Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/293173.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M
  Fandom:
      A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire_-_George_R._R._Martin
  Relationship:
      Jaime_Lannister/Sansa_Stark, Cersei_Lannister/Sansa_Stark, Cersei
      Lannister/Jaime_Lannister
  Character:
      Jaime_Lannister, Cersei_Lannister, Sansa_Stark, Tywin_Lannister, Tyrion
      Lannister, Tommen_Baratheon, Petyr_Baelish, Lysa_Tully_Arryn, Brienne_of
      Tarth, Kevan_Lannister
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Dark, Sexual_Violence, Implied_Relationships,
      Sibling_Rivalry
  Stats:
      Published: 2011-12-13 Updated: 2012-04-03 Chapters: 16/? Words: 43418
****** Auribus Teneo Lupum ******
by Laine
Summary
     After Joffrey's murder and Tyrion's arrest, Sansa Stark's marriage is
     annulled. But Tywin and Cersei Lannister have no intention of letting
     her go so easily. Alternate universe. Jaime, Cersei, Sansa.
Notes
     This is an alternate universe fic; I've futzed around a lot with the
     timeline of events. In this version, Joffrey is dead, Tyrion's been
     arrested for the murder, and the Lannisters have decided to acquit
     Sansa. And there the story begins.
     "Auribus Teneo Lupum" translates to "I have the wolf by the ears".
***** Chapter 1 *****
 
