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themostepotenteTitle: a tithe to the seven in perfect thirds
Author/Artist:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
themostepotente
Pairings/Characters: Cersei/Rhaegar (unrequited), Cersei/Jaime, Cersei/Robert, Cersei/Eddard (imagined), Cersei/Lancel
Rating: NC-17
Words: 3,200 words
Warnings: Incest, language, violence
Prompt: • live and learn / or die and teach by example –– Cersei-centric, mentions of Cersei/Rhaegar, Cersei/Robert, Cersei/Jaime etc. I dunno, something about her life and how she sees it and things of that sort.
A/N: Originally written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
got_exchange. Enormous thanks to xylodemon for being the rockstar that she is.
.a tithe to the seven in perfect thirds.
:: by TheMostePotente ::
“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” – Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear
[.the sea in storm.]
Cersei Lannister is born in the hottest summer betwixt two of the harshest winters. Her newborn cries were said to have been loud enough to pierce the veils that divide the Seven Hells.
“She has a voice, my precious daughter,” says Joanna.
Cersei quiets, almost stills in the swaddle of silks.
Tywin regards the tiny cunt between his daughter’s legs. “She has a voice, yes,” he replies in answer. “But she will not be heard.” He orders the maester who will serve as many as five kings to attend his daughter.
Joanna refuses the girl to Maester Pycelle, and instead, takes her twin boy at her opposite breast. “And what of our son, husband-mine?”
Tywin looks down upon his son with fatherly concern. “He will have to be voice enough for the both of them.”
Cersei’s cries begin anew, as if angered by this revelation, only to be muffled by the push of her mother’s teat into her tiny red mouth.
She is never the child who suckles first.
*
A beautiful baby, Cersei grows into a more beautiful girl. Her eyes reflect the green of all that blooms wild and strong in summer, and the gold of her long plaits mimic the stolen rays of the sun – traits once born of Lann the Clever.
Not long after she speaks her first words, she learns how to pray to The Seven. She takes a special interest in the women of the Faith and keeps the song Maiden, Mother, and Crone close to her heart. There is something to be said about powerful women who are worshipped and their acceptance or denial of prayers. The latter mirrors the cruel streak in Cersei, just as blood red and as sharply defined as the swathe of crimson on black on the head of an ancient Ghiscari.
It is this cruel streak that teaches her to love and hate in equal measures. Unsurprisingly, she feels the strongest of this push-pull at the announcement of her mother’s second pregnancy.
*
Tyrion Lannister is born the second year of the Three Year Winter. The child is misshapen, stunted, abnormal. An agonising delivery, Joanna dies from hemorrhaging, her beautiful face frozen in joyful misery. The hatred Cersei feels is almost immediate, and she vows that this loathing will remain as ever pure. As such, Cersei does not refer to her youngest sibling by name.
The nameless imp brings about a coldness that matches the chill of winter. Brings about a poison, a pox, a stain upon the Lannister household. It seeps into her skin like an infection and stirs a fever of the blood. It is this fire that tempers and teases and threatens ruination. Cersei wields this as a weapon to strengthen the ties between her and Jaime, uses these same ties as a garrote to strangle the relationship between brothers. Tyrion, however, has ways of fraying even the strongest ropes.
*
Despite the absence of her mother, the will of The Seven intervenes. In the midst of womanhood, though, she still has time for Jaime and his ingenious escapes. He plays at war and she chases butterflies, and together they seek shapes in the clouds. Where Jaime sees swords and shields, Cersei sees princes and dragons. And when Jaime reaches for her hand and asks her what gives her pause to blush, she always gives him the same answer – a lie.
*
Tywin promises her to Rhaegar Targaryen before she even begins her moon-blood. The news instills in her a quiet excitement. She develops a similar appetite for books and studies the harp in appreciation of her future crown-prince.
On royal parchment, she draws her and Prince Rhaegar on dragonback, exploring the vast skies of Westeros. When questioned by her brother, Cersei denies any such likeness and convinces Jaime that it is a picture of Jaehaerys I and Good Queen Alysanne. This ensures he remains rapt with devotion for his sister. It cannot be any other way.
