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Theon.

Bodies of those dead and living litter the ground in the godswood, and with Bran’s eyes iced over and distant, Theon knows himself to be alone. His arrows are long gone, and with them the possibility to halting the advance of the Night King’s guard, the Night King himself. Theon’s kept himself and the shell of Bran alive with his spear, but he can feel the Night King arrive even before the second truest monster he’s ever known shows his undead face.

There could never be a monster like the one that’s already met his end in Winterfell, not for Theon Greyjoy.

If he’s honest, the first Theon Greyjoy died under Winterfell too.

If he’s honest, the Theon he is now will die at Winterfell before very long, and though he can think of plenty of ways he might like to live, he can’t think of a better way to die.

You’re a good man.

He hears Bran’s voice and turns, and whatever Bran is now, he knows to give him confirmation of the only question Theon still struggles to answer. Only the heat in his eyes tells him that he cries to be given this benediction; his face has long lost the ability to feel.

Theon lets himself take one last look at the heart tree, with long and white limbs, the fiery red leaves caught in a winter wind. He thinks of another time when he’d stood in front of it, not even a man, let alone a good one.

Thank you.

Only one choice left now, only one more charge.

If it buys Winterfell, if it buys his family, even a few moments, then his life will be worth more than it ever has been. He could not imagine anything mattering more.

The Night King steps forward, his Walkers behind him, and the fire raging through Winterfell behind them. Theon adjusts his hand on his spear, and before he can think a moment longer, he charges forward, screaming into the long night.

He runs for longer than he thinks he will, and then his spear buckles, breaks under the Night King’s hands. More than the pain, he registers the soft punch of the spear going through his middle. He looks up, at dead, malevolent eyes, and when he drops, it’s into darkness.

He wants to look at the heart tree when he dies, see the red against the white limbs, the sky, but it’s dark. Theon falls a long, long way through the darkness, and the moment he realizes he’s only dying, not dead, he realizes he’s no longer in the godswood.

There’s grass under his cheek.

It’s warm.

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"What the fuck."

It was rare to actually see it happen. To see the moment a person appeared, flickering into existence with the blink of an eye. He landed in a heap, a rag doll of motionless limbs and heavy, clanging armor, and I thought, Christ, he's dead..

Just fucking great, there's a dead guy right there, and I guess I've got to deal with it.

Walking across the grass, I didn't even hesitate. Once, I might've. I knew that, with shameless clarity. I wasn't sure it made me better or worse, now, that I made other people's fucking problems my own. It was less lonely, maybe, but a hell of a lot more trouble.

As I approached him, I heard a low groan. Oh fuck.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ," I muttered to myself, my phone already in my hand as I dropped down onto my knees in front of him, reaching out to slide a hand along his clammy neck, feeling or a pulse. But his eyes were wide, unseeing, blood staining his lips, and I felt a slice of fear grip at my insides and twist.

"Hey, man. Okay, you're okay," I said uselessly, fumbling to dial for an ambulance while I eyed the spear jutting from his gut.

A voice cuts in through the haze of pain and darkness, and for a moment he's a child holding a spear, listening to Yara inform him of the main danger for any fighting with said weapon.

He's aware that he's dying, but he's also suddenly aware that besides his memory of Yara, someone else remains near him. The accent sounds strange, the words nearly another language. It sounds like whoever the man is, he's going to help.

Theon sucks in a wet breath.

"Padding," he croaks. "Hold me still."

"Yeah, I don't know how the fuck I'm supposed to do that when you're wearing armor," I muttered, sliding a leg under his head, my other knee against his back, keeping him tipped up on his side, so the longer end of spear stays off the ground.

The call finally connected and I rattled off the address, talking with the dispatcher, who basically told me the same thing.

The back side looked the worst, blood oozing from the torn edges of his armor plate. Setting the phone down in the grass, I yanked off my shirt, wrapping it as gently as I could around the spear to try and staunch some of the blood and keep it still.

Through the phone's speakers, I could hear the dispatcher's tinny voice trying to keep me calm. I ignored it. "They're like, three minutes out, man. You gotta just hang on."