 
"Have I said something amusing?"
Tywin Lannister, Warden of the West, Lord of Casterly Rock and Hand of the
King, folded his hands atop the polished wooden table, his omnipresent frown
immovable as ever. He narrowed his gold-green eyes only a fraction, kept his
posture ramrod straight as he regarded the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard,
who seemed incapable of preventing his mouth from twitching with incredulous
laughter.
Ser Jaime Lannister, resplendent in his golden armor and white cloak, tilted
his head slightly to the side, asked a question that had certainly never before
been posed to Lord Tywin: "Surely you are joking."
A pursing of the lips, a lift of silver eyebrows constituted his father's
reply. Jaime turned his gaze to his sister, seated at Lord Tywin's right. The
Queen Regent only mirrored their father's posture, green eyes shining with a
strangely triumphant glow. All he could think to do was shake his head, waiting
for one of them to abandon the jape and speak to their true purpose.
Still waiting. Still nothing. He supposed he may as well play along:
"Well, Father," he drawled, "there seems to be a small obstacle to this plan."
He used his left hand to grip the edge of his white cloak, waving it like a
banner before the table. "I don't know if you recall, but I am a member of the
Kingsguard. Nay, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. And as such-"
Cersei smacked her palm against the table, a slip of parchment beneath her
delicate hand. She wore an ornate ring of emerald and pearl on her fourth
finger; he watched the play of sunlight on the gems as she tapped her fingers
on the letter. "Read it," she spoke quietly, lips stretched taut in an
unnerving approximation of a smile.
He leaned forward, placed both the good and the gold hands upon the table- his
left index finger lightly brushed over Cersei's, and she flinched. A brief scan
of the text, and he stared hard into his sister's eyes, those perfect
reflections of his own. His words came in a threatening hiss, jaw clenched
tight: "You can't do this."
Any casual acquaintance of Cersei's would have found her expression thoroughly
non-plussed, but he knew her too well for that, knew her too well to ignore the
subtle narrowing of her eyes, the near-indiscernible widening of her smile.
"No, but the King can." She pressed a finger to the bottom of the page: there,
in wobbling script, Tommen's signature.
"So you see, " Lord Tywin clipped, "there's no hindrance at all."
Jaime felt the blood rushing to his face, curled his remaining hand into a
fist. Lord Tywin opted to ignore his son's obvious rage, continuing in as
placid a tone as ever. "I've asked very little of you, Jaime. In comparison
with your sister" - he watched Cersei puff her chest out just a bit, and the
sight caused his stomach to twist- "and even with your brother, you've been
relieved of a great deal of responsibility, thanks to the Kingsguard."
Jaime opened his mouth to protest, to ask whether there could be a greater
responsibility than defending the realm, defending the king...but to make such
claims about the Kingsguard...Gods, I'd never be able to keep a straight face.
Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest, allowing defiance to seep into his
tone. "What is the Stark girl to you, Father? The Starks have lost Winterfell.
None of them remain in the North. How valuable can her claim possibly be?"
"She's as dangerous now as ever- more, perhaps, for whatever Tyrion might have
told her." The sound of their brother's name caused Cersei to stiffen with
anger- she's taken to grinding her teeth again.
"It is your time to serve the family, Jaime. This is what I command. You'll
marry the Stark girl, put a child in her, hold Winterfell under her name."
Tywin's lips stretched into a straight line; as close to a smile as he'd ever
allow. Jaime looked at Cersei again, felt a sudden and terrifying urge to slap
the smugness from her face.
There was nothing to say, nothing to do. He reached his left hand up, removed
the white cloak roughly from his shoulders, threw it at Cersei, who cried out
when a corner of the fabric poked her in the eye.
"If I have your leave, Your Grace," he snarled, dipping his head in what might
pass for a bow. Cersei gave no response save a glare, and he watched her twist
the fabric of the cloak tightly around her hands. He found himself starting to
recall the many other times she'd had his cloak balled up in her fists; he
pivoted on his heel, hastened toward the exit.
"And Jaime," Lord Tywin called, "your brother failed to do his duty, even on
the night of their wedding. Do not think to do the same- you will get a child
on that girl. I'll not have it said that both my sons are less than men."
The lightest exhalation of breath, a sound he might have missed from anyone but
her...Cersei, laughing.
Are you truly so vengeful, sister?
***** Chapter 2 *****
She'd been a pretty thing, Sansa Stark, only weeks ago. Tall and well-developed
for her age, with lustrous hair and clear skin- she was, Cersei often thought,
fairer to look upon than the Tyrell girl that everyone fawned over so absurdly.
But this sallow creature standing before her...Cersei sighed, gestured to the
girl to step inside. "Sansa. Close the door, if you will."
The girl did as she was told. The Queen Regent noted Sansa's refusal to look
her in the eye, smiled inwardly at the observation. "To me, child."
Sansa Stark glanced about the room, wide blue eyes clouded with bemusement.
Indeed, the small chamber seemed a strange place for an audience with the Queen
Regent; just simple stone walls, a wooden chair, a mattress pallet at center.
Cersei lowered herself into the chair, and when Sansa hesitantly approached,
she gestured to the cot. "Sit. Please."
Obedient as always, the little wolf girl. Cersei folded her arms over her
knees, leaned toward the last Stark with a smile on her exquisite face. "I
expect you've been told of your upcoming wedding, little sister."
Sansa nodded, but spoke not a word. The Queen Regent glanced down at the girl's
hands- she'd bitten her nails down to the quick. She placed her own well-
manicured, jewel-laden hand on Sansa's, her grin widening when she felt the
child tremble. "I am pleased to keep you in my family, sweetling."
"Your pleasure is mine, Your Grace." So courteous, even now.
"This afternoon, you'll visit the septons, and they shall annul your first
marriage." She tilted her golden head, forced herself into the girl's line of
vision. "Do you know what it means, to annul?"
"It...it will be as though the marriage never occurred..." She ended the
sentence with a question mark, and Cersei nodded.
"Will Lord Tyrion be there?" Sansa's eyes- still lovely, though the rest of her
has faded so dreadfully- held some indecipherable blend of emotions; Cersei
thought that one of them might have been pity, and she clenched her hand on the
girl's until Sansa emitted a little chirp of discomfort.
"Tyrion will never see the light of day again." She loosened her jaw- Mother's
voice, warning me that I'll grind my teeth down to powder...- coated her voice
in honey once more.
"Now, in order to annul your marriage, we must assure the septons that he never
penetrated you."
"He did not." Sansa seemed to know what was about to transpire; a sheen of
sweat appeared on her brow, accompanied by a blush that looked far too loud
against her parchment-pale skin.
"I believe you, child. But we must be sure." Cersei rose, stepped to the foot
of the pallet. "Lie down and spread your legs."
"But...but the septas..." Her eyes darted left and right- there's no one here
to help you, little wolf.
"Never mind the septas." When Sansa pressed her knees together, Cersei took one
kneecap in each hand, roughly separating her thighs. "If the Queen Regent
vouchsafes your maidenhood, who will dare say otherwise?" The girl shivered as
Cersei slipped a hand beneath her skirts, tugging her smallclothes down around
her ankles.
"Now, Sansa, tell me. Are you a horsewoman?"
"I-" She sputtered, and her fear was delicious. "I ride sidesaddle, Your
Grace."
"Of course. As all proper ladies do." Slim fingers moved over the soft hair
that sheathed Sansa's sex. "Then there should be blood...that is, if you are a
maiden."
She glanced up at the Stark girl, meeting blue eyes with green. A lift of
golden eyebrows, daring the girl to object, to protest...but only silence.
Silence punctuated with Sansa's breathing, tighter and more ragged with each
inhale.
Cersei prodded the girl's slit- tight, tight, tight. Her finger tip pushed into
the warm flesh...she continued on, slipping in to her knuckle- the girl jerked,
whined, but Cersei's other hand flat on her abdomen stilled her movement. A
strand of coarse red hair caught on the filigree ring she wore- her smile
widening, Cersei pushed the rest of her finger, ring and all, into Sansa. A
well-filed nail scraped at the girl's inner wall; she screamed lightly, subdued
only by a knife-sharp glare from the Queen Regent.
"Don't be so craven, you little fool," she hissed, plunging another finger in
after the first. "This isn't anything in comparison to the feel of a man inside
you." The feel of Jaime inside you...She caught her breath a bit at that, hoped
that the girl wouldn't see the color rising in her cheeks.
Perhaps it was not worth it, this scheme she and Father had concocted. Her
nipples still grew hard when she thought of that mad coupling in the sept, his
cock inside her, her thighs sticky with moon blood and Jaime, her Jaime...
But she could not forgive the defiance, the disrespect, the gall. She was the
Regent, not him...he believed himself beyond her influence, beyond her
power...He'll see. They all will see.
A sharp shriek, muffled by a hand over the mouth- lost in her own thoughts,
Cersei hadn't realized that she'd been fucking Sansa mercilessly with her
fingers. She pulled the digits out of the girl's body, frowned when she noticed
the dark blood crusted in the contours of her rings. A sigh- she supposed she'd
have to clean them herself.
"There's a basin in the cupboard- take care to wash yourself." Cersei stood,
smoothed her clean hand over the folds of her satin gown.
She didn't want to look the girl in the eye, began to shrink away toward the
door; but a lion does not run. The naked, animal hurt in Sansa's eyes...Cersei
felt the sudden compulsion to gather the child in her arms, smooth her hand
over the red curls and beg her pardon.
When did you grow so weak?
Instead, the Queen Regent fixed the girl with a disapproving stare. "Cry, if
you must, but you'll thank me for it on your wedding night." She pushed the
door open with her right hand; the blood on her fingertips left markings on the
wood. "The sept, this afternoon."
Sansa opened her mouth, as though about to speak- but Cersei swept from the
room, the door clanging shut behind her.
***** Chapter 3 *****
What she lacked in patience, Cersei more than made up for in her ability to
focus. Jaime recalled the games they'd play as children at Casterly Rock, when
they'd look into each other's eyes and try not to blink first. He'd never won.
All of that intense, unwavering concentration, now centered on Sansa Stark.
Jaime lowered his head to take a sip of wine, using the opportunity to glance
at the quiet girl seated beside him. Sansa, who had once worked so fastidiously
to plait her hair in the intricate coils that Cersei had made popular, wore her
tresses unbound, hanging in a heavy sheet to the middle of her back. Her
clothing was simple, determinedly free of adornment. In the plain robe, with
the loose hair and impossibly pale face, she looked for all the world like an
acolyte of the Seven Sisters. He flicked his eyes over to Cersei on his other
side- she continued to glower at the Stark girl, her tongue working in her
cheek, raking her gaze over Sansa's face, hair and body. A curious form of
rebellion...but subtle. Elegant, even.
Though the meal had nearly reached its end, Sansa's dish remained entirely
untouched. The girl sat straight in her chair, hands folded in her lap, not
even troubling to push her fork around the plate. When the servants came round
to clear the table, they looked at Sansa quizzically; she gestured to one to
remove the dish. But Cersei's voice, laden with an icy chill, interrupted:
"Leave it there." Sansa blinked up, glanced at the Queen Regent, then stared
back down again. Cersei addressed her next words to the girl, a dangerous edge
hidden beneath the sweetness of tone. "Sansa, sweetling. You haven't touched a
bite."
"I'm not hungry, Your Grace." She flexed her fingers under the table, pointedly
refusing to meet the Queen's eyes again. Oh, good girl, he found himself
thinking, growing rather impressed with this passive defiance.
"But you never broke your fast this morning, nor at midday meal." Cersei
pressed her lips together, looked to Lord Tywin, as though expecting him to
come to her aid. Their father, however, remained stone-faced and silent. That's
right. Reap what you sow, Your Grace.
She looked away from Lord Tywin, focused on Sansa once again. "You've not eaten
all day."
"Nor yesterday, either," Sansa murmured. Jaime snorted into his wine glass,
only to be rewarded by the sharp collision of Cersei's heel on his shin.
"Very well, then." The Queen Regent rose, and the courtiers followed suit. She
looked to Ser Meryn, standing by the entrance. "Ser, please remain here with
Lady Stark. She's not to move from the table until she eats something.
Anything."
Gods, this is humiliating. He wondered whether he ought to say something,
whether, as Sansa's betrothed, he had any ability to overrule the Regent's
command. Were he still the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, he could at least
prevent Ser Meryn from taking part...
A hard look from his father, and Jaime rose to his feet, galled by his own
obedience. Before stepping away from the table, he caught a quick look at
Sansa's face. He'd expected redness in the cheeks, tears in the eyes- but she
remained statue-still, blue eyes trained on her folded hands. He continued to
watch her as he moved toward the door, waiting for her to look up- wanted to
see if there was fire behind that remarkably blank stare- when she failed to do
so, he found himself vaguely disappointed.
===============================================================================
Jaime stalked out of the White Tower, bristling with pique. The knights of the
Kingsguard had taken the news of his severance in stride; realizing how little
he'd be missed upset him more than he would have expected. I was never meant
for leadership.
Cersei had ordered chambers prepared for him on the opposite end of the castle
from her own. She thinks she's punishing me. And maybe she is.
Passing the Great Hall en route to his rooms, he stole a peek inside and very
nearly laughed at the sight: Sansa Stark asleep, head buried in folded arms on
the tabletop. The dish of food completely unaltered, Ser Meryn tapping his foot
and whistling ...the tableau should have been hilarious. And yet there was
something profoundly sad about this fragile woman-child, jaw stubbornly set
even as she slept.
He stepped into the hall- Ser Meryn rose, clearly out of habit. "Lord C- Lord
Lannister."
Jaime greeted the knight with a curt nod before crossing to the girl at the
table. He placed his left hand on her shoulder, shook her gently. "My lady."
Sansa tilted her head, eyes barely open as she replied, "I haven't moved from
the table. Tell him, Ser Meryn. You may go to Her Grace, let her know that I
have not moved."
"I see that." A smile started to pull at his lips, but he knew that she'd
interpret it as mockery. Instead, he moved his hand to her upper back, nudged
her a bit. "Go on. Stand up."
He watched her plant her feet to the floor, but her eyes trailed over the
muscles in his arm and, surely realizing that he could overpower her easily,
she soon abandoned the resistance and obeyed.
Once she drew herself fully upright, Jaime turned to Ser Meryn. "You may inform
my sister that I'll be escorting Lady Stark back to her chambers."
"But...but the Queen Regent told me-"
"What do your manners tell you, ser?" Ser Meryn looked about to protest again,
but Jaime cut him off before he could begin: "This girl is no scullery whelp,
but a high-born lady. She will be treated with the appropriate dignity. If my
sister has anything to say about it, tell her to speak to me."
He offered the Stark girl his arm; she glanced back and forth between him and
the table, as though deliberating her next move, but eventually allowed him to
lead her from the hall.
"Starving yourself in protest, then?" He asked once they started to proceed
down the corridor. She turned her head to face him, and he felt quite satisfied
by the challenge in her expression.
"Will you command me to cease?"
"Not at all, my lady." She was surprised by that- a series of quick blinks
before she looked away. "In all honesty, I quite admire your fortitude."
She opened her mouth, clearly unsure whether to thank him for the praise.
Eventually, she settled on an acknowledging nod, and he continued:
"But starvation...it is an ugly way to die."
He watched her face in the dim candlelight, expression wavering between
curiosity and the desire to appear disinterested. She did respond, however, in
a slightly higher pitch than usual:
"How do you mean?"
Jaime steered her into a brightly lit corner just outside her bedroom door. He
took one of her hands in his good one, lifted it up to the light. "Your nails
are weakening already," he observed, brushing the tip of his thumb over the
brittle surface. "That will continue, until they eventually fall off
altogether." He proceeded to the top of her hand, where the dry skin began to
scale. "Your skin will be a disaster. It will change in color, then shrivel and
crack until movement is too painful to bear."
He stole a glance at her face, found her appropriately stricken. He moved along
to her hair, twisting an auburn lock around his index finger. "Your hair will
grow thin, and then start to shed- you'll be bald as Varys by the end." When he
gripped her shoulders with both the real and false hands, she gave a little
gasp of surprise. "You'll become sick, sicker than you've ever been in your
life. If you can pass water, it will be brown, maybe even black. Your muscles
will fail, until even breathing becomes too difficult. And then you'll
just...slip away."
It required real effort to keep from laughing at her slack jaw and wide eyes,
but he restrained himself all the same.
"You've seen this happen?"
He did laugh a bit at that, a cynical sniff. "I've been to war, girl. What do
you think?" He tilted his golden head, bent his knees to look her in the eye.
"Now tell me. Is that any way for a wolf to die?"
Those Tully eyes flashed with anger- ah, there's the fire- and she roughly
shunted his hands from her shoulders. "If you are trying to make me speak
treason-"
He just watched, watched until her words failed, watched until the spark of
rage gave way to a wistful sort of melancholy, tinged with fear. She took
several small steps backward until she made contact with her bedroom door.
"I...I beg your pardon, my lord. I spoke too harshly..."
"Not at all." He stepped toward her and took her hand. Her body stiffened, but
she did not resist as he brushed his lips over her knuckles. "Sleep well, my
lady."
He felt her eyes on the back of his head, watching as he retreated down the
corridor, but he did not look back...he felt he was doing her a kindness.
