very well pay- and one he had no connection to, anyhow. The bank collectors would come around sometime. They could settle it then.
He did what he could in Cat’s memory. Mostly, he took things to a storage centre and paid for the year’s lot, leaving the numbers for Uncle Ben. He had no right to pick and choose among the furniture and the heirlooms. Finally, he sat on the steps in the empty house, looking around and thinking. Theon sat there for hours, until the carpeting dug into his arse and there was nothing left to think about.
Then he took what he could carry and headed home.
ØØØ
Arya didn’t find out until months after it happened. There was just a little section of the English-language newspaper, an article about the deaths of two British citizens in Slovakia. Gendry had seen it and bought her a copy.
She felt numb, huddled against Gendry’s chest as he dozed. They were in Turkey then, doing whatever they could to stay alive, still using the credit cards when they needed to, the cards her mother had never cancelled for some reason. What would happen to Bran and Rickon? Sansa? Was someone targeting them?
Arya had never gone back. She knew if she did, she might be wanted for murder. She had seen Mr Burton and her father die, she’d been right there when it happened. There was no way they wouldn’t want her for questioning, and if they did- she had fled Britain. No one was going to believe her after that.
Later, she wondered if she could ever go home again.
That night, she dreamed of Westeros, horrible, terrifying dreams of bloody feasts and wolf heads sewn onto human bodies.
ØØØ
Jon didn’t come to the funeral. He sent a note saying he hadn’t been allowed leave but he was very sorry to hear what happened.
That left only three family members at the funeral. Theon didn’t count himself as he stood listening to the priest. Cat had wanted a proper Catholic burial. The day was cold and sunny. Robb would have liked it.
In that moment, looking at Cat, her crippled son and her other, half-wild child, Theon lost his faith in God. Some would also say he lost his mind.
Mr Scott was dead, Robb was dead, Sansa was all but chained to an abusive fiancé and Arya was missing. Jon just hadn’t shown up. All the key players were missing.
ØØØ
In Westeros, Robb Scott’s murder was called the Red Wedding. Robb, ever gracious and kind, apologized for his infidelity…and was killed for it.
Theon blamed it on whatsername, that girl who used to play with them, Jeyne. In Westeros, it wasn’t Theon’s fault. Nothing was ever his fault in Westeros.
Jon wanted to come to the funeral. His superiors would not allow it, just like he’d said. Only in Westeros, that was the truth. If there was one person Theon had ever cared about, it was Robb. He couldn’t cope with the thought that Robb had been abandoned like that by his own brother, like Theon’s family had abandoned him. The Night’s Watch had an oath, what was it? No wife, no child? Something like that. In Theon’s mind, that extended to all family.
Jon was not ever coming back. Robb’s death wasn’t Theon’s fault. These were the truths to which he held.
ØØØ
The last time Jon had come home, Theon had sneered at him when he suggested they play the game. He was too old for games when he could go out drinking instead. Robb had punched him in the arm, told him to suck it, Jon was on leave, and share his weed.
Well, if Robb was playing…
Robb was very affectionate when he was high. He liked to crawl up next to Theon and put his head on Theon’s shoulder, mumbling barely coherent things like how comfy Theon was and could they sxhgit later? It made Jon laugh or maybe that was the marijuana. Jon was a dick sometimes.
Jon announced he was tired. Robb had nodded off long ago. Theon left Jon to take care of his brother since he was horny and his curfew wasn’t one like the babies. Rosie would be sure to welcome him on short notice.
All Theon ever had to do was tell a girl his sob story of a life and he had an instant feel. Some of them tried to back out after that but it wasn’t that easy to do with a hand down one’s shirt and a tongue in one’s mouth. Theon didn’t have to work very hard to get what he wanted.
It made Robb all the more frustrating. Robb wouldn’t take any of his bullshit. He’d push Theon away, tell him to shut up and stop being such an arse, then go right back to laughing with him. It was confusing…and it was tantalizing. Feisty, Theon liked to call him. Dick, Robb liked to call him.
Still, it was Theon he clung to when he was high, Theon he felt up, Theon whose shoulder he laid his head on. Whatever he really thought, Robb let Theon smooth his auburn hair down when it got too far up Theon’s nose without a word of protest.
ØØØ
He couldn’t let Cat ken the truth, couldn’t let her be disappointed in one more son, however tentative a title that was. Cat was old-fashioned and deeply religious; she would be better off hating the Freys and having them leave her father’s company than hating her own son.
Theon was in so much pain. He didn’t want one more person to alienate him. He was an adult now and he was as lost as a child.
So he went to the only home he still had.
The Iron Islands were a cold, desolate place. Northern Ireland wasn’t much better.
At first, Theon barely understood a word anyone was saying. Everyone was laughing at him, everyone. Even his uncle, who told him he could stay with him, looked at him with open disdain. It stung.
He had no friends in Northern Ireland. Turned out his father was barely tolerated now he’d gone religious. They didn’t look too fondly on Muslims there.
There was also that awful, humiliating first meeting with his sister. There Theon was, trying to show off for these Irish girls and one of them turned out to be his sister. He was, apparently, the only one who didn’t find the whole thing funny.
They mocked him at every turn. Theon had never realized how good of an education Mr Scott had given him. These people heard three words and called him a spoiled pansy. He threw out his clothes and got new ones. They laughed. He tried his hand at ploughing. They snickered when his palms blistered. The only thing he could do was outshoot them. He’d always been excellent with a pistol.
Theon spent six months in Northern Ireland before he gave up. He found work in Suffolk, where people could speak like human beings and writing was considered important.
Eventually, though, he longed for Northern Ireland.
So he went back and was laughed at again.
A year later, he ran into Ramsay Bolton.
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