Work Text:
All of Balon’s kids had a favored uncle. One that swept them up after the harsh hand of their father fell upon them. Aeron knew it was a Greyjoy tradition. His favorite uncle had taught him to drink like a man and he held himself very strongly to that teaching. As the youngest that survived he had nothing special to be good at so he drank and whored and made a general cozy place at the bottom of authority for himself.
He tended to drink more than he paid attention to his nephews and niece. But he didn’t fail to notice how Victarion swept up Rodrik and Euron took Maron under a dark wing. And while not a Greyjoy, Rodrik Harlaw took over the favored position for Asha. Which was perfectly fine by Aeron, he would rather drink than play teacher.
When little Theon came along Aeron mostly expected the boy’s aunt to step in for him. Would have expected it if not for how closely Alannys held that boy to her breast and coddled him in her skirts. Theon was a shy baby, springing to tears at someone new looking at him or wailing when anyone other than his mother held him. Making Alannys hold him all the closer and for Balon to grow increasingly irritated with his youngest. All of the other kids liked their father well enough but not Theon; the boy who didn’t like anyone.
It sort of put a block on tradition but Aeron didn’t really care. Let Alannys keep her squalling brat while he drank and sang and made merry as he pleased.
But tradition was tradition and Balon grew to despise his youngest alongside his wife. In the thick of it tradition came and the other three kids were swept away to avoid the worst of their father’s temper. Aeron drank by the hearth with deaf ears to the crying of a four year old and the fight between husband and wife. Drank and drank even as Alannys sobbed and Balon broke another chair. He consumed the black tar rum of the sailors without lifting a finger to put a stop to his eldest brother beating his wife.
Alannys had been raising Theon out of tradition. The women didn’t raise the children, it made them soft and ironborn were never soft. It was an uncle’s place to teach their nieces or nephews while the father took care of more important duties. Truly, it should have been Euron that swept up Rodrik and Victarion Maron while Aeron got the two youngest. The two least likely to have anything important to do later in their lives.
And when tradition was broken, Greyjoys broke it back. Until Aeron had a crying four year old boy dropped into his arms by Balon before his brother dragged his wife out of the Great Hall.
Theon was a tiny thing even at four. Scrawny and too short by half compared to how his brothers were at his age. He shook and continued to cry even after Aeron set him on the bench. The Greyjoy black hair was a rat’s nest of curls where Balon had probably cuffed him over the head with a cup of wine for his crying. Waste of wine to him.
Aeron lifted the carved cup in his hand to continue drinking and watching the fire in the hearth. When the cup was empty he grabbed the old bottle off the table behind him and poured another without looking at it. The crying next to him settled into sniffles then finally silence. Theon never made a lot of noise in comparison to Asha and Maron. Rodrik was quiet too but that was more because of how Victarion was quiet unless necessary.
“Drink.” Aeron held the cup out to his nephew at his side. When it wasn’t taken he pressed it to the boy’s chest. “Drink, boy.” Small hands wrapped around the polished wood to take it and coughed with a sip of the rum. “What you’ll from me is how to drink. That’s what I do, what the youngest Greyjoys of the family do.”
“Tastes bad,” Theon complained, trying to hand the cup back. “Don’t want it.”
“Too bad, this is our role.” The cup wasn’t taken back as he lifted the bottle to his lips to drink from it. “We’ve got no purpose in the family but to drink and forget that. You’re gonna learn that it’s easier bein’ this way than tryin’ way too damn hard to compete.”
There was another cough as Theon drank from the cup. He would learn.
By five Theon no longer coughed at the harsh alcohol and at six he was able to turn a deaf ear to everything else. Aeron kept the lad at his side like tradition and out of the arms of his mother. Alannys seemed to come down with a strange illness where she would wander Pyke calling out for her children in the night but no one brought those kids to her. Not with Rodrik off learning to lead the Iron Fleet and Maron was gallivanting across the sea with Euron. Asha had more time spent at Ten Towers than Pyke and Theon lived at the inn bartop like Aeron.
It was tradition. Things went smoother without kids bothering their fathers and mothers not being soft on their offspring. There was no place for weakness in the Iron Islands. Because even drunks like him knew how to sail and raid and pirate; and Theon would too.
His nephew was eight when Aeron taught him how to truly drown out the world around them. Deaf ears and rum soaked tongues was how the youngest Greyjoys survived. Theon would get better at drinking as he got older and his body could handle more but the deaf ears took practice. It was an act of willful ignorance and one that children learned easier than adults. The youngest had little place and learning young that they had no purpose made it all the better for deaf ears.
The older siblings would make comments, jabs and jokes, they’d probably raise a hand or two but the key to survival was ignoring it. Aeron had long since grown deaf to how his brothers spoke of him as was tradition and buried all that Euron had done while growing up under the wine and rum like he was expected to. And Theon would do the same. His siblings would be the worst to come and if he failed to learn this then he’d be a very miserable man.
Tradition spoke of keeping underage nieces or nephews under hand no matter the circumstances. So when Balon decided to rebel against the crown, his kids were with their uncles. Where they went, the kids went. But Rodrik and Maron were of age so it was just Asha and Theon to be kept at close hand.