===============================================================================
When he arrived in the Great Hall the next morning, Jaime found his betrothed
delicately nibbling along the edge of a shortbread, several cherry pits on the
dish in front of her.
***** Chapter 4 *****
I couldn't even have a new dress.
The thought rankled her with its shallow stupidity, but Sansa clung to it
nonetheless as she stood stock-still before the looking glass, allowing the
seamstress to finish the necessary alterations. One sleeve stubbornly persisted
on sliding from Sansa's shoulders; it was there that she found the spot.
Very tiny, almost inperceptible...but there it was, dark against the white
fabric of the gown- a splotch of Arbor red, surely put there by some clumsy
reveler at her last wedding. The stain had darkened into a rusty sort of brown,
nearly the color of Sansa's hair. And she could not stop looking at it.
She heard the seamstress behind her give a little sigh of frustration. I cannot
blame her, really...She'd shed enough weight in the weeks since her first
marriage to render the fitting a tedious task, although her decision to abandon
the hunger protest had brought much of the roundness back to her face. Even
so...when she tilted her head up to look in the mirror, she only noticed the
pallid skin, limp hair, chapped lips. It mattered not what the seamstress did;
she looked like a frail child playing at weddings in her mother's clothing. She
quickly rejected that line of thought- my eyes are red enough as it is.
The women sent to style her hair faced a task even more arduous. The Queen
Regent dispatched her own personal cosmetic maids to tend to Sansa on the day
of her wedding. They descended upon her, plaiting her hair and pinning it up in
the southron fashion- or, at least, they attempted to do so. A memory sprung
unbidden into Sansa's head- she and Arya in Winterfell, Lady Catelyn's maids
working to make them presentable for the arrival of the royal family. She, of
course, had submitted willingly, but her sister...What would Arya do, were she
here? She'd surely scratch and squirm and pummel until released...considering
such behavior a tad extreme, Sansa opted instead to toss her hair, flinging the
pins about the room with each shake. The maids pulled at the auburn locks,
implored her to hold still- she heard one of Cersei's ladies-in-waiting- one of
those fool Tyrells, perhaps- asking where her courtesies had gone. I've no
idea. And for the first time, I honestly don't care.
Eventually tiring of the maids' hapless efforts to keep her from moving, Sansa
spoke crisply: "Leave it down." They demurred, weaving strands of silver into
the loose curls. A small victory, but Sansa smiled all the same.
A creak of door hinges, and she found herself in the company of both the Queen
and Queen Regent. Margaery, a rosy vision in a violet gown, stepped tentatively
toward Sansa, a sickeningly disingenuous smile on her lovely face. "Sansa. You
look beautiful," she sighed, and Sansa felt suddenly torn between the urge to
laugh over the other girl's blatant lie and the urge to shove her lissome body
into the wall. I believed you my friend...what a fool I was. Until the day she
died, Sansa would never forgive the Tyrells for their reticence during the
aftermath of Joffrey's death. They spoke not a word for me. Were it up to them,
I'd be in that cell with Tyrion.
The Queen Regent, however, did not share her good-daughter's opinion of Sansa's
appearance. She crossed to the girl in white, lips pursed tight. A dangerous
flicker of green eyes toward the maidservants, and she spoke in a low, nearly
menacing tone: "This is the best you could do?" Sansa glanced down at the
fabric Cersei held, and her stomach twisted; the grey-and-white Stark cloak, in
Lannister arms. Her fingers itched, but she restrained herself from snatching
the cloak away, instead twisting her hands in the skirt of her gown.
Cersei surveyed the other women in the room before issuing a simple command:
"Leave us." Sansa watched Margaery push her tongue into her cheek, obviously
wondering whether to obey, but she followed her cousins into the antechamber.
While observing the cloak in Cersei's hands, Sansa had noticed the jewelry the
other woman wore; the silver filigree ring, freshly polished, on her right
index finger. A chill crept up her back, but she forced herself to meet the
Queen Regent's eyes.
Cersei Lannister stepped closer, until she stood barely a finger-length from
Sansa. The girl anticipated a slap, a shout, perhaps something worse...but
Cersei only stared, beautiful emerald eyes unblinking. Her eyes, so like her
brother's...in the darkness of her bedchamber, Sansa had tried to think, tried
to imagine what it would be like, being bedded by Jaime Lannister. She dared
not hope that he'd show the same mercy as his brother- I'd never be so
fortunate. But whenever she pictured his hands- hand, rather- on her, pictured
him atop her in the dark, his face morphed into Cersei's- only a small
adjustment- and she felt ill again.
"Turn around." Sansa balked, but eventually pivoted to face the mirror. Cersei
tugged at the neckline of the gown until the fabric rested securely on her
shoulders. Her hands moved down to the back of the bodice, where she folded the
material several times before cinching it tight with a grey satin sash. All the
activity quick and efficient, performed by capable hands...Sansa felt her inner
muscles clench, forced her face to remain still.
Cersei combed her fingers through the unbound waves of auburn. "Your hair..."
She bit her lip. "I suppose it isn't inappropriate for a maiden bride to wear
her hair loose." She crossed to a small table in the corner, returning with a
tiny glass pot in her hand. A lift of the lid revealed a rosy pigment, which
Cersei dabbed over the dry surface of Sansa's lips. She trailed a thumb over
the girl's cheekbone, her voice barely above a whisper. "My brother is very
dear to me, Sansa. If I learn that you've misbehaved, I shall have to become
very angry with you." Both smooth, white hands now cupped the sides of Sansa's
face. "You'll be a good girl, will you not?"
Arya would spit in her face and run. But Sansa, even while testing the limits
of her own defiance, would never be Arya. So she nodded, her head growing
heavier with each bob. "Your Grace."
The Queen smiled, and Sansa thought that she'd never seen anything so beautiful
and terrible in all her life. "You're so pale, sweetling..." she murmured.
Before Sansa could reply, she cried out in painful surprise; Cersei had taken
each cheek between her thumb and forefinger, pinching until bright splotches of
red appeared on Sansa's face.
Finally, Cersei moved behind Sansa and draped the cloak over her shoulders. The
girl stiffened at the feel of the Queen's cold metal rings against her
collarbone, tensed even farther when Cersei's lips brushed over her temple. "No
tears, now." Sansa hadn't any intention of crying, but the suggestion caused a
hard knot to form in her throat. When the Queen steered her into the
antechamber to greet the ladies of her train, Sansa felt herself nearly choke
on the mucus building in her nose and throat. I will choke on it before I let
her see me cry again.
===============================================================================
King Tommen I of House Baratheon awaited them outside the sept. Sansa couldn't
help but smile at the plump, jovial boy, clad in Lannister crimson. Margaery
bent her knees to kiss her husband atop his golden curls before filing into the
sept, her ladies close behind her. Cersei waited until the last to enter
through the doors, a hard stare and a lift of one eyebrow her only farewell.
"It's all strange, isn't it, Sansa?" Tommen chirped after she settled her hand
into the crook of his arm.
"What is strange, Your Grace?"
"Well, first you were to be my sister, then Joffrey married Margaery instead.
Then you were my aunt, but Uncle Tyrion went away. And then you were just
Sansa...and now you're my aunt again."
The simple statement of the facts affected her more than she would have
imagined. The hot tears pushed against her eyes, but she stretched her face
into a forced smile instead. "I suppose that's one of the strange things about
it, Your Grace."
The enormous doors opened again, and she and Tommen began their processional to
the front of the sept. She looked down and let her eyes travel to the bottom of
her right sleeve. In the cool afternoon light, the wine splotch could almost
pass for blood.
***** Chapter 5 *****
After two decades of life at court, Jaime Lannister had attended more weddings
than any one person should ever have to endure. Perhaps it was the knowledge
that he, as a member of the Kingsguard, would never have to take part in one of
his own, but he'd always found the pomp and ceremony of it all fairly
ridiculous. The delicate maiden bride, the exchanging of the cloaks, the
illusion that any of it signified lasting happiness- Cersei's wedding was as
beautiful as could be, and look what came of that.
The memory remained fresh in his mind's eye: his golden, radiant, perfect
sister, clinging to Robert Baratheon's arm, a light in her eyes that should
belong only to him. When she found Jaime in the crowd, he let himself feel just
a bit satisfied at the pull of a frown at her lips, the sheen wearing off of
her happiness. But it proved little consolation. He'd gathered around her with
the other men for the bedding ceremony, reaching her first and removing the
Baratheon cloak from her shoulders. He rested his hand on her brilliant hair,
she leaned into his touch; a silent apology. But when the courtiers began to
unlace her dress, jesting and cheering, he stepped away, returned to his cups.
He spent the night in the stables, vomiting in a trough and trying not to
imagine Cersei in that idiot oaf's arms.
She'd come back to him, of course- she always had, and he thought she always
would...he caught a glimpse of her in peripheral vision, a flash of red and
gold. He wanted to look her in the eye, to discover whether she shared any of
the pain he'd suffered, all those years ago, but the prospect of receiving only
her superior, self-satisfied smile proved too troubling to chance.
Instead, he let his gaze wander to the far end of the sept- perhaps a more
damning mistake, for he immediately locked eyes with Brienne, who leaned
against the wall by the door. He'd never in his life encountered an expression
of such powerful contempt- and considering the looks the Kingslayer had
received from Ned Stark, Barristan Selmy, his own father- no small feat, to be
sure. He had very pointedly avoided the Maid of Tarth since the announcement of
his betrothal- he knew how she would look at him, knew what she would say. And
he knew that she was right.
He should have refused. He should have stood firm, faced banishment or treason
charges with his head held aloft. Jaime knew this, and yet he weakened,
acquiesced just as he had when Lord Tywin had ordered him to lie to Tyrion
about the crofter's daughter. Perhaps it is not too late...if I stand here
before them all and tell them that I will not...
But then he watched Sansa step down the aisle on Tommen's arm. Catelyn Tully
Stark in miniature-although rather prettier, if he recalled correctly. I swore
I'd see you safe. If he rejected the marriage, what would become of the last of
the Starks? He'd seen the predatory gleam in Cersei's eye when she looked at
the girl; she'd never let her go in peace. And Lord Tywin- she's as dangerous
now as ever- had proven his willingness to kill children before. He'd surely
make no exception for Sansa Stark.
This is all I can do.
He scarcely heard the septon's words; the sounds converged in his ears, melding
into a soft buzz. Sansa Stark never looked at him, her cerulean gaze firmly
fixed on the bottom of her right sleeve. A few moments of silence and a pointed
nod from the septon cued him to remove his cloak- his left hand fumbled at the
clasp...although he couldn't see her, couldn't hear her, he could feel Cersei
snickering.
Jaime stepped behind Sansa and brushed her hair over one shoulder. The direwolf
stitched into the fabric of her cloak had its teeth bared in a vicious snarl-
he wondered vaguely whether Sansa had sewn it herself. Reaching over her
collarbone, he was surprised- and a little embarrassed- to discover that she'd
already loosened the ties on her cloak, requiring him only to slip the heavy
fabric off her shoulders and drape the Lannister cloak over her instead. He
kissed her on one cheek, then the other, then briefly on her mouth. All he
registered was the dryness of her lips and the fact that she kept her eyes wide
open.
The feast passed quickly, which he considered a mercy. The Arbor wine flowed
readily; Cersei drank, Jaime drank, Tywin watched them both with disapproval-
like usual.
While not exactly rude, Sansa proved rather disinclined to engage in
conversation with any of the adults at the table. She spoke a little with Queen
Margaery, exchanged one or two words with Cersei (none of which Jaime was able
to overhear), and spent the rest of the feast chatting with Tommen about the
kittens he wished to acquire.
When the King retired for bed, Sansa retreated into herself once again. Jaime
took a glance into her goblet, found it full of the honeyed milk Tommen had
been drinking. He shook his head, gestured to a servant to replace it with
wine. She started to protest- "I don't care for the taste of wine."
"You won't be drinking it for the taste, my lady wife," Jaime replied. When she
made no motion to lift the glass, he nudged it toward the edge of the table.
"Please."
She looked at him then, and he was startled to find her gaze nearly as intense
and unfaltering as Cersei's. Nothing remained of the dainty little girl-child
who'd followed her golden prince with lowered lashes and soft smiles. Even the
broken, quivering thing who'd awaited her fate with tears and trembling hands
after Joffrey's murder...even she was nowhere to be found. The girl who sat
before him now was a remote, wintry creature with all the stubborn abandon of
one who no longer cared whether she lived or died.
And Jaime Lannister knew, knew what it was not to fear death- not out of
courage, but out of utter hopelessness. But Sansa Stark was too young for that,
too young to be so blank, so disenchanted. In spite of it all, she should care.
He pressed her to drink one glass, then another, until she began to sway in her
seat, the red wine staining her lips. He wished then to do as Tyrion had done
and refuse the bedding ceremony- but it was too late for that.
The women surrounded him, Cersei at the front. She slipped her hands under his
doublet, undid the clasps- her fingertips brushed over his chest, and he felt
himself begin to harden. He reached his left hand to touch her hair- but she
sidestepped and moved away from him, leaving the other ladies of the court to
take care of the rest.
A quick glance over to Sansa: she calmly submitted to the removal of her
clothing, her lips firmly pressed together, her eyes blinking in rhythm. As was
customary with younger brides, she'd been stripped only to her smallclothes. He
quickly took inventory of her garments- a light linen slip over drawers of the
same material. Simple, white and absurdly juvenile, but he found the picture
pleasant all the same.
Before pulling the doors to Jaime's bedchamber closed, Lord Tywin hissed in his
son's ear: "I'll have my men listening out here all night. Either that girl
will have to be a very good actress, or you will take her maidenhead." Jaime
barely had time to be appalled before the doors slammed shut, leaving him alone
with his child bride.
===============================================================================
To her credit, Sansa seemed rather composed for a newly-flowered girl about to
lose her maidenhood. She made no effort to retreat beneath his bedlinens, but
instead propped herself on the pillows, hands in her lap, fussing a bit with a
loose sliver of skin at her cuticle. The fidgeting gave her away, and he
quickly noticed the twitch forming in her right cheek, the uneven patterns of
her breath.
Jaime seated himself on the end of the bed. He deliberated whether to drape a
coverlet over his lap, but eventually decided against it. He felt he had to say
something to her, even something as idiotic as what he eventually blurted out:
"Are you afraid, Sansa?"
She looked up from her hands. "I..." A soft shrug, a shake of russet hair. "I
don't know, my lord." Then a blink of those blue eyes, followed by a steely
stare. "Have I reason to be?"
He could not help laughing at that, but felt immediately chastised by the pang
of hurt shadowing her face. He responded in as gentle a tone as he could
manage: "I don't believe so. No." He turned his shoulders to face her, extended
his left hand. "Come."
Sansa slid from the pillows and stood before him, slipping her notably small
hand into his. He watched her glance quickly down at his lap, then back up
again. He pulled just a bit, and she stepped forward, close enough that several
long strands of auburn hair brushed his shoulder.
And then, to his surprise, she reached down and took his right wrist in her
hand. She stroked her fingers over the seam where his flesh made contact with
the gold- he felt himself begin to shiver. Her voice, quiet and deliberate:
"Does it hurt you?"
"No." He could have left it at that, but instead he elaborated: "I forget,
sometimes, that it's gone...I'll think that I feel my fingers tingling."
He hesitated before looking up, unsure whether he could abide pity from this
girl. But she only nodded, her eyes impenetrable as ever.
Sansa looked back down at the golden hand before drawing his arm around her leg
and placing the metal on the back of her knee. He watched, weirdly mesmerised,
as she shuddered. Her voice, high and quiet: "It's cold."
Looking down to his left, Jaime realized how tightly he'd been clinging to
Sansa's hand- his knuckles went white. He released her, let his fingertips
trail down her bare leg before settling his palm on her thigh.
Cersei and I were about this age, when we lay together for the first time. He
hadn't been able to last long- just three thrusts, maybe four, before he
spurted his seed inside his sister. She'd only smiled, guided his hand down to
rub her in the spot she liked until she reached her own climax. But then, he
and Cersei had spent years playing together, touching each other- he couldn't
expect the confidence of a teenage Cersei from the solemn little waif he'd just
married.
And so he moved slowly, carefully. He lowered her onto his knee- she jumped a
little when her leg made contact with the hardness between his legs. Jaime
tried to use his imagination, tried to think how a girl this age would want to
be kissed. What did you dream about when you sang your songs, Sansa Stark? He
lifted his left hand and tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear before
drawing her face close to his. "Have you ever been kissed, Sansa? Truly
kissed?"
Something flickered in her eyes, something sharp and bright that he did not
understand. Her hand rested on his back, her answer one clear, determined
syllable: "Yes."
She didn't resist when he pressed his closed lips to hers, and when he opened
his mouth, she followed suit. Jaime gathered the hem of her slip in his left
hand and made a clumsy attempt to pull it over her shoulders. When she relieved