Her father serves King Aerys as Hand, and the match between Cersei and Rhaegar is a good one. The betrothal is set to be announced at the Tourney at Lannisport, and when the time arrives, Cersei cannot contain her joy. She sneaks out with a friend the night before to see the maegi, in greedy possession of far too many questions an old mind can answer justly. She returns alone, frightened and shaken to the core, and once morning comes, she is just as disappointed at Aerys’s refusal of her as she is haunted by the crone’s words.
*
Tywin Lannister is no matchmaker. His insistence that Jaime be betrothed to Lysa Tully is folly. Cersei has all the cunning of the sigil of her house, and she quickly convinces her brother to join the Kingsguard that they might never be apart. She loves Jaime too much, pushes the brambles and pushes the thorns into the flesh of his paws, rather than pulling them out. A wounded lion does not wander. A wounded lion does not stray.
Tywin grows angry at the sight of his eldest son in white, but there is little he can do after oaths are sworn except grieve the loss of his own shorn mane.
*
On a summer’s day, much like the one she was born unto, Cersei captures three butterflies and imprisons them in glass. “Three more for the killing jar,” she whispers in a rage of tears.
[.a night with no moon.]
“War will be the death of us all.”
Cersei’s heard her father say this more times than she could ever count. If she had one Golden Dragon for each of the times any of her father’s bannermen have said this, she’d have a purse large enough to keep everyone compliant. And then, where would man and his eternal whore lie?
War does bring death, but so does poison, the pox, wildfire, and… love. Love is the true destroyer of men for all that it’s worn upon sleeve and vambrace.
Men are foolish when it comes to battles. They know not how to pick and choose wisely, think even less wisely when teats and cunt are in hand and mouth. Women are shrewder in matters of stratagem and counsel. In delicate yet strong hands, kingdoms can be won and kept. Even the eunuch, she thinks with a laugh, would sit the Iron Throne longer. Cocks are for little boys and foolish men to swing.
Now, not only must she suffer these fools, she’s to marry one.
*
Lyanna Stark has ruined Robert Baratheon for any other woman. A loveless union, she nevertheless tries to make it work. If nothing else, Robert is handsome. Dark-haired and bearded, strong-jawed, lean and muscled. The eldest of three born leaders. A king. And if she cannot have Rhaegar Targaryen, should she not have his vanquisher? The Seven Kingdoms are held together with the threads of loveless marriages, hers should be the knot that ties them neatly in place. She is their queen, after all. Though, a tug here and there to loosen this knot should well serve as a reminder when they forget.
*
Robert always comes to her stinking of wine and whores. He calls her every name in the Seven Kingdoms but her own. It’s the dead Stark girl’s name that wounds the most, however. Moreover, he doesn’t care. Makes no excuses or apologies. Comes to her like this time and time again when he bothers to remember theirs is the marital bed. Envy is a luxury she can hardly afford, but if she were a weaker woman, she might admit to envying the girls in Littlefinger’s harem. Any sane woman would rather be called a whore with affection than her given name with none.
*
Through some small miracle or curse, Robert puts a child in Cersei’s belly. No announcements are made and no ravens are sent. The secret is hers and hers alone, and she plays it like a chess piece, choosing to move or counter at her discretion. For now, she allows everyone their squares. Handmaids make the most worthwhile pawns, she muses.
Robert is a hypocrite of the worst kind, and it brings Cersei some pleasure in knowing two Golden Houses will darken the Baratheon dynasty. Orys Baratheon and Rhaelle Targaryen have done little more than left marks on tapestries and curses on tongues. Beyond that, their names have been declared blasphemies, told to be forgotten. In the dead of night, to his sleep-troubled mind, she whispers these names and they hover like flies over horse stink.