Theon can't figure it out, who this man is, and where he is. It's not the first time he's been badly injured, floating on the edge of death and sanity, but somehow it's become the strangest. At least his new companion seems to be in contact with others, and is able to keep the weight off his wound.

Three minutes.

Theon fades in and out of awareness, but as he tries to last these three minutes, he can hear himself mumbling raggedly. "I wanted to die in the godswood. I wanted to see the tree. Can't see Sansa, she needs to be safe. Did you see the Night King? Where's all the snow?"

While fully formed thoughts when in his head, he sounds far less coherent, with a little more gurgling.

"You're not gonna die," I said, a promise I knew I couldn't keep, because he was pale and rigid with pain and gurgling on his own blood.

"It's not gonna make a whole lot of sense, if I try and explain it to you right now," I said, pushing his hair back from his face. He was dirty, splattered with blood and soot, plucked right out of the middle of battle.

"Everything's fine, man. I'm sure she's safe. You just gotta stay awake right now," I said, looking at him upside down, his head resting on my thigh. He looked like he was about to drift again, and I gave his cheek a tap with my palm. "Come on, eyes open. I can hear 'em coming."

In the distance, there were sirens. Unless he was in the middle of a fuckin' cosplay session gone wrong, he was about to be really fucking freaked out by the ambulance, but there was nothing I could do about that.

Theon tries and fails to place the accent, vaguely registering the stranger's similarly unrecognizable clothing. But the man's touch is gentle enough that Theon lets himself believe, believe that the stranger has him in a place away from winter, that Sansa is safe, that he will live long enough to make any sense of this.

How much he wants to sleep, though he supposes if he does, he'll just wake up again, bleeding out in another strange place. He jerks a little at the tap to the face, though his eyes focus, like he's really seeing the stranger for the first time.

"Who are you?" he croaks. "Do I hear horns?" There are strange lights in the edges of his vision, and a roar. "Don't tell me there are more-- more dragons."

"No dragons. At least not today," I said, trying to keep his focus on me instead of the approaching ambulance. "They're here to help, okay? It's all going to seem really fucking weird, but trust me, it's okay."

He had no reason to trust me, of course, but if he got spooked, all he was going to do was make himself worse, and stranger or not, I didn't actually want to watch some guy bleed out in the vacant lot by our apartment.

"My name's Neil," I said, glancing towards the ambulance as it pulled up to the curb, two EMTs hustling out. "I was just on my way past. It's my lucky day, I guess." I managed a smirk, staying put even as the EMTs rushed over, their eyes a little wide as they took in the scene.

"Little help?" I asked, giving the first one, a woman, a thin-lipped smile.

"I don't think the dragons were much help," Theon says, voice thready, trying to hold on even as stranger things begin to happen around him. "Whole battle plan was--" He has to stop, take a deep rattling breath.

"Neil," he repeats, trying to push his attention back to the current moment. "I'm Theon. Who are they?" They appear to be-- healers, of some sort.

"Neil," he says again. "Where am I? This isn't Winterfell." He can taste his own blood, and growing panic. "I fell. The battle was still--" He breaks off as the EMTs begin to get him ready to move.

They start trying to shove me aside, working quickly to secure the spear. Another truck pulled up, a small fire engine, and a guy with a pair of what looked like garden sheers hurried over. Jesus Christ.

I wanted to tell them to back off, to give him room to breathe, to at least give him a second to understand what was going on, but I also knew there wasn't really time for that. They spoke to him clearly, explaining what was happening to him, assuring him they were there to help, but I doubted it would've made a whole lot of sense, even without all the blood loss.

"Fuck off," I hissed, when they told me to step aside, but the firefighter— a huge motherfucker with arms as big around as my head, yanked me up by the elbow. "You need to step aside," he said calmly, pointing me over just a few feet away.