him of the duty and removed the garment herself, he tried to quickly dismiss
the bruising of his pride.
He shifted to place her on the bed, let himself register the sight of her,
naked from the waist up. Still a girl, to be sure, and her brief foray into
self-inflicted starvation did nothing to enhance her shape. But she was
budding; she'd be as tall as Cersei soon, perhaps taller, with a woman's
curves. In a sudden flash of madness, he wished to ask her if Tyrion had gotten
this far, if he had touched her at all...but the very idea was petty and cruel
enough to upset his stomach.
He propped himself up on his right arm, leaning over to kiss the hollow of her
throat, the thumb of his good hand brushing over her pert nipples. She released
a breathy little sigh, and he felt a rush of blood to his cock.
But when he moved his hand to her thighs and attempted to nudge them open, she
snapped them shut with such force that the sound of the clap reached the men
outside the door, who responded with a string of off-color jests and jeers.
He thought on what his father had said, wondered if it might be worthwhile to
tell Sansa to feign her screams and moans...but as he looked at her splayed on
his bed, red hair against white skin, a soft blush creeping into her cheeks as
he touched her... When he met her eyes again, he saw a hint of something
beneath the apprehension and cool reserve that perhaps resembled desire- or
else you're just a middle-aged fool, desperately wanting a pretty young girl to
find you appealing.
Jaime tried again to part her legs, only to meet the same resistance. It wasn't
unusual for a maiden to fear the act of bedding, but surely she understood,
surely she knew this was what he- what everyone- expected?
He leaned forward to kiss her again. "Sansa..." he whispered, brushing his
finger over the outline of her hip. "Best to just have it done."
A pause, as she considered this. She bit her lip, furrowed her brow, and
eventually tucked her chin into her chest in a strange sort of nod. Before he
could touch her again, she lifted her own hips off of the bed, reaching down to
pull the ties of her drawers and remove them. Then she parted her knees,
placing her feet flat on the mattress.
It was easier than Jaime expected, lying with a woman- a girl - who was not
Cersei. Although he knew himself capable of becoming aroused by other women, he
somehow believed that acting on those urges would be pointless, since nothing
could compare to what he had with his sister. And it was true- his experiences
with his twin, that ultimate joining of two into one, were wholly singular. But
Sansa's body was soft and pliant, and when he finally eased a finger into her,
he found her as tight and hot as Cersei had ever been.
Not nearly wet enough, though. A part of him wanted to ignore it, to take her
anyway and have it over with. But he remembered the primal fear in her eyes
when he'd first tried to part her legs- I don't want to hurt her any more than
I must. He placed another finger on the nub just above her opening, where
Cersei had always loved to be touched, and moved in soft, quick circles. She
squirmed, but he felt encouraged by her little bird-like chirps.
Still not quite there. The next thought that came to him initially seemed
absurd, far too intimate for anyone but Cersei- but the further stiffening of
his cock that accompanied the idea propelled him to act on it.
Jaime kissed her between her legs, sliding his tongue over her folds and into
her cunt. He laughed when he felt Sansa's foot on his back and heard the sharp
gasp of astonishment. Her sounds, quiet and timid as they were, obviously
bespoke her pleasure- as did the clenching of her fist in his hair. He soon
felt her grow slick with her own wetness; he slipped his tongue out and moved
to gently suck the little button above her slit, and the high-pitched cry that
resulted caused the revelers in the hall to howl with laughter.
He thought that he could perhaps make her come first- she might experience less
pain with her body limp from release. But no; her muscles still held far too
much tension, she still punctuated every whimper with a vigilant lift of her
shoulders, those damnably-alert blue eyes refused to flutter shut. Instead, he
lightly kissed up her body- her hipbone, her belly, between her breasts. The
last kiss fell on her forehead as he positioned her knees on either side of his
hips and slowly pressed the tip of his cock into her.
He had absolutely every intention of going slowly, moving in bit by bit, but he
had his weight braced on the golden hand, still moist with the sweat from both
their bodies- he lost his balance, nearly falling atop her, and the forward
movement pushed him in to the hilt.
She screamed- of course she screamed- but he barely heard her over his own
throaty groan as the wet tightness enveloped him. The expected panic flashed in
her eyes- at least there are no tears. Jaime lifted his hips until only the tip
of him remained inside her, leaning forward to kiss her brow again. Lips
trailed down to her temple, and he found himself mouthing words of apology
against her skin. He eased his cock into her again, and her only sounds came
from her rising breath.
And yet the girl refused to close her eyes. While he remained aroused by the
beauty and willingness of her firm young body, he could not help but feel
unpleasantly distracted. The reason fell upon him with the weight of stones;
her eyes were Catelyn Stark's eyes, silently condemning him for failing to
bring her daughter home. With each thrust, each light sigh from Sansa, all he
heard, all he saw in her beautiful blue gaze: Oathbreaker, Oathbreaker.
He withdrew from her, sat up on his heels. "On your hands and knees," he
rasped, his throat thick with both shame and want. She blinked rapidly, but did
as she was told. He wrapped his right arm around her waist- she gasped at the
pressure of his metal hand against the delicate skin- and dipped the left hand
between her legs to rub her again.
The sounds she made were so like Cersei's- he constantly had to remind himself
to move slowly, lest he lapse into the fast, desperate rhythm he and his sister
preferred. Eventually, he buried his face in her thick curtain of ruby-dark
hair, breathed her fragrance, the scent that was entirely Sansa's own. She
smelled herbal, floral, distinctly southron- but then there was something
beneath, something he only remembered from the woods outside Winterfell- a
crisp, wild fragrance that belonged wholly to the North. Still the little wolf
girl, whatever they've done to you.
And then, ridiculously, a wave of possibility- there's still time, save Brienne
I'm all that's left to care, I can help you I can help you and protect you and
take root in you before they cut you down...
Jaime came with a low, loud moan, emptying himself in her and letting his
thoughts scatter away before he had time to reflect on how foolish they were.
Sansa dropped her body forward, resting their weight on her forearms. He
continued to lean over her, pressing warm kisses to each bump in her spine. At
the last, he nestled his face into the join of her neck and collarbone- he
thought he may have said her name, just a light exhalation of breath. She did
not turn her head, but he felt a light pressure on his left hand; her littlest
finger, resting atop his knuckles.
When he did finally move away from Sansa, allowing the girl to curl into a ball
on her side, he glanced down at the sheets, where the joining of their bodies
had been. He heaved a deep sigh of relief to find them clean.
***** Chapter 6 *****
It would be so easy.
The window faced east; while the other side of the castle would still be in
darkness, the earliest light of morning trickled into the bedchamber, painting
the walls in streaks of orange and gold. Lady Sansa Lannister blinked the crust
of sleep from her eyes, squinting against the sudden brightness. The sunlight
found a focal point on a dagger mounted on the wall. Sansa let her gaze wander
over the intricate carving of the scabbard, the ornate bracket that affixed the
weapon to the stones. The knife is loose in the scabbard- I could pull it out
quick as lightning.Of course, she'd have to slip from the bed and cross the
floor to reach it- I can be quiet. I'm very good at being quiet.
She shifted a bit beneath the coverlet until she faced the man lying beside
her. Jaime Lannister-my husband-looked younger in sleep, his beautiful face
peaceful, his fair hair and beard shining in the dawn. Sansa's eyes trailed
down to his exposed neck- there it is.Light as could be, she brushed her
fingertip over the large vein. One quick, clean cut, and that would be the
end.She closed her eyes and imagined it: her white skin coated in blood of
Lannister scarlet, the breath exiting his body, Cersei's horror-stricken face,
coming upon the lifeless form of her golden twin...And me? Oh, they'd hunt me
down, likely burn me alive as the Mad King would, but it would be an honorable
death, blood will have paid for blood...
A visceral shudder shook her body as the images flashed through her mind. She
gave a little squeak of surprise when Jaime responded to the movement, drawing
her closer until her head rested just below his chin. He murmured something
into her hair- a soft, sibilant sound that may have been a name, perhaps her
own. Sansa lay still, barely daring to breathe, but she couldn't restrain a
little quiver when he rested his left hand on her bare breast. In spite of the
uncomfortable aching between her legs, she felt rather flushed when she
recalled the events of the night before.
He had tried to be gentle, that much she understood. She even felt the urge to
giggle when she recalled the feeling of his lips and tongue on her sex, when
she recalled the warm tingling in her lower belly. But while he may have taken
her maidenhead as carefully as he could, Sansa felt no tenderness toward this
man to whom she'd been given. She looked back at the knife, then again at
Jaime's still face. He looked enough like Joffrey, looked more than enough like
Cersei, that she could still summon up the proper contempt.
And yet she knew that she would never do it. The knowledge settled upon her
like a cold sheen of sweat, and her dry mouth filled with a bitter-sour tang-
the taste of defeat. She'd felt this before, only days ago, when she realized
that the Lannisters would never relinquish their hold on her. She may have
escaped Joffrey, been released from Tyrion, but now they were just passing her
off to another of their own, tasking him with the responsibility of filling her
womb with a golden-haired, green-eyed brat, shackling her to them until the day
she died. And when she considered everything, absolutely confirmed that there
was no one left in the world to care for her well-being, the answer seemed
laughably simple.
She made the attempt the next day: a bad half-hour standing on the roof of a
tower, one hand clinging to the windowframe, one foot hovering over the edge.
The sun glinted off of the stony ledge- she suddenly remembered Bran, the way
he would leap from rooftop to rooftop as though carried aloft by the wind. His
balance, so unerring that he could walk a ridgepole from one end to the other
without so much as a waver. She wondered how many steps she could manage before
tumbling down- two, maybe three? And then she looked down over the edge at the
stone floor of the courtyard below. Deep breaths in and out as she visualized
her body plummeting through the air, her skin and bones pulverized on impact,
her skull bursting open like a gourd. Her vision blurred, her head reeled, and
she angled her body back into the window. I am afraid to die, afraid of the
pain.The thought was so fundamental and humbling that she quite lost her
breath. She could not do it, could not take her own life- not out of love for
others nor any moral objection, but out of pure, selfish, unshakable fear.
And this same fear would keep her from pulling the knife from the wall, would
keep her from doing her part to avenge her family's deaths at the hands of the
Lannisters. Sansa began to shiver in earnest, wrapping the coverlet tight
around her and pressing her body flush against Jaime's. I was never the brave
one. Robb was brave, and Jon and Arya...but I'm naught but a craven. I cowered
before Joffrey, I did not speak for Tyrion, I let them rope me into another
Lannister marriage.
I am the last of the Starks, but the one least worthy of survival.
She started to cry then, for the first time since the announcement of her
betrothal. All of the defiant energy that had sustained her up until this point
exited with the tears, with the hard, cold realization that she'd lost- lost
without even presenting much of a fight.
Here in bed with her husband, her limbs entangled with his, his heartbeat
echoing against her ear, Sansa felt that she'd never been more alone in all her
life.
Jaime stirred, his emerald eyes fluttering open, and Sansa hastened to wipe the
tears from her cheeks, clearing her throat and nasal passage with a loud sniff.
She felt him against her leg, half-hard already, and despite her instinct to
recoil, she shifted her weight until her thighs rested on either side of his
hips. A pulse throbbed between her legs, but she steeled herself nonetheless,
hoping it would be over quickly.
Although his grasp grew firmer on her breast, Jaime made no attempt to enter
her. He only darted his gaze about, eventually letting it rest on her face.
"Good morning, Sansa," he whispered, placing his golden hand on her hair. It
bumped against the tender skin of her scalp with more force than he probably
intended; she winced, only slightly.
"Good morning," she mouthed, breath still bated. Jaime moved his left hand from
her breast, lifted it to hover over her face, where she could feel a streak of
moisture that she'd neglected to clear away. She met his eyes and felt both
perplexed and terribly vulnerable when faced with the surprising kindness she
found there. He barely rested the pad of his thumb on her cheek, but withdrew
from her before wiping the tear away. With a light, careless kiss to the top of
her head, he slid from the bed and retreated into his dressing chamber.
Sansa nestled herself into the warm imprint in the mattress where Jaime had
been, a prickling sort of anxiety competing with the gnawing emptiness within
her. Her husband quickly re-emerged, clad in training garb, and Sansa, suddenly
very aware of her own nakedness, pulled the bedclothes tighter around her body.
"I'll be out in the yards. It is very early yet- you should try to sleep."
Astonished, relieved, almost disappointed, Sansa could do nothing but nod.
Jaime moved to the side of the bed to retrieve his sword- he paused for a
moment, as though deliberating whether to touch her, but then pivoted on his
heel and walked toward the door.
"I shall be back to collect you in a few hours- the King and Queen expect us to
break our fast with them." Sansa nodded again, her mouth slightly ajar, knowing
that she surely looked like a simpleton. Jaime's lips curved up into a vague
smile, and he bowed his head to her before exiting.
She tried to take his advice and return to sleep, but her erratic lapses into
slumber were fitful and disturbing. Images assaulted her with no particular
narrative or priority- her body tumbling out of the window, the knife at
Jaime's throat, Joffrey's cruel smile as he watched his Kingsguard beat her,
Cersei's silver filigree ring, the Hound's mangled face hovering over her in
the dark, Jaime's bare skin shining golden in the candlelight, her father's
head on a spike-
She awoke with a high-pitched shriek, only to discover that she had company. A
pair of dressing maids bustled about the large chamber, arms filled with silks,
brocade and jewels. She recognized them both from the Queen Regent's staff-
older women both, and exceptionally stern.
"My lady," the taller one- Elspeth, maybe?- began, "we have been sent to ready
you to dine with the King and Queen."
"Oh," Sansa breathed. She slowly rose to her feet, still clinging to the
bedsheet that covered her. The smaller woman quickly handed her a satin chemise
and drawers, and the two maids politely averted their eyes until she put them
on.
They drew her into a second dressing chamber off of the main room, pulled and
prodded at her with a no-nonsense, brusque demeanor, one that had obviously
been a key factor in Cersei's decision to send these particular women. But the
Queen Regent needn't have worried; Sansa, still mired in thoughts of
resignation, did nothing to interfere with their handiwork.
She first found herself laced into a rather ostentatious confection of maroon
and gold, but the maids soon shook their heads in tandem, one clucking her
tongue in disapproval. A quick glance at the looking glass told Sansa why; a
small purple bruise on the top of her right breast, barely peeking out over the
lavishly embroidered neckline. She blushed furiously, prompting the following
comment from the short, plump maid (whose name she guessed might be something
like Joleyne, but she honestly wouldn't swear to it): "By the Seven, Lady
Sansa, you're red as a poppy. It isn't at all flattering with your hair."
Sansa gritted her teeth but said nothing. Once maybe-Elspeth and maybe-Joleyne
changed her into a more modest gown of green and silver, they plaited her hair
atop her head and tied a heavy collar of jewels around her neck, one that she
was sure she'd seen Cersei wear before. Her heart sank into her stomach when
she saw her finished reflection in the mirror- a proper southron lady, through
and through.
Jaime arrived for her shortly after, just as he said he would. He'd been
cleanly scrubbed and clad in finery, and she felt a little prickle of
goosebumps at the sight of him.
He stepped into the light of the doorway, his eyes looking her up and down in
obvious appraisal. He shook his head, then spoke quietly: "No, this won't do at
all."
She felt her cheeks burning once again- heard the tongue-clicking from those
damnable dressing maids- but before she could speak, Jaime reached his left
hand behind her neck and untied the ribbon that fastened the jeweled collar.
She sighed in relief as its weight lifted. Jaime tossed the necklace on the
bed, then turned to regard her once more. Slowly, deliberately, he slipped his
hand into her intricately-styled hair, pulling the pins out one by one and
letting them drop to the floor. His fingers combed through the braids until her
thick waves of russet hair tumbled about her shoulders. At the last, he stroked
his fingertips over her brow, his voice barely above a whisper: "Much better."
Something stirred in the cavernous expanse inside, a spark of energy that she
did not understand. Blue eyes locked on green, a flinty flicker passing from
one gaze to the other. And though it had been so long that her facial muscles
felt stiff from disuse, Sansa smiled.
***** Chapter 7 *****
Sansa flew into the Queen’s sitting room nearly an hour late, immediately
dipping into a low curtsy and making her apologies to Margaery.  The Tyrell
girl replied with a magnanimous smile and a delicate white hand on Sansa’s
ruddy head.  “No apologies are necessary, my lady aunt.  I am pleased that you
could join us.”  Cersei watched her goodsister flinch at Margaery’s touch,
watched her eyes darken at being addressed as “aunt” by a girl three years her
senior.  She felt a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, but it quickly
faded when Sansa rose, giving the Queen Regent a full view of her attire. 

