Chapter Text
Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco Goya
.
.
To walk in circles.
He truly feels like he does, coming back to Winterfell, outside the old Stark mansion, where Ramsay—or was it Robb?—poured gasoline over and burned his things in the garden. The past is the past but Theon is here to confront Roose about it, and he expects the Truth.
The door is open, letting in the wind. Theon shudders at the sight. Or is it the cold? Alone, he makes his way through the building. Without the comfort of another presence, he is forced to confront the memories of the house alone. But something strange has happened: the lingering smell from his last visit (the musk of old wood, the concrete dust, the scent of wool rugs, the ambergris and civet… Catelyn’s perfume, Eddard’s aftershave...) are gone. Scrubbed away. The furniture is gone, cobwebs removed, walls re-painted. No familiar noises to wrap around him, either, house as dead like a grave. Like no one never lived here at all.
In the living room, the couch is the only thing that remains. The photo from the papers materializes in his head. Eddard Stark’s body, sitting there, facing the TV. The problem in the image was that he had no head upon his shoulders; it’d been sliced off. The gaping wound had been fresh but it’d been done so expertly there were no gore on the furniture or flooring. Clothes, unruffled and clean, changed? In the famous photo he sat there, peaceful except for the lack of head. And the head was nowhere to be found. When Theon turns, he’ll see Catelyn materialize, sitting behind her husband, against the wall, in some kind of vegetable-state. The doctors did not know what poison that caused her state. The photos had leaked and Robb had obsessed over them. Theon stares at this crouched-down would-be Catelyn (her open mouth, her staring eyes) and wonders if she knows where the head went. And then his foster parents are gone in a flash and all that's left is an empty couch and the wind. The end on the piece of shit story that was the Stark family.
Or? Nobody ever wanted to hear about what came after. The healing, the shattering, the pain. Theon does remain.
"Would you like me to show you the head?"
Theon nods to the one whose voice is like the beating of moth wings.
Roose starts walking in the direction of the bathroom. He never checks to see if Theon is following. The light is less strange, and there aren't any leeches in the bathtub or the toilet or the sink anymore. Instead there's a container, a minature freezer, the one you use to bring ice cream to the beach , turned upwards. Roose unlocks it and pulls out something round and grotesque.
Almost unrecognizable. Almost.
"I kept it in a freezer for a long time. I thought you'd find it here, the day you came and visited me. But you didn't." Instead, he got fucked in the ass and a leech crawled up his nose. Dropping the head back to its freezer (a dull thud that bounces along cracked linoleum), Roose continues, "I suppose I owe you an explanation. A last gesture to this," he looks around, "life. Ask ahead."
Claustrophobic, this space.
Theon moves out of the bathroom and Roose does not. The light does not showcase any blemishes on the latter man like it does the former. Wrinkles are a map: to wrinkle you have to live, travel, smile, frown. Roose has not moved (on). He remains while Winterfell collapses. The truest ghost.
Floorboards creak under a shifting weight. "You orchestrated this, didn't you?" He tries to specify, tries to put words to the unspeakable horror of being a pawn, fails. "All of it?"
"Clever boy. Not Balon Greyjoy's sniveling heir, nor Eddard Stark's rebellious adoptee, nor Ramsay's second Reek." Theon knows immediately: Roose knew all his identifies. Knew him, even if it took years for Theon too learn Roose's name. "And to answer your question, no. Firstly, there were more players than me. Secondly, some things happened by chance. Like you living. Lastly, I simply pushed a few buttons."
"Is Ramsay gonna kill again?" Theon asks.
"Is the sun going to rise?" The tone isn't cruel. "He's planning to redo the past. Do right what he did wrong last time, or the other way around, depending on your perspective. Ramsay has one single purpose and no thought of his own. He failed to do it the first time so he will try again until he gets it right. I have always known everything my son does... wants... is, ever since he killed his brother."
"…?" No. The brother is irrelevant. It's written in Roose's dead eyes.
"Ramsay lives on borrowed time. Both him and you were supposed to have died ten years ago."
"So I live on borrowed time too?"