"You're in a place called Darrow," I said, trying to stay where he could see me. It took the two EMTs to hold him still while the firefighter clipped the spear off closer to his body, so it wouldn't get knocked in the ride over. With that over, the two guys rushed to bring over the stretcher, the woman crouching to quickly running an IV line out of the back of Theon's hand and giving him what I fucking hoped was some strong pain killers. "The battle's still going on with out you, man. I'm sorry."

Theon tries to keep his head above the waves of darkness that keep threatening. He knows he should try to stay awake; somehow he is still alive, and Neil's said the battle continues. They put a needle in his hand and if he were able, he'd jerk away. He's had all sorts of needles in him before, and he hates them.

Before he can struggle, a wave of distant calm washes through him. The pain starts to subside, but he's having a more and more difficult time reaching for thought, for words. "Neil," he calls, his voice wet. "The godswood is undefended now." He's going under the waves again, warm and dark. "The crypts. Sansa."

Then the ocean swallows him.

Theon wakes up in a warm, sunlit room that smells nothing like Winterfell, or any other place he's been. If before he'd been tugged under dark waters, he's floating atop them now, drifting. A glance down confirms that the spear is gone, and that he's been sewn and bandaged-- but leaves him utterly confounded. The needle in his hand has been secured with sticky paper, and strange heavy and stiff threads abound. Boxes with lights and symbols, strange chirping sounds, and a room that looks nothing like he's ever seen, either.

There are voices outside the doorway, and he fights the urge to close his eyes to get a reprieve from all that is different. He starts to pull at the sticky paper and needle, shifting and then freezing as the chirping gets louder.

"They're gonna strap you down if you fuck with that too much," I warned, leaning in the doorway, arms crossed over my chest.

Tucked under my elbow was a stuffed grey bear holding a little felt daisy, the words Get Well Soon stitched onto the sole of one of its feet. I'd bought it only after finding out he wasn't fucking dead, after a long and awkward conversation with the receptionist downstairs. They'd given me the run around for half a goddamn hour, then finally told me that they hadn't killed him on the ride over, or in the last eighteen hours or so, but that he wouldn't be able to have visitors until later that afternoon. Instead of driving all the way home and losing a decent spot in the labyrinthine parking deck, I wandered the cafeteria and the coffee shop, then finally the gift shop, and ultimately the bear had been an impulsive purchase born out of exhaustion.

It seemed funny, at the time. Now, standing in his doorway, the whole goddamn situation felt nothing but strange.

"You talk to anybody, yet?" I asked, slipping further into the room. I had a feeling that, even if he had, he was high enough that he wouldn't have remembered.

If it's possible, Theon's face goes even paler, ghostly white at the mention of straps and being held down. His hand drops immediately from the needle, and his head drops, shoulders curving forward protectively. But the moment passes, and he's glad to hear the irritating chirps die down as he sucks in a breath and looks up to find Neil.

He's able to actually look at him, and there's nothing there that seems familiar to him about-- any of it. "I haven't," he says. "You, when I was dying. I would think I was dead, if I wasn't sure I knew what it already felt like. What happened to me?"

"You're in a place called Darrow. It's a city, maybe on the east coast of North America, but nobody really knows. And it's twenty-nineteen," I said, grabbing a chair and sinking down into it.

For some reason, hospitals always had the most uncomfortable chairs in the world.

"I'm gonna guess all that's far off from where, and when, you were," I said, dropping the bear onto the bed, at his side. It sat, just a little under-filled, lopsided and scruffy. They made a weird pair.

"It happened to me, too. Four years ago. I was at home, then suddenly, I was here. I didn't get a fucking spear through the side, though."

"None of that sounds even the slightest bit familiar," Theon says, picking up the strange little doll, and in his pleasantly floating place on an ocean of what he's beginning to suspect is very powerful medicine, he likes it, tucking it closer to himself. He hopes little Lyanna Mormount lives, the little bear.

"I am Theon Greyjoy, of Winterfell and the Iron Islands, of-- Westeros," he says, because he's not sure if Neil will recognize any of that. "I was in battle. I fell in battle, in the godswood. I was trying to keep my family safe. What did you mean that the battle goes on?"