*
The day finally comes when Robert’s trespasses become too great an irritation to bear. He drinks too much on the days thence. Mentions one too many a whore’s name. Argues the significance of the Golden Dragon as opposed to the Silver Stag and why one has more value. Beats it to a bloody pulp like a courser past its prime. And then, he says her name. Says it as he never has before. Prefaces it with the words the only woman.
Cersei has moon tea that eve. In fine Targaryen fashion, she flips a coin in her unborn child’s honour but doesn’t pain herself with the outcome.
*
Westeros is predicated on poor life decisions. They pock the flesh of the Seven Kingdoms like the greyscale, leaving ugly and unsightly mottles behind, from the northernmost tip to the southernmost point. Nothing so crippling or even life threatening, but scars nevertheless.
Cersei has made her fair share of poor decisions, not the least of which is taking her brother into her bed. As lovers, they share their pain and their pleasure in even strides. She leaves him bloodied and he leaves her bruised, and they love and hurt in perfect circles.
Jaime is faithful to her, as faithful as the Most Devout to the Seven. He worships her wholly and pledges to take no other. She takes whom she likes and if it suits, and she uses her tears and her cunt to manipulate when it pleases. Theirs will always be a love born of jealousy and possessiveness.
He fathers her three bastard cubs, golden-maned and green-eyed, and only the Hand is fool enough to raise questions. Jon Arryn is bold in his carelessness, and he pays for it with his life. In all ways. tears are a weapon twice wielded in a woman’s arsenal, and she follows one set with another.
Before the funeral pyre burns, Cersei removes the Silver Stags at Jon Arryn’s eyes and replaces them with tarnished Groats.
A Lannister always pays their debts.
[.the anger of a gentle man.]
Robert names his next Hand from half a world away.
The Kingsroad is long and winding and dusty, and they caravan to the North on a maybe. This sort of negotiating cannot be done by raven, her fool husband explains. When she insists on staying behind, Robert strikes her. He can fuck their proposed stand of solidarity in the arse for all she cares. She’ll never be cosy with the Stark brood.
Winterfell is little more than a frozen mudhut, the Northroners just as foreign and as savage as those across the Narrow Sea. Cersei wonders how anyone can call this barren wasteland a home, or why a bastard born of these lands would wish to be doubly cursed with a name like Snow.
The feasts of the North leave her in wont of a lamprey pie and roast swan. The foods are too heavy here, made heavier by tankards of honeyed mead. Even the wines are leaden with the burdens of the Northroners. The men themselves do not stir her appetites. Filthy-mouthed and dirty-fingered with beards full enough to nest sparrows. This godsforsaken place ill suits her.
*
When he doesn’t have his hands on a serving wench, her husband speaks of an alliance, a joining of Houses. The Stark girl is comely enough, but her Joffrey deserves better. Besides, the marriage tie isn’t near as strong as the blood tie Robert proposes to substitute.
Lord Stark isn’t truly sold on the idea either. He’d just as soon turn Robert away, turn Robert out, if it wasn’t for the guilt that haunts Eddard like a shade. A shade that dies and resurrects itself the moment Robert opens his mouth to ask anything. Eddard has the grace to accept, but Cersei doesn’t envy him his talk with his wife. The thought makes her smile.
Mayhaps, she’ll whittle away what time she has left here watching him agonise over how to break the news gently. It may even be what makes this journey worthwhile.
*
She follows him through the godswood, only vaguely aware of the knotted faces carved in the barks of the trees. She shadows Lord Stark to a particular weirwood, red leaves swept and skimming the surface of a pond. This one must be aeons old. A vessel long left deserted. Eddard bends the knee and bows his head, hands white-knuckled on the hilt of his Valyrian steel blade. Not only does he pray to these ancient gods, he swears a sort of fealty to them. To uphold the justice of the North. And in return, will they see him safely to King’s Landing.
He asks – no he begs -- will they watch over his family and see his bastard son safely to the Wall. Will they quell his wife’s anger and dry his youngest’s tears. Lord Stark waits there, stills, in that very position, until the winds die down and he has his answers.