"No. I would've not wasted words on you had I believed that." Roose: silent in the institution. The first one, where the doctors and nurses believed they hacked Reek off like a shell, but instead buried it deep inside Theon. The institution is whereRoose and him had sex, oral, he recalls it now, Reek eager to get lost in—less mad, less lively—oyster eyes. So the realization came sometime after. Maybe when he'd missed Eddard Stark's head in the bathtub. "I thought I was going to have to put you down at first." Theon had blinked up through Reek's eyes and wheezed, Fuck off, I'm getting better. "You got better. You won the game."
"What game?"
"The only one that matters."
Theon wonders if Roose mocked—slow, unintelligent—Ramsay with that as a child, how do I play it, father and if you have to ask you'll never learn, and if naming his torture sessions sequences was an attempt to get be more than Roose's shadow. Still.
"You arranged our meetings."
"Yes."
"You made him go to the party. To the bar. To the school. …To the diner."
"Yes."
"You influenced the Bitches to start going after him for revenge."
"Yes."
"You made Littlefinger exploit—"
"No," Roose cuts him off / cuts him, voice a knife, moth wings with razor edges, "like I said, I'm not the only player. Baelish did all that on his own. Like the Freys and the Lannisters." Theon knows none of those names. "This game is older than you," he repeats himself, "and has been going on for a long time. I won't bother explain it to you, no doubt you'd rather not know. However, I've grown tired of it. I'm leaving this life behind, soon. There is just a few things left unfinished. I'm going to sell Winterfell to the construction companies nearby; no doubt it'll become a great parking lot. But Ramsay must die, to erase Roose Bolton."
Roose looks at Theon.
Looks and looks and looks.
"You have to do it." The verdict is final, pen set to paper.
"Fuck off. Why?"
"Because that's how you end this circle. That's the only way you'll ever live a decent life."
"My problems won't just disappear if I kill him." History lives on, even if it doesn't show on Roose's face.
"Perhaps not all. But haven't I paved the way for you? No Robb. No Ramsay. And you certainly won't hear from me again. I've repaid you through an education, money on your account," Theon swallows thickly—he did not know that, "and the knife I used to kill my history. Now it's time to kill yours."
A joke makes itself known: Roose has cut so many strings he can start a new life as a midwife. Though that's what it's been building up to, right? To renounce his past. To confess and be cleansed. To live again. An acquired life. Revenge for his dead son, or for his soiled reputation as father of a monster, no, no no no, it's too easy, too common. Roose is a man who plays with people for a living—and when he's bored, he simply leaves. How many times has he left?
(Another question: how many Reeks have there been?)
"Don't overthink it. I am planning to retire."
"People won't forget."
"They will." On his lips, a flash, something that is not a smile. "I have one of those very forgettable faces."
"I won't forget you."
"So what, you'll go to the police? Tell them about me, about Ramsay? I suppose the latter wouldn't wield too bad a fruit—for a time. Until they'll let him out again. And he comes to repeat it all." A snake eating its own tail. Endlessness. Theon can't imagine a worse fate, to be stuck in limbo, like he has for a decade. Roose continues, "You are nothing. In limbo. You have become like me, a no one." Ramsay thinks this a step into transcende, Theon knows, but there is nothing in R015 but death.
"How will I kill him?"
Something sharp glimmers in Roose's hand. "With a blade fit for a monster: one that killed another rotten pawn. Complete the circle." He offers it, quiet. "It has to be a knife. Not a gun. Not a syringe. No – no, it's a scalpel you'll be doing my son with. It's only right."
The "why" is old on his tongue and will never be answered, Theon knows. He takes the knife. The choice was actualized by Roose: with his school courses, his money, his way out.
Or is it at all a choice?
"I need to think."
"You need to kill him as quickly as possible, before he comes after you."
Ramsay will find him and drag him back to R015.
"To truly kill him, you'd have to kill yourself, also."
"Fuck off. This is my choice. And I need time."
"It's a suggestion." Roose watches him, silent. It takes Theon a moment to understand that he's done with language, for now. Perhaps he'll never speak again?
Theon says, "Goodbye."
He has an idea of where he's going. He walks quickly, in a trance, and reaches the car.
"Wait."
Had he run? Roose, running? The idea seems as impossible as him raising his voice, or—!
A smile.
Roose's mouth curls upwards, and it can't be a smile, it looks to wrong. If it is, then it's the first time he's seen Roose smile. Something lurking in Theon's belly tells him to run.
"Do you remember the first thing I told you?"
Theon does, and feels the wind blow through his soul.
.
.
Later, in the car, he grabs his phone and dials a number.