"Whatever was happening there, it doesn't stop. You don't stop being there. They won't notice you're gone. I don't know why. It's... magic or... alternate dimensions. Who the fuck knows," I tried to explain, "But we didn't all die to get here. At least we don't think so. I mean, I don't know why we're all so fucking sure we're not in some kind of Purgatory, honestly."

I picked at a loose piece of yarn on his blanket.

"I've never seen anybody show up as hurt as you were," I admitted, after a pause. "I wasn't really sure you'd still be alive, but I had to see, you know?"

"I'm most certainly dead there," Theon says, his voice flat, mostly as a result of his attempts to suppress any other emotion. "We don't have anything like this place. I am certain I bled to death in the godswood." There's a hollow laugh. "I won't know what happened, then? If it made a difference? If they're safe?"

He tries to rub his hands over his face and the needle tugs; he's silent for a while before he looks at Neil again.

"Thank you," he says. "For saving me. Would have hated to die of impaling twice, you know."

"The only way you'll know is if somebody else from home turns up," I said, watching the twinge of tension in his eyes as he jostled the needle in the back of his hand. "It happens. People come and go."

I chewed at my bottom lip.

"I didn't save you. I just made a phone call," I admitted, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. I thought about Philip, about how if I'd maybe gotten there a few minutes earlier, he might've still been alive. But I didn't, and he wasn't.

I was about to say something more, when the door creaked open and a nurse hustled in, all bright smiles and her voice too bright and friendly as she went over what was probably a checklist of questions about his pain level and shit. She shoved her way over to the monitors by his bed, hooking on a new IV bag, checking the numbers, looking at his morphine drip. By the time she made it to the piss bag hanging on the side of the bed, I was on my feet and backing towards the door.

"Don't go anywhere," I murmured to him over her chattering, smirking as I slipped out into the hall.

"Will they only come here if they're dead too?"

Theon shakes his head. "You could have left me, but you didn't. You could have been too frozen to know what to do. I don't know what the fuck a phone is, but it sounds good to me."

He sighs as the nurse comes back in, not meaning to be an ass, but this number system makes very little sense to him, and she mentions a few more new phrases that he doesn't understand at all, until suddenly he does understand that she's talking about his scars, about-- about the biggest of them, the most noticeable.

It's at that point he stops talking, and stares out the window.

On her way out, the nurse pauses by Neil. "You've gotten more out of him than any of us. I think he could use a friend."

"Yeah, maybe 'cause I'm not prodding at him and sticking needles in him," I muttered, shouldering my way past her with two juice pops I'd swiped from the nurse's station in hand.

"So, looks like you're off solid food 'til dinner, so," I said, hooking my foot in the leg of the chair and dragging it back over with a grating scrape of it across the tile. I plopped down into it, and while I noticed his uncomfortably melancholy stare out the window, I pretended like I didn't.

"We got red or orange," I said, the clear plastic of the juice pops crinkling as I waved them where he could see.

The rasp of the chair legs on the floor get his attention, and he can't help thinking, as he looks at some odd drawing of faces that the nurse had also tried referring to, that if he were more comfortable in this place he might really find it in him to be an asshole.

Then again, he's pretty sure most of his most truly awful behavior was left behind in Ramsay's dungeons.

"I'm not sure I'd want to eat anything," Theon says, aiming for petulant and coming out considerably more broken than he'd like. The hand without a needle in it tightens into a fist and then releases. He wants to ask Neil more questions about this place, but that strange floating feeling is back.

"How do you taste a color?"

"Yeah, well, I just risked getting chewed out by the nurse at the front desk for this. Don't be a dick," I countered, tearing the plastic from the orange and handing it over without waiting for him to choose. I tore the plastic off the red and stuck it in my mouth, figuring he'd probably need a demonstration how to eat something like that. "The red's cherry," I said, "but it's mostly dye and sugar, so yeah, it tastes like a color."

At his skeptical look, I sighed, "It's cold and your mouth's probably like fucking sandpaper. Just trust me."