Later that day, in an abandoned tower, she allows her brother to take her from behind. She imagines Eddard’s rough hands on her teats instead, imagines his thighs flush with the backs of hers, his balls slapping sharply against her arse cheeks.
If she closes her eyes, she can feel the phantom itch of sleeping furs at her knees and the scratch of dirty nails at her hips, clawing for purchase. He has her right how he likes her; bent over, undignified, his name on her tongue, and a cunt hair away from coming.
It’s not until then that she notices the Stark child, perched in the window and watching her, that she startles. At her command, her brother makes haste to the window, his cock still free of his breeches. She watches as Jaime takes the boy in hand, instills in him a fear worthy of a father’s.
Threats should be enough. He is just a child after all. But her brother is no just punisher.
The Stark boy falls to his death, and a murder of crows mark the occasion with their shrill cries before the deafening silence.
*
The balance of power shifts again in Westeros with the appointment of Eddard Stark as Hand.
Lord Stark spends half his time in council meetings in Robert’s stead, the other half in Robert’s company reliving the glory days that are naught but ash now. The both of them possess this power over the other. Stark says what he pleases and keeps his miserable, honourable life. And Robert mostly gets what he wants through misguided brotherly love. One could argue theirs is a friendship fraught with sharp edges. But neither seems bothered at the prospect of deep cuts.
Perhaps it is better that Robert spend all his time with Stark. It lends time enough for the bruises on her cheeks to heal. For her to spend time with her pride of little lions. Though, for all the good Eddark Stark’s counsel does the realm, it does little to strengthen Robert’s relationships with Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen. In fact, Cersei thinks, she will pay Lord Stark from her own purse of gold if he can make sense of Robert’s logic to step in for his frigid brother Stannis and his cock-loving brother Renly to perpetuate the Baratheon bloodline. Albeit with a string of worthless bastards.
Foolishly, Stark decides his time is best spent forgetting what troubles he’s left behind in Winterfell, the son nipping at Death’s heels and the wife he’s practically made a widow. He uses his energies to right as many wrongs as he can before he’s stepped on one toe too many. He continues where Jon Arryn left off, nose buried in a tome left dusty and dog-eared on purpose. And just like his predecessor, Eddard Stark erringly crosses a line the tide never meant to erode from the sands.
Cersei laughs when confronted, balks at the proposition he makes to have her and her children run from this pampered life. Stark actually seems to care about sparing their lives, and that is far from his worst mistake. It’s only when he threatens to expose the nature of Robert’s trueborn children if she does not comply, that Cersei takes action.
Turning her back on Stark, she walks away clean with a plan in the palm of her hand.
*
Her cousin Lancel is so easy to manipulate. She has such a vise-like grip on his manhood, he doesn’t know which way is up. They barter, a little too like commoners for their own good, he with information and she with her cunt.
On the day that Robert goes boar hunting, Lancel plies him with overmuch wine and her fool husband is gored within an inch of his life. On Robert’s deathbed, he names Eddard Stark Lord Protector of the Realm until her son Joffrey comes of age. They too have an objective it seems, one that does not include her. Robert bids her leave, and his final words are notarised.
When she returns to their bedchambers one last time, oaths of protection are made. Stark promises to protect the realm, and Cersei promises to protect those interests.
A fine meal of boar skewers is served in Robert's honour. He passes soon after.
*
Stark puts his trust in those who value coin above all else. He’s arrested for treason, thrown in the dungeons, and sentenced to die. Joffrey sits the Iron Throne and Cersei is made Queen Regent. A balance of power shifts once more, and there is talk of these rabid changes controlling the seasons. Winter is coming.
*
Joffrey is more like the Mad King than Cersei is willing to admit. True enough, her son reneges on his word. But then Stark is a fool for ever thinking he might serve as a man of the Night’s Watch with his brother and bastard son. If kings cannot be revered, fear is what stays a kingdom.
The axe falls, and the little dove faints. From half a world away, a wife is made a widow, children are made fatherless, and a direwolf howls in mourning.
And come the day, neither Cersei nor Eddard keeps their promises.