Grey linen and loose hair, as though she plans to take septa’s vows later this
afternoon. Cersei opened her mouth to comment on the ridiculously austere
clothing, but ultimately refrained.  She does it just to bother me- mentioning
it will only goad her on, the little wretch. She instead rose from her chair,
kissed the girl on the cheek, and gestured to the chair beside her.  “Please
sit, little sister.”
 
Cersei watched out of the corner of her eye as Sansa lowered herself into the
chair and accepted the sewing materials handed to her by a nearby maidservant. 
Under closer examination, she noticed the flush in the young woman’s cheeks,
the quickness of her breath, the silver circlet atop her head tilted slightly
askew.  She reached behind the Stark girl under the guise of replacing her
thimble, swept her eyes over Sansa’s neck and collarbone- there. Just beneath
her ear, nearly concealed by the loose-hanging hair, a fresh love bite bright
pink against her white skin. 
 
She felt her throat go dry and her heartbeat quicken.  A sudden burst of pain,
nearly enough to make her cry out; she’d plunged her needle into her left index
finger.  Scarlet blood leaked out onto the scalloped edges of the table
covering she’d been embroidering.  She continued to watch the droplet’s
progress along the white silk piping as she spoke in a tone low and quiet:  “It
is not like you to lose track of time, Sansa.”
 
Red as a pomegranate. Margaery’s insipid little maidens began to twitter at the
violent blush, but Sansa failed to acknowledge them, focusing her eyes on
Cersei instead. 
 
“There is no excuse, your Grace” was her contrite reply. 
 