I took a bite from my popsicle, crunching ice for a moment before going back to his earlier question: "You don't have to die to come here. I'm not dead. At least, I don't think."

With the numbing ocean waves carrying him along again, Theon huffs out a laugh at being told not to be a dick, only to find himself wondering what the healers here had thought of that. Are they going to want to talk about it?

Better to try and eat the icy orange stick. He watches Neil intently, and then copies the motion, too high and too suddenly thirsty to carry that it seems a little strange.

"You're not from here," Theon confirms, sticking out his tongue to see if there's an orange tint to it. Whatever the healer put in his needle, it makes him feel a lot better.

So, maybe getting him the popsicle wasn't entirely altruistic. Maybe half the fun was watching him try and eat it, petulant and high out of his mind on morphine.

"Hell no," I said, crumpling both wrappers and tossing them into the trash bin by the bed. "I'm from Kansas, which I know means fuck all to you, so."

Theon has gotten as far as finding where the stick meets the actual orange ice, and he looks shocked for a minute to find wood in the middle the ice pop, even shooting Neil a somewhat betrayed look before he tips it the other way. Oh, right, he's holding the other end of the wood.

His next look at Neil is perplexed, and then he just bites into the damn thing, catching most of it in his mouth.

"I've never heard of any Kansas," he agrees. "Are there more people from places that aren't-- this? Maybe someone knows Westeros. Maybe someone can tell me if everyone is dead."

"You're not missing much," I said, grinning as my teeth closed around my ice pop, playfully smug as I bit off a piece without dropping it all over myself.

"Maybe," I said, reaching over and picking a chunk of orange ice off the collar of his hospital gown and pitching it into the trash can. "I haven't heard anybody mention Westeros, but there are people from all over. Different places, different times. It's not like I know everybody."

Edited 2019-05-12 15:39 (UTC)

Theon tries to shoot him a dirty look, but changing his face makes him feel like he's about to fall off the bed. It only makes sense that these healers have incredibly strong pain medicine, but still he's clutching the rail of the bed for a moment.

"Then you can help me ask them? You know your way around this place."

Watching where Neil had tossed the orange ice, he flicks his little piece of wood over there as well, watching it sail into the bin.

"Wow," I said, brow arched as I pitched my own stick into the trash. "You've got good aim, for somebody high as shit."

I was actually surprised he was still awake, and didn't expect him to remember much of the conversation later.

"Maybe. If I don't have anything better to do," I said, reaching out and straightening the daisy clutched in the Get Well bear's hand. "I think you need to get outta here, first."

Leaning back in my chair, he laced my hands behind my head, giving him a once-over. For somebody nearly dead the day before, he looked— well, he looked like shit, but that was still an improvement.

"So," I said, "Who's Sansa?"

"I'm a good shot," Theon mumbles, for the medicine seems to be pulling him a little deeper each time he feels it wash over him. "Will you come back and visit again? I don't want to be alone here."

That's nothing he'd usually be able to ask, and he supposes, with a distant calm, that it's part of whatever is seeping into his blood.

"Sansa?"

He can't hide the absolute stupid lovesick look, even if it's also slightly shame-faced. "Sansa is the Lady of Winterfell. I went back to swear myself to her service for the battle. I knew she'd be glad to see me but her smile... and she embraced me..." His head droops against his pillow. "Like a flame against the winter night. If by dying I gave her even a single breath more, it was worth it."

He's drowsy, but at least maybe he'll dream of her now.

"Yeah, sure," I said, almost offhand, and maybe once, it would've been a lie. In that moment, I wasn't completely convinced it wasn't one still. But I felt oddly responsible for him, despite owing him nothing. "I'll teach you how to use the phone, later, when they've turned the drip down." I gestured to the machine chugging along beside him. Every so often, it clicked and a little drip of medicine dropped down into his IV.

"Right," I said, not because any of what he said sounded familiar, but because I'd heard the waver in his voice, yesterday. The desperation. It didn't sound like he was calling to just a fellow soldier, or a friend. That was the voice of a man calling out to somebody he loved. "Figured as much."

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