:: End ::
Author/Artist:
themostepotentePairings/Characters: Cersei/Rhaegar (unrequited), Cersei/Jaime, Cersei/Robert, Cersei/Eddard (imagined), Cersei/Lancel
Rating: NC-17
Words: 3,200 words
Warnings: Incest, language, violence
Prompt: • live and learn / or die and teach by example –– Cersei-centric, mentions of Cersei/Rhaegar, Cersei/Robert, Cersei/Jaime etc. I dunno, something about her life and how she sees it and things of that sort.
A/N: Originally written for the
got_exchange. Enormous thanks to xylodemon for being the rockstar that she is.“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” – Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear
[.the sea in storm.]
Cersei Lannister is born in the hottest summer betwixt two of the harshest winters. Her newborn cries were said to have been loud enough to pierce the veils that divide the Seven Hells.
“She has a voice, my precious daughter,” says Joanna.
Cersei quiets, almost stills in the swaddle of silks.
Tywin regards the tiny cunt between his daughter’s legs. “She has a voice, yes,” he replies in answer. “But she will not be heard.” He orders the maester who will serve as many as five kings to attend his daughter.
Joanna refuses the girl to Maester Pycelle, and instead, takes her twin boy at her opposite breast. “And what of our son, husband-mine?”
Tywin looks down upon his son with fatherly concern. “He will have to be voice enough for the both of them.”
Cersei’s cries begin anew, as if angered by this revelation, only to be muffled by the push of her mother’s teat into her tiny red mouth.
She is never the child who suckles first.
*
A beautiful baby, Cersei grows into a more beautiful girl. Her eyes reflect the green of all that blooms wild and strong in summer, and the gold of her long plaits mimic the stolen rays of the sun – traits once born of Lann the Clever.
Not long after she speaks her first words, she learns how to pray to The Seven. She takes a special interest in the women of the Faith and keeps the song Maiden, Mother, and Crone close to her heart. There is something to be said about powerful women who are worshipped and their acceptance or denial of prayers. The latter mirrors the cruel streak in Cersei, just as blood red and as sharply defined as the swathe of crimson on black on the head of an ancient Ghiscari.
It is this cruel streak that teaches her to love and hate in equal measures. Unsurprisingly, she feels the strongest of this push-pull at the announcement of her mother’s second pregnancy.
*
Tyrion Lannister is born the second year of the Three Year Winter. The child is misshapen, stunted, abnormal. An agonising delivery, Joanna dies from hemorrhaging, her beautiful face frozen in joyful misery. The hatred Cersei feels is almost immediate, and she vows that this loathing will remain as ever pure. As such, Cersei does not refer to her youngest sibling by name.
The nameless imp brings about a coldness that matches the chill of winter. Brings about a poison, a pox, a stain upon the Lannister household. It seeps into her skin like an infection and stirs a fever of the blood. It is this fire that tempers and teases and threatens ruination. Cersei wields this as a weapon to strengthen the ties between her and Jaime, uses these same ties as a garrote to strangle the relationship between brothers. Tyrion, however, has ways of fraying even the strongest ropes.
*
Despite the absence of her mother, the will of The Seven intervenes. In the midst of womanhood, though, she still has time for Jaime and his ingenious escapes. He plays at war and she chases butterflies, and together they seek shapes in the clouds. Where Jaime sees swords and shields, Cersei sees princes and dragons. And when Jaime reaches for her hand and asks her what gives her pause to blush, she always gives him the same answer – a lie.
*
Tywin promises her to Rhaegar Targaryen before she even begins her moon-blood. The news instills in her a quiet excitement. She develops a similar appetite for books and studies the harp in appreciation of her future crown-prince.
On royal parchment, she draws her and Prince Rhaegar on dragonback, exploring the vast skies of Westeros. When questioned by her brother, Cersei denies any such likeness and convinces Jaime that it is a picture of Jaehaerys I and Good Queen Alysanne. This ensures he remains rapt with devotion for his sister. It cannot be any other way.
Her father serves King Aerys as Hand, and the match between Cersei and Rhaegar is a good one. The betrothal is set to be announced at the Tourney at Lannisport, and when the time arrives, Cersei cannot contain her joy. She sneaks out with a friend the night before to see the maegi, in greedy possession of far too many questions an old mind can answer justly. She returns alone, frightened and shaken to the core, and once morning comes, she is just as disappointed at Aerys’s refusal of her as she is haunted by the crone’s words.
*
Tywin Lannister is no matchmaker. His insistence that Jaime be betrothed to Lysa Tully is folly. Cersei has all the cunning of the sigil of her house, and she quickly convinces her brother to join the Kingsguard that they might never be apart. She loves Jaime too much, pushes the brambles and pushes the thorns into the flesh of his paws, rather than pulling them out. A wounded lion does not wander. A wounded lion does not stray.
Tywin grows angry at the sight of his eldest son in white, but there is little he can do after oaths are sworn except grieve the loss of his own shorn mane.
*
On a summer’s day, much like the one she was born unto, Cersei captures three butterflies and imprisons them in glass. “Three more for the killing jar,” she whispers in a rage of tears.
[.a night with no moon.]
“War will be the death of us all.”
Cersei’s heard her father say this more times than she could ever count. If she had one Golden Dragon for each of the times any of her father’s bannermen have said this, she’d have a purse large enough to keep everyone compliant. And then, where would man and his eternal whore lie?
War does bring death, but so does poison, the pox, wildfire, and… love. Love is the true destroyer of men for all that it’s worn upon sleeve and vambrace.
Men are foolish when it comes to battles. They know not how to pick and choose wisely, think even less wisely when teats and cunt are in hand and mouth. Women are shrewder in matters of stratagem and counsel. In delicate yet strong hands, kingdoms can be won and kept. Even the eunuch, she thinks with a laugh, would sit the Iron Throne longer. Cocks are for little boys and foolish men to swing.
Now, not only must she suffer these fools, she’s to marry one.
*
Lyanna Stark has ruined Robert Baratheon for any other woman. A loveless union, she nevertheless tries to make it work. If nothing else, Robert is handsome. Dark-haired and bearded, strong-jawed, lean and muscled. The eldest of three born leaders. A king. And if she cannot have Rhaegar Targaryen, should she not have his vanquisher? The Seven Kingdoms are held together with the threads of loveless marriages, hers should be the knot that ties them neatly in place. She is their queen, after all. Though, a tug here and there to loosen this knot should well serve as a reminder when they forget.
*
Robert always comes to her stinking of wine and whores. He calls her every name in the Seven Kingdoms but her own. It’s the dead Stark girl’s name that wounds the most, however. Moreover, he doesn’t care. Makes no excuses or apologies. Comes to her like this time and time again when he bothers to remember theirs is the marital bed. Envy is a luxury she can hardly afford, but if she were a weaker woman, she might admit to envying the girls in Littlefinger’s harem. Any sane woman would rather be called a whore with affection than her given name with none.
*
Through some small miracle or curse, Robert puts a child in Cersei’s belly. No announcements are made and no ravens are sent. The secret is hers and hers alone, and she plays it like a chess piece, choosing to move or counter at her discretion. For now, she allows everyone their squares. Handmaids make the most worthwhile pawns, she muses.
Robert is a hypocrite of the worst kind, and it brings Cersei some pleasure in knowing two Golden Houses will darken the Baratheon dynasty. Orys Baratheon and Rhaelle Targaryen have done little more than left marks on tapestries and curses on tongues. Beyond that, their names have been declared blasphemies, told to be forgotten. In the dead of night, to his sleep-troubled mind, she whispers these names and they hover like flies over horse stink.
*
The day finally comes when Robert’s trespasses become too great an irritation to bear. He drinks too much on the days thence. Mentions one too many a whore’s name. Argues the significance of the Golden Dragon as opposed to the Silver Stag and why one has more value. Beats it to a bloody pulp like a courser past its prime. And then, he says her name. Says it as he never has before. Prefaces it with the words the only woman.