It meant that when Aeron was tasked with joining Victarion with the Iron Fleet, Theon was with him. At sea and under deck when a fight broke out. A near year of water battle broke with Euron laying out a plan to take out Lannisport and the Lannister reinforcements. Victarion led and Aeron followed. And when they were taken prisoner so was Theon. Their quiet nephew was separated from them and nothing but silence about his whereabouts came.
It took close to five months before they were brought back to Pyke in chains. Theon was with them. Quiet as always but where an intelligent gleam once never seemed to leave black eyes there was nothing. Aeron had taught him willful ignorance and deaf ears but not even he could teach someone to withstand isolation.
The courtyard of Pyke was nothing but rubble. Aeron noted the worst of the damage came from a fallen tower before disregarding it. He just wanted a drink. What he got was King Robert talking too much and Theon being taken hostage to keep a second rebellion from rising. To which he could only laugh at until it hurt. There was a similar snicker from Euron nearby. The youngest Greyjoys held no purpose in the family even if the heirs were dead.
But for obvious reasons they wouldn’t say that. They would let Theon be taken away while they recouped and found their strength again. Balon would never let this rest or back down on the threat of his son’s head. If Theon was killed then it was just another dead child. The same with Asha and Maron and Rodrik. If all of Balon’s children were killed and he died as well the seastone chair would pass to Euron or Victarion. No one cared about dead children. Let alone the youngest of the Greyjoy family.
“Remember what I taught you,” Aeron said as Lord Eddard Stark pulled his nephew out of the line up.
There was silence from Theon. Long enough for it to become known that he wasn’t going to reply. “I’d speak up, lad,” Euron called out from near the ruined stables, “what’d your uncle teach you?” It was mocking and Aeron knew it well.
“Answer him, boy.” It was Victarion next. From at his side the quietest of his brothers joined as tradition willed.
No one had to look to know that the inlanders were confused about the tradition playing out in front of them. One of them was being taken, it wouldn’t do for them to forget the teachings of their elders. They would need them wherever they were being taken. No doubting it in Theon’s case.
“Theon.” The sharp call from Balon finally had the ten year old lifting his head at being addressed. “What did Aeron teach you?”
And Theon didn’t answer. Deaf ears lead to silent tongues. Hear nothing, say nothing, and drink to until people forget you’re there. Aeron could be proud at how well his nephew had taken to the teachings as the youngest but he would rather have a drink.
“Look at that,” Euron crowed, “you can do something right, Aeron.” The silence from the inlanders hadn’t lifted, bewildered and confused as they were. Even King Robert was watching with a calculating eye. “How ‘bout we get you a drink, eh? You’re bound to be needing one after-” there was a whistle “-five months in a cell. How’d he do, Victarion?”
“Better than you would,” Victarion replied coldly. “As you would know.”
The reminder only had Euron breaking out into a grin and too loud laughter. Aeron wanted a drink. It did no one any good when Victarion and Euron butted heads. Less so when it involved him or their tumultuous childhoods with their elder brothers.
“Take the boy,” Balon directed at the king, “before my brothers have a go at each other.” Their eldest brother was glaring at all of them. “Over Aeron no less.”
“Oh, don’t be so bitter,” Euron called out, “I’ll have a go if I want to. And over our baby brother if I wish.”
“We’ll have a go,” Victarion accepted, as he always would. “Let them get the lad outta here-”
“Maybe I want him to watch his uncle get put in his place for getting between me and my painfully sober little brother.” Aeron really wanted a drink. “He won’t get that teaching now that his brothers are dead.”
There was movement in the courtyard as the inlanders finally decided to get their affairs in order. While others remained where they were to watch the Greyjoy family have a fall out. In their eyes, at least. This was a fairly normal occasion before the rearing of the kids took precedence.
“Even with five months in a cell,” Victarion started, “I can still beat you.”
“Oh? Are we betting that?” Euron replied, stepping away from the ruined stables with a lazy stretch of his arms over his head. “Alright. You win, I leave Aeron alone.” Still, he wanted a drink. “I win, I take him with me on Silence for a while.”
“You’re not taking him anywhere.”
And they were off. Aeron watched for a moment before walking around the ruined edge of the courtyard to where he knew a bottle of too dry wine was stuffed in the kennels. Euron may be taking him on Silence in the near future but it wasn’t going to be sober.
The bottle was taken from him before he even got the cork out. He only sat on the broken stones without a glance at where Balon walked away with his drink. In the middle of the ruined courtyard Victarion was getting his ass beat. Euron was laughing and jesting with bloody teeth and bloodier knuckles while their brother carried on in silence. It had been like this since they were kids and it wasn’t likely to change. Victarion defended him and Euron beat him for it. It was simply how it went while Balon left them to work it out themselves.
Aeron looked away from the fight long enough to watch Theon being guided through the ruined gates out of Pyke. They’d never see the boy again. All there was left was Asha and she was Rodrik Harlaw’s so things would return to how they were before the kids came along. To deaf ears and rum soaked tongues.