A bright laugh behind her plucked at Cersei’s already-delicate nerves, and Lady
Leonette trilled blithely, “Oh, Your Grace, surely you recall what it was like
to be a newlywed?  I don’t believe that anyone at Highgarden caught sight of me
for a week after I married Garlan.”  The girls of the Maidenvault dissolved
into giggles again, and even a few of the matrons chuckled under their
breaths. 
 
Cersei did not laugh, and neither did Sansa.
 
But Leonette wasn’t through.  “Really, Sansa, it’s quite generous of Lord
Jaime, letting you go for long enough to tell us all about it.” 
 
Had she not observed it with her own eyes, Cersei wouldn’t believe it possible,
but Sansa somehow managed to blush even deeper, until her skin adopted a shade
that the Queen Regent had only seen before on choking victims.  The ladies
began to echo Leonette’s sentiments, and there was something ugly and wanton
about their keen interest.  Cersei had long ago grown accustomed to the way
women reacted to Jaime- she felt proud, even, watching them swoon and sigh over
her beautiful, golden, thoroughly unattainable brother.  But it felt different
now- now that Jaime was maimed, stripped of his shining white cloak, wedded
outside the family- not so unattainable anymore. Self-satisfaction battled with
an acute sense of loss, driving her to distraction.
 
Eventually, Margaery shook her head, glancing uncomfortably in Cersei’s
direction.  “Let her be, ladies.  You needn’t tell them anything, Sansa. 
Besides, I’m sure Her Grace would rather not hear such things of her own
brother.”
 
Were Cersei a less observant woman, she might have missed the sharp flicker in
Margaery’s lovely brown eyes and the subtle curl of her lips.  As it was, the
Queen Regent straightened her posture, offering her good-daughter a saccharine
smile. 
 
“Come now, dear Margaery, you mustn’t think me so humorless as all that.  You
have brothers yourself- surely you don’t take offense at every bit of gossip
you hear about them?”  Margaery’s smile faded and Cersei’s widened in perfect
synchronicity.  The Queen effectively silenced, Cersei returned her attention
to Sansa.  “You may speak.  Although you may wish to consider that most of
these ladies are maidens- do try to spare their delicacy.”
 
Another laughing fit from Margaery’s retinue of idiots- Cersei wondered whether
she herself had ever been so frivolously vacant.  Surely not. 
 
But one glance over to Sansa, and Cersei felt amply rewarded for tolerating the
girlish stupidity.  The hideous redness in her face persisted, accompanied by a
matching rash on her neck and collarbone. The Northern girl’s glacial poise
disintegrated, replaced by darting eyes and stammering protests.  But the
ladies of the court were waiting, breaths bated- even Margaery’s mouth hung
slightly ajar. 
 
Cersei placed a hand on Sansa’s knee.  “Have you really nothing to tell?  That
says very little for my brother, doesn’t it?” 
 
Sansa looked up then, and Cersei felt vaguely disappointed by the absence of
tears.  "I...I don't know what to say..." Her voice was small, so pitiably
small- for a single, terrifying, exhilarating moment, Cersei wondered whether
Jaime had treated her brutally, whether her experience had been something akin
to rape.
But then the girl inhaled, exhaled, continued.  “He is...gentle.  And patient. 
He tries not to hurt me.”  She had the room in silent thrall.  “He always wears
the golden hand- I think he worries that I’ll be frightened otherwise.  And
then when..it’s through...he holds me until he falls asleep.” 
 
Clearly through, Sansa looked back down at her sewing.  The ladies in the room
responded equally with rapturous sighs and clucks of disappointment. 
 
Cersei continued to watch as the color settled in Sansa’s cheeks, the panic
draining away, replaced by her usual stillness.  A sudden jerk of a muscle
reminded the Queen Regent that she still had her hand on Sansa’s knee.  She
gave it a brief squeeze- made sure to sink her nails into the soft skin- before
releasing. 
 
Though the morning continued as uneventfully as usual, Cersei’s heartbeat never
slowed.  She gradually noticed a pulse forming in her pricked finger, throbbing
away in perfect time.
 
...
 
She stole through the corridors with a speed that could come only from
practice.  No candle, no torch- she knew these halls well enough to keep to the
darkness.  The stone floors felt bracingly cold under her bare feet.  Before
pushing open the large wooden door, Cersei lowered the shawl from her head,
exposing her golden hair.
 
Moonlight spilled in through the window casement, illuminating the figures in
the bed.  Sansa on her side, curved into herself, a soft cloud of hair all
around her.  A well-muscled arm curled around her hip, a flesh-and-blood hand
resting on her thigh.  Both the gold of Jaime’s hair and the gold of his false
hand floated in the auburn sea- light against dark, sun against flame. 
 
A step closer, and Jaime abruptly woke, the coverlets falling from his bare
torso as he sat up straight, his muscles at attention.  She spoke not a word. 
Green eyes met green eyes, and he relaxed ever so slightly.
 
“Are you mad?”  He kept his voice at a whisper, but Cersei thought that he
needn’t have bothered- Sansa’s only movement came from the rise and fall of her
chest with each breath.
 
“I suppose that depends on who you ask,” Cersei quipped.  She crossed to the
bed, her eyes never leaving her twin’s.  Jaime moved his hand from Sansa’s hip,
but otherwise remained perfectly still.  The space between Sansa’s body and the
edge of the bed was small, but Cersei nestled in all the same, half-curling
herself around the sleeping girl. 
 
Jaime still didn’t move.  His twin began to card her fingers through Sansa’s
thick hair, but even the pulling failed to rouse her.  “She sleeps soundly,”
Cersei commented. 
 
She allowed herself a tiny smile of victory when Jaime shifted his shoulders
and shook his head.  “She takes a dram,” he murmured.  “Pycelle makes it for
her.  He tells me that without it, she’d never sleep through the night.”
 
“Sweet of you, to take such an interest.”  She swept her hand over Sansa’s
brow, rubbing the backs of her knuckles over the soft, smooth skin. 
 
“I thought it might be...something else.” 
 
Jaime’s eyes darkened, and Cersei replied with a startled blink.  She lowered
her stare to the girl’s face, so impossibly innocent- she had a fist closed
around the wool blanket, her face rubbed against it...Cersei felt a tiny pang
of sadness when she noticed a corner of the fabric in Sansa’s mouth.  Would she
ever have the nerve, could enough steel run through her blood, to kill a child
in the womb?  
 
As she watched Sansa, Cersei took notice of the nightshift she wore.  It was a
laughably childish confection- white, with lace and ribbons up to her neck, the
hemline falling well below her knees.  She lowered her hand from the girl’s
face and allowed it to roam over her body, her palm tracing the curve of
Sansa’s hip.  The thin fabric revealed an absence of smallclothes; she plucked
at the fabric between Sansa’s thighs, discovered that it stuck to her skin.
 
Her mouth went dry as she imagined it.  Had Jaime sat her down on his cock,
touching her through the ruffles and bows of that little-girl nightdress?  Or
did she lie on her side as she was doing now, suckling the edge of her blanket,
barely aware of Jaime’s hips pistoning against her as Pycelle’s dram lulled her
to sleep? 
 
She’d worked her hand under the hem, fingers barely brushing against the sticky
crust on the insides of Sansa’s thighs.  A sharp intake of breath distracted
her from her thoughts, and she glanced up to look at Jaime. 
 
He watched her hand’s progress beneath Sansa’s dress, his lips slightly
parted.  Cersei glanced up and over and smiled again at the sight of bedlinens
tented in her brother’s lap. 
 
“Why are you here?”  His whisper startled her; her finger pressed harder
against Sansa’s skin, and the girl gave a little squirm.
 
And then she reached across Sansa’s body to cup Jaime’s cheek in her palm.  She
felt a prickle of distaste at the roughness of his beard, but set it aside. 
She answered his question in an unusual flash of honesty:  “I don’t know.”
 
The film from between Sansa’s legs still lingered on her index finger; she drew
the tip over his lower lip and delighted in the sudden quivering of her body
when met with the desire in his eyes.  She rose up on her knees- Sansa still
pressed between them, her body soft against the tautened muscles of Cersei’s
legs- and framed Jaime’s face with her other hand. 
 
“Jaime,” she breathed, her thumbs smoothing rhythmically over his cheekbones. 
And then she waited, waited for him to seize her face and kiss her, waited for
him to pull her onto his lap and tear her gown open. 
 
But he did not.  And with a heavy, sinking sense of finality, she knew that he
never would again.  Perhaps if she leaned into him, he would respond in kind-
but whether from anger or disgust or pride, Cersei did not and would not.
 
Instead, she leaned over Sansa Stark, smoothed a tangle of ruddy hair behind
her ear, and kissed her temple.  As she slipped from the bed and moved toward
the door, Cersei wanted nothing more than to meet Jaime’s eyes, to find him as
lost as she- she felt him watching her, all it would take was a little turn of
the head- but she kept her gaze trained on the door.
 
When she stepped into the corridor and eased the door shut, she allowed herself
one last glance through the crack at the doorframe.  Sansa shifted beneath her
woolen blanket, muttered something unintelligible.  She heard Jaime whisper to
her- what, she couldn’t tell- and watched him pull her until her head rested on
his chest, dropping a light kiss on her lips before resting his cheek against
her hair. 
 