Cersei has moon tea that eve. In fine Targaryen fashion, she flips a coin in her unborn child’s honour but doesn’t pain herself with the outcome.
*
Westeros is predicated on poor life decisions. They pock the flesh of the Seven Kingdoms like the greyscale, leaving ugly and unsightly mottles behind, from the northernmost tip to the southernmost point. Nothing so crippling or even life threatening, but scars nevertheless.
Cersei has made her fair share of poor decisions, not the least of which is taking her brother into her bed. As lovers, they share their pain and their pleasure in even strides. She leaves him bloodied and he leaves her bruised, and they love and hurt in perfect circles.
Jaime is faithful to her, as faithful as the Most Devout to the Seven. He worships her wholly and pledges to take no other. She takes whom she likes and if it suits, and she uses her tears and her cunt to manipulate when it pleases. Theirs will always be a love born of jealousy and possessiveness.
He fathers her three bastard cubs, golden-maned and green-eyed, and only the Hand is fool enough to raise questions. Jon Arryn is bold in his carelessness, and he pays for it with his life. In all ways. tears are a weapon twice wielded in a woman’s arsenal, and she follows one set with another.
Before the funeral pyre burns, Cersei removes the Silver Stags at Jon Arryn’s eyes and replaces them with tarnished Groats.
A Lannister always pays their debts.
[.the anger of a gentle man.]
Robert names his next Hand from half a world away.
The Kingsroad is long and winding and dusty, and they caravan to the North on a maybe. This sort of negotiating cannot be done by raven, her fool husband explains. When she insists on staying behind, Robert strikes her. He can fuck their proposed stand of solidarity in the arse for all she cares. She’ll never be cosy with the Stark brood.
Winterfell is little more than a frozen mudhut, the Northroners just as foreign and as savage as those across the Narrow Sea. Cersei wonders how anyone can call this barren wasteland a home, or why a bastard born of these lands would wish to be doubly cursed with a name like Snow.
The feasts of the North leave her in wont of a lamprey pie and roast swan. The foods are too heavy here, made heavier by tankards of honeyed mead. Even the wines are leaden with the burdens of the Northroners. The men themselves do not stir her appetites. Filthy-mouthed and dirty-fingered with beards full enough to nest sparrows. This godsforsaken place ill suits her.
*
When he doesn’t have his hands on a serving wench, her husband speaks of an alliance, a joining of Houses. The Stark girl is comely enough, but her Joffrey deserves better. Besides, the marriage tie isn’t near as strong as the blood tie Robert proposes to substitute.
Lord Stark isn’t truly sold on the idea either. He’d just as soon turn Robert away, turn Robert out, if it wasn’t for the guilt that haunts Eddard like a shade. A shade that dies and resurrects itself the moment Robert opens his mouth to ask anything. Eddard has the grace to accept, but Cersei doesn’t envy him his talk with his wife. The thought makes her smile.
Mayhaps, she’ll whittle away what time she has left here watching him agonise over how to break the news gently. It may even be what makes this journey worthwhile.
*
She follows him through the godswood, only vaguely aware of the knotted faces carved in the barks of the trees. She shadows Lord Stark to a particular weirwood, red leaves swept and skimming the surface of a pond. This one must be aeons old. A vessel long left deserted. Eddard bends the knee and bows his head, hands white-knuckled on the hilt of his Valyrian steel blade. Not only does he pray to these ancient gods, he swears a sort of fealty to them. To uphold the justice of the North. And in return, will they see him safely to King’s Landing.
He asks – no he begs -- will they watch over his family and see his bastard son safely to the Wall. Will they quell his wife’s anger and dry his youngest’s tears. Lord Stark waits there, stills, in that very position, until the winds die down and he has his answers.
Later that day, in an abandoned tower, she allows her brother to take her from behind. She imagines Eddard’s rough hands on her teats instead, imagines his thighs flush with the backs of hers, his balls slapping sharply against her arse cheeks.
If she closes her eyes, she can feel the phantom itch of sleeping furs at her knees and the scratch of dirty nails at her hips, clawing for purchase. He has her right how he likes her; bent over, undignified, his name on her tongue, and a cunt hair away from coming.
It’s not until then that she notices the Stark child, perched in the window and watching her, that she startles. At her command, her brother makes haste to the window, his cock still free of his breeches. She watches as Jaime takes the boy in hand, instills in him a fear worthy of a father’s.
Threats should be enough. He is just a child after all. But her brother is no just punisher.
The Stark boy falls to his death, and a murder of crows mark the occasion with their shrill cries before the deafening silence.
*
The balance of power shifts again in Westeros with the appointment of Eddard Stark as Hand.
Lord Stark spends half his time in council meetings in Robert’s stead, the other half in Robert’s company reliving the glory days that are naught but ash now. The both of them possess this power over the other. Stark says what he pleases and keeps his miserable, honourable life. And Robert mostly gets what he wants through misguided brotherly love. One could argue theirs is a friendship fraught with sharp edges. But neither seems bothered at the prospect of deep cuts.
Perhaps it is better that Robert spend all his time with Stark. It lends time enough for the bruises on her cheeks to heal. For her to spend time with her pride of little lions. Though, for all the good Eddark Stark’s counsel does the realm, it does little to strengthen Robert’s relationships with Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen. In fact, Cersei thinks, she will pay Lord Stark from her own purse of gold if he can make sense of Robert’s logic to step in for his frigid brother Stannis and his cock-loving brother Renly to perpetuate the Baratheon bloodline. Albeit with a string of worthless bastards.
Foolishly, Stark decides his time is best spent forgetting what troubles he’s left behind in Winterfell, the son nipping at Death’s heels and the wife he’s practically made a widow. He uses his energies to right as many wrongs as he can before he’s stepped on one toe too many. He continues where Jon Arryn left off, nose buried in a tome left dusty and dog-eared on purpose. And just like his predecessor, Eddard Stark erringly crosses a line the tide never meant to erode from the sands.
Cersei laughs when confronted, balks at the proposition he makes to have her and her children run from this pampered life. Stark actually seems to care about sparing their lives, and that is far from his worst mistake. It’s only when he threatens to expose the nature of Robert’s trueborn children if she does not comply, that Cersei takes action.
Turning her back on Stark, she walks away clean with a plan in the palm of her hand.
*
Her cousin Lancel is so easy to manipulate. She has such a vise-like grip on his manhood, he doesn’t know which way is up. They barter, a little too like commoners for their own good, he with information and she with her cunt.
On the day that Robert goes boar hunting, Lancel plies him with overmuch wine and her fool husband is gored within an inch of his life. On Robert’s deathbed, he names Eddard Stark Lord Protector of the Realm until her son Joffrey comes of age. They too have an objective it seems, one that does not include her. Robert bids her leave, and his final words are notarised.
When she returns to their bedchambers one last time, oaths of protection are made. Stark promises to protect the realm, and Cersei promises to protect those interests.
A fine meal of boar skewers is served in Robert's honour. He passes soon after.
*
Stark puts his trust in those who value coin above all else. He’s arrested for treason, thrown in the dungeons, and sentenced to die. Joffrey sits the Iron Throne and Cersei is made Queen Regent. A balance of power shifts once more, and there is talk of these rabid changes controlling the seasons. Winter is coming.
*
Joffrey is more like the Mad King than Cersei is willing to admit. True enough, her son reneges on his word. But then Stark is a fool for ever thinking he might serve as a man of the Night’s Watch with his brother and bastard son. If kings cannot be revered, fear is what stays a kingdom.
The axe falls, and the little dove faints. From half a world away, a wife is made a widow, children are made fatherless, and a direwolf howls in mourning.
And come the day, neither Cersei nor Eddard keeps their promises.
:: End ::
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Date: 2012-07-13 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-17 11:52 pm (UTC)shiny things.
Date: 2012-07-15 01:45 am (UTC)