As she made her way back to her chambers, heartbeat still pounding in her
chest, head and left finger, Cersei reminded herself to ask Pycelle in the
morning for a sleeping dram of her own.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
***** Chapter 8 *****
"Look at these jolly little fellows!"
At the sound of Sansa's voice, King Tommen glanced upward, round green eyes
shining with delight. He sat cross-legged on the floor of a long-forgotten
study; Sansa thought idly that his mother would be furious when she caught
sight of his brocade overcoat, trimmed with dust. She dropped to her knees
beside the boy and smiled at the squirming, furry mass in his lap.
"They're not all fellows- there are some girls, too." Tommen lifted a kitten
from the center of the huddle and placed it on Sansa's spread skirt. "Like this
one."
She brushed her fingertips over the soft fur, as downy and grey as Lady's was
when Father first brought her home. The hard stone of melancholy lodged
permanently in her stomach gave a little lurch- she pressed the kitten to her
cheek and breathed a sigh before asking, "Where did you get them?"
"From Marg- from my lady wife." Sansa winced at that- the idea of this plump
little lad as a married man never ceased to be both revolting and laughable. By
the Seven, the top of his head barely reaches Margaery's chest. She wondered
for a moment whether people felt the same about her marriage before realizing
the foolishness of the comparison. Tommen is a child, and I'm quite nearly
grown. Never mind that my husband is old enough to be my father- no one thinks
a thing of it.
Of course, that wasn't strictly true. A week prior, they'd received a visit
from Jaime's aunt Genna, blessedly without her Frey husband. Sansa had been
torn between her blistering hatred for anything connected with the Frey family
and her curiosity about the full-figured, blowsy woman who contrasted so
sharply with her brother's icy reticence- she positioned herself until she
nearly hid behind Jaime, saying little and eating little. Eventually, Genna
Lannister turned her emerald eyes on Sansa and beckoned to her.
"This is the bride? Let's have a look, then." She felt Jaime's golden hand on
the small of her back, nudging her forward, and she reluctantly approached and
dropped into a curtsy. "My lady aunt."
And then Genna laughed, this time with exasperation, before turning to her
brother. "Tywin, have you gone mad? This is a little girl."
"She's a woman flowered, Aunt," Cersei offered, and Sansa willed herself to
keep from looking the Queen Regent in the eye, knowing what she'd find there.
"A girl," Genna repeated. She tilted her silver-gold head and swept her gaze
over Sansa's body. "A beauty, though. You favor your mother, my dear." At the
mention of her mother, Sansa bit her lip, but quickly realized how that
emphasized her childishness. And indeed, Genna immediately began to shake her
head, directing her next words to her nephew.
"Jaime. I hope you've at least kept separate beds...it's indecent, otherwise."
No one spoke a word. Genna sighed, leaned back in her chair, and Sansa wished,
as she had so many times before, that she were dead.
For two nights after that, Jaime slept in his solar.
A restless mewling from the kitten broke Sansa's reverie. She lowered it to her
knee and continued to stroke its soft fur before asking Tommen, "Have you named
them all yet?"
"No," he replied. "I'm still deciding. Have you any ideas?"
"I'll think on it," she laughed. Cradling the kitten in one hand, she reached
the other into the folds of her shawl. "I made something for you."
Tommen watched as she withdrew a small model of a bird, intricately folded from
a slip of parchment. Sansa flung the bird into the air and smiled when its
wings appeared to flutter of their own accord, holding it aloft as it sailed
across the room.
The King gave a sigh of astonishment. "Where did you learn to do that?" he
breathed.
"In Winterfell, when I was very young," Sansa replied. It had been Uncle
Benjen, visiting from the Wall, who'd dazzled Sansa and Arya with his flying
parchment birds. The girls demanded to learn the craft, and in a brief period
of camaraderie, she and Arya had driven Maester Luwin to distraction by
pilfering every parchment they could find, filling the halls of Winterfell with
their flock. Another stomach lurch, and she forced herself to focus on Tommen's
smiling face. "I'll teach you one day, if you'd like to learn."
The boy nodded before gently placing his kittens in a wooden box. "How far can
it fly?"
She felt her face brighten with a mischievous grin. "Let's see, shall we?"
Depositing her kitten in the box, she retrieved the bird and gestured to Tommen
to follow her out into the corridor. "Throw it as straight as you can," she
instructed.
King Tommen Baratheon and Lady Sansa Lannister gave a collective gasp of
delight when the bird flew down the long hallway and seamlessly turned a
corner. Tommen raced down the hall after it, and Sansa lifted her skirts to her
knees and dashed after him. The bird maintained its momentum, flapping away as
if propelled by magic- until a door swung open, trapping the folded parchment
against the wall.
An indignant squeal, and Tommen stomped toward the figure in the doorway.
"Uncle Jaime! You broke it."
Jaime released the door, enabling Tommen to retrieve the crushed bird. "Many
apologies, Your Grace," he murmured, his tone quiet and grave.
Sansa stepped to the King, shaking her head, and cupped her hands. "Let me see
it." After Tommen dropped the bird into her palms, she smoothed, refolded,
tightened the creases. She handed it back to the King with a grin. "All
better."
Jaime stood still in the doorway- she considered the solemnity of his voice,
the heaviness of his facial expression, and then realized where he'd been; the
door led to the dungeons where Tyrion was held.
She turned to Tommen, dropped into a half-curtsy. "If I have your leave, Your
Grace." Tommen nodded, turning to scamper down a different hallway. But before
he left, he called out: "Sansa! You mustn't forget to think of kitten names."
"I shan't, Your Grace," she shouted in reply before turning to Jaime, placing a
hand gingerly on his arm.
He looked down at her, his eyes stormy and troubled, and she realized she had
her answer even as she began to ask: "Did he...?"
"No."
Sansa knew better than to ask anything more. Jaime had been to see Tyrion over
a dozen times since his arrest, but no matter what he said, no matter how he
pleaded, the Imp had spoken not a word. Sansa knew what Jaime sought- a denial,
an explanation, anything to confirm Tyrion's innocence. She'd heard the
arguments behind closed doors, Cersei and Jaime screaming back and forth about
Tyrion and Joffrey and the dungeon until Lord Tywin would interrupt in hushed
tones and put an end to the shouting.
She wondered, sometimes, whether she should go to Tyrion. She who had seen it,
she who knew at her core that the Imp was blameless...he might speak to
her. But what good would it do? They'd never listen to me, anyhow. Excuses,
flimsy pardons that she'd repeat to herself to distract her from the real
reason behind her failure to go to the dungeons. I'd never know where to start,
what to say.
Jaime began to walk down the hall; Sansa, her hand still on his arm, was
startled by the movement. She trotted along behind him for a few steps before
matching his stride.
"I'm going to the training fields for the rest of the afternoon," he said
without looking at her.
"With Ser Payne?" she inquired. Jaime shook his head, gave her a perfunctory
glance.
"No. With Brienne."
Sansa gave a nod of silent comprehension. While Jaime's fights with Ser Ilyn
Payne often resulted in scattered cuts and scrapes, his training with the Maid
of Tarth was something else entirely. He'd return dented and bruised, black-
and-blue splotches covering his arms, back and chest. She itched with
curiosity, longed to ask why the Lady Brienne saw fit to fight him so fiercely,
but she never quite worked up the nerve.
For she knew it to be purposeful, knew that Jaime welcomed, perhaps even
solicited the pain- a strange sort of penance. The last time he'd been to see
Tyrion, the last time he'd let Brienne brutalize him up and down the training
field, he lay on his back in their bed that night, positioning her atop him.
His eyes shadowed, his jaw set, he used his golden hand to grind her into his
pelvis, the other hand guiding her fingers to his bruises, pressing her nails
into his ravaged skin. He eventually sat up, brought his mouth to her ear, his
whisper choked and desperate as he ordered her to bite his shoulder, pull his
hair, rake her nails over his back again and again until she drew blood. Right
before he reached his climax, he told her to hit him across the face- when she
hesitated, he stopped, released his vise-like hold on her body, lowered his
eyes and murmured a string of apologies. She'd felt him grow soft within her,
and when he lifted her from his lap and turned to lie on his side, she'd been
too overcome with confusion and concern and arousal to know what to do. So she
turned her back to him, picking dried blood out from under her nails and
waiting for her heartbeat to slow.
Her hand clenched on Jaime's arm as she remembered, and she blushed a bit at
the quizzical look she received. Stepping away from her husband, Sansa started
to turn on her heel. "Then I suppose I'll see you this evening," she said as
flatly as she could.
As she retreated down the corridor, Jaime's voice called out to her: "Oh, I
nearly forgot- my sister is looking for you."
She heaved a sigh, reached down to shake the dust and cat hair from her skirts-
but then she stopped, allowing the grey particles to remain, stark against the
pale yellow of her gown.
Before she turned the corner, she saw Jaime flash her a small smile.
 
...
 
Sansa pushed open the door to the bathing chamber, drunk on her own
boldness...among other things. There had been a delivery to the castle that
afternoon- several casks of Dornish wine, a fresh vintage. She'd spent the
afternoon in the cellars with the Queen Regent, who insisted that they sample
each barrel. In spite of her protests, her assertion that she really knew
absolutely nothing about wine, Cersei had dragged her along, handing her glass
after glass of red and gold liquid, watching her with those unblinking green
eyes until she finished every drop. After a time, the two women grew quiet and
drowsy, until their respective handmaidens ushered them off like children into
their chambers. Sansa woke with a light aching in her head and the realization
that she'd missed evening meal. She took a moment to orient herself, until it
occurred to her to wonder where Jaime was.
He'd been training earlier- the baths were the obvious answer. She thought to
simply ready herself for bed and take her draught- if Jaime came back or not,
it would hardly matter in sleep. But some addled impulse propelled her to her
feet and guided her across the castle, clad only in a loose linen robe.
The heavy steam in the room only added to the clouding in her head- a glint of
gold in the haze alerted her to Jaime's location.
He hadn't noticed her yet. She leaned against a column and watched his chest
rise and fall, watched his hard body glistening in the torchlight. Although
she'd initially thought the dappling of his skin a result of the dim lighting,
she quickly realized that he'd been every bit as battered as she might have
expected. The golden hand rested on the floor outside the bath; overcome by
curiosity, Sansa leaned closer, straining her neck in an effort to catch a
glimpse of his naked right arm. The skin had grown over the space where his
hand once was, the healing surprisingly smooth- her body tilted too far
forward, and she let out a huff of breath when she nearly lost her footing.
Jaime twisted his neck to look in her direction, verdant eyes narrow. She took
several sheepish steps into the light.
"My lady." He gave a courteous nod, offset somewhat by the perplexed knitting
of his eyebrows. "I thought you'd already be abed."
Sansa reached into a fold of her robe and removed the little vial of potion. "I
haven't taken it yet." Jaime nodded, and she continued forward until she stood
at the very edge of the floor, the steam from the bath flowing freely into her
lungs.
"I..." she began, looking down at her feet, "I was looking for you."
"Why?"
Why indeed? The reason felt too pathetic and desperate to put into words. She
couldn't explain the gaping maw of nothingness, the solace that came even from
the shallowness of skin upon skin. Even though she did not trust him, did not
love him, hardly knew him, she wanted his heartbeat against her back, his arms
around her, anything to anchor her to the earth.
She shrugged. As she lowered herself to sit on the edge of the bath , he
reached behind him for the golden hand- she wanted to tell him to leave it, but
he'd already affixed it to his right arm before she could speak a word. She
felt his gaze upon her, but she focused her eyes on her bare feet swishing
about in the warm water.
His hand closed around her ankle, and she gasped aloud. Her body buzzed with
the wine and the steam and the close proximity- every pore in her skin cried
out for contact, for the primal completion that would let her forget, however
briefly, her incredible emptiness.
She pulled the loose robe over her head and braced her hand on Jaime's shoulder
as she slid into the water. Her fingertip dug into the tender skin beneath a
bruise; she froze for a moment, half-afraid that he'd ask her to hurt him
again. But he only drew her between his legs, shifting their bodies until her
back pressed against his chest.
His fingers traced the insides of her thighs, his lips brushed the side of her
neck. A soft, low voice in her ear: "Tell me of your day with Cersei."
Immediately, she felt the strain of conflict forcing her lips into a frown.
They'd taken this path before- one night, as they lay naked in bed, Jaime had
asked her to recount her day in the Queen Regent's company. He pressed for
details; what Cersei wore, what she said, what might have occurred to vex her.
With each morsel of information, Jaime rewarded his wife with a kiss, a caress,
moving down her body until his cheek rested on her hipbone. Then she began to
tell of an insipid argument she'd had with her husband's sister- something so
insignificant that she barely even recalled the particulars. And as she spoke,
Jaime moved his head between her legs as he'd done on their wedding night,
punctuating her every phrase with a lick or a suck until she trembled and broke
beneath him.
But while she felt herself tingling with the memory of that intense pleasure,
Sansa had misliked the gleam in his eyes, the quaking of his voice when he
spoke his sister's name. And so she turned her head against his shoulder to
face him, her tone nearly coquettish: "I'd rather have a story from you."
His chest rumbled with laughter before he answered, "What sort of story would
you have from me?"
She had to think about that. She had no real wish to hear tales of battle- his
recent history with her brother still smarted too sharply. She very much wished
to hear about Brienne and his journey back from Riverrun, about this oath to
her mother that he'd occasionally mention before hastening to change the
subject- but her body felt too heavy, her head too muddled for a potentially
contentious conversation.
After a moment, she settled upon a subject that she considered innocent enough:
"About where you grew up. Tell me of Casterly Rock."
She reclined back against his body and closed her eyes. He spoke with more
detail than she would have anticipated, describing the pebbly beaches, the
secret caves, the lush gardens. The accounts of his boyhood explorations and
adventures always involved the plural pronoun: "we" this, "we" that- a small
discordance in the idyll.
Finally, he rested his chin on the top of her head, the warm skin of his left
hand and the very warm metal of his right smoothing over her arms. "Well, I
suppose you'll see it all for yourself soon, anyhow."
Sansa sat bolt upright. She swiveled her body until she faced him directly, her
voice shaking as she asked, "What do you mean?"
Jaime blinked with bemusement before answering, "After the situation settles
here, my father will remain in the Tower of the Hand, and you and I will go to
Casterly Rock."
The hard stone of the bath steps ground against her kneecaps as she knelt
between his legs, her hands on his shoulders. Her body sparked equally with
elation and embarrassment that the thought had never occurred to her before.
Yet she had to be sure- "We're leaving King's Landing."
"Yes." Jaime nodded with a half-smile, which grew into a full one when Sansa
reached up to cup his face in her hands.
"Say it." She brought her face close to his; her skin prickled with goosebumps
from anticipation and the sudden exposure to the air.
A tiny pressure on the back of her neck closed the gap between them until her
forehead pressed flush against his. He repeated her words in a whisper: "We're
leaving King's Landing."

Her mouth on his, her fingers in his hair, and she felt a weak, delicate, but
undeniably-present tendril of something sprouting in the cavern within her, a
prick of light in the darkness- were she still a dreamy girl who believed in
songs, she might have called it hope.
***** Chapter 9 *****
He summoned her directly. It took Jaime some time to parse through the
audacity, the absolute impropriety of it all. As Sansa's husband, he should
have been consulted first- but Lord Tywin's page relayed the news nearly as an
afterthought, telling him more as a courtesy than as a necessity.
The anger dropped low in his stomach, churning and pulsing, the phantom fingers
of his right hand prickling- he recognized it now as his body's natural
reaction to frustrated helplessness. Never in his life had Jaime Lannister felt
so consistently helpless as he had in these months since his return...
He insisted on accompanying her. She'd responded with typically adolescent
indignation- blue eyes flashing, jaw set, insincere bravado in her every word:
"I'm no child, I can go on my own," "I'm not afraid"-
He followed her into the Tower all the same.
Lord Tywin Lannister half-rose from his seat behind the long wooden table.
Gold-green eyes blinked upon the entrance of his son, and he made no attempt to
conceal the annoyance lurking beneath his courteous tone: "Thank you for
delivering your wife to me, Jaime. Now leave us."
"I would prefer to stay, my lord." Jaime felt a current of heated challenge
passing back and forth between himself and Lord Tywin; his father lifted his
eyebrows, pursed his lips, and directed his attention to the girl standing
before him.
"Lady Sansa. Please sit."
Sansa hesitated for a moment before lowering herself into the uncomfortable
wooden chair opposite Lord Tywin. She planted her feet on the ground,
straightened her back, folded her hands in her lap- only the gooseflesh on the
back of her neck indicated her anxiety.
Several moments of silence passed before the King's Hand spoke again.
"Remind me...how many moons have passed since your wedding?"
A prickle of cold danced up Jaime's spine at that soft, deliberate, predatory
tone. From his vantage point in the doorway, he could only see Sansa's face in
profile- she clenched her jaw and surprised him with the sharpness of her
voice:
"Which one, my lord?"
Lord Tywin narrowed his eyes, placed his palms flat on the table. "Don't toy
with me, girl."
Sansa's hands shifted in her lap, and she inhaled through her nose. "Three."
"Thank you. Three."
Jaime grained forward with the intention of approaching the table, but
something in his father's knife-sharp stare held him fast.
Lord Tywin continued: "I am told that you bled at the last moon. Is that
correct?"
Sansa whipped her head around to look at Jaime, her cheeks stained vermilion.
"Do not look at him. Look at me."
Suddenly, a desperate gleam appeared in Sansa's eyes, begging for rescue- Jaime
took a step in Lord Tywin's direction, shaking his golden head. "Father-"
"Silence." Menace seeped from every pore, and Jaime at once felt himself nine
years old again.
Lord Tywin looked back at Sansa. "Before you answer, I would advise you not to
waste my time with lies. If you lie to me, I will know, and your husband can
tell you that I have little patience for falsehoods."
Sansa turned her face away from Jaime, but not before her eyes shadowed with a
dark disappointment that made his stomach twist. He detected a little quaver in
her voice when she replied,
"Yes."
"I see."
Jaime knew the reason for his father's keen interest, knew House Lannister's
desperation for an appropriate heir- he wondered how closely Lord Tywin
monitored Sansa, which of her handmaidens served as the liaison- the chill ran
down his back again.
Lord Tywin leaned forward; the glint of firelight in his gold-flecked eyes gave
him a serpentine look that was even more unsettling than his usual glowers.
"You've been taking a sleeping draught. I'll have it from you now."
"My lord-" A ghostly pallor crept across Sansa's face when the nature of Lord
Tywin's insinuation fell upon her. The abject horror of her expression clearly
suggested that the idea had never before entered her mind- but it had entered
Jaime's, and he felt a squelching sense of guilt working with the shame,
provoking him nearly to nausea.
Lord Tywin extended his hand, palm facing upwards.
"Give it to me."
She hesitated, obviously waiting for Jaime to interject. And he knew, he knew
that he should...but his mind immediately offered forth a plethora of excuses:
 it would do more harm than good, she'd look more suspicious, he'd believe that
we're in league together, trying to deprive House Lannister of an heir...
Finally, Sansa withdrew the vial with trembling hands and placed it on the
table. Lord Tywin uncorked the tiny bottle, sniffed its contents, placed a drop
on his fingertip and dabbed it on his tongue. Before Jaime could begin to
properly wonder why his father knew the taste of moon tea, Lord Tywin resealed
the bottle and slipped it into the folds of his own cloak.
"Sleeping potion or no, it is best to remain cautious. I'll have a word with
Maester Pycelle, and you'll not take it again."
"But then...how will I sleep?" Sansa's posture had wilted considerably by this
point; her fingers gripped the seat of the chair as she drew her shoulders
inward, her body matching her tiny voice.
Tywin scoffed, waved a hand dismissively. "When you grow tired enough, you will
sleep." He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands upon the table. "We do
you a great honor, child- a traitor's daughter, chosen to bear the heir to
Casterly Rock. You come from fertile stock, you have your health and youth, and
I understand that your husband shares your bed with more than enough
frequency"- Jaime and Sansa twitched in tandem- "I have no wish to have this
conversation again three more moons from now. Am I making myself quite clear?"
Sansa pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes- Jaime recognized the sparks of
defiance, had seen them directed, albeit rarely, toward himself and Cersei, but
surely she doesn't think to try it here-
And then she spoke, her tones crisp and clipped, and he felt his fears
realized:
"And if never bear a child? What then?"
Jaime watched, at once mesmerized and horrified, as Lord Tywin's eyes blazed,
then settled. He leaned in very slightly, looking into Sansa's eyes- not
blinking, never blinking.
"That would be unfortunate. Because, of course, the Crown intends to restore
your family's holdings to your second son- to give him Winterfell."
Lord Tywin paused, allowing the impact to settle upon Sansa. Eyes widened,
breath faltered- he had her then.
His next words came barely above a whisper, coated with a supercilious sort of
charm that Jaime had heard from Cersei before- he'd always wondered where she
learned it, this cold, peculiar seductiveness. From his father, it felt alien
and macabre- but he found himself as transfixed as Sansa when Lord Tywin
uttered the simple sentence:
"You want to go home one day, Sansa, do you not?"
Sansa's breath hitched in her throat- a rasping, almost strangled sound.
Stripped of her pertness, her anger, her reserve, she answered in a light
exhale that was, perhaps, the most forlorn sound Jaime had ever heard:
"Yes."
Lord Tywin's lips flattened in as close to a smile as he ever deigned to give.
"Then we understand each other." He did not rise to bid her farewell, merely
turning back to the leatherbound ledger beside him. "That's all."
Sansa rose slowly from the chair, her breathing still uneven, a gleam in her
eyes that could only be from tears. She all but shoved Jaime out of her way as
she fled the chamber; he heard the heels of her shoes clacking aggressively
down the stairs.
He remained in the doorway for a time, eyes focused on Lord Tywin, searching
for a way to articulate his disgust- but his father never looked up from the
ledger.
The sound of Sansa's steps began to fade away- he hastened down the stairs,
called her name before reaching her on the landing-
She turned sharply to face him. The color rose in her cheeks, tendrils of fiery
hair flew out around her face- she lifted a hand to rub the area under her
reddened eyes, but the tear streaks remained.
Her breath grew labored as she obviously tried to keep from crying, her throat
thick and her eyes naked with rage and despair: "Why did you not help me?"
Jaime forced himself to meet her gaze- blue, blue like Catelyn Stark's, blue
like Brienne's, pained and lost and Gods, she's only a little girl-
She continued, her voice low and flat, nearly monotonous: "Why did you come, if
only to stand there in silence? I am your wife, but you let him speak to me
like-" She wiped her nose on her sleeve, gave a loud sniff before she lowered
her eyes to the floor and mumbled, "My father went to war with your family to
protect my mother. But if you will not even..." She shook her head, dropped her
volume even farther. "What use are you?"
Were he another sort of man- a man like Robert Baratheon, a man like Aerys
Targaryen- Jaime would have slammed the back of his hand into her cheek with
enough force to knock her flat. As it was, he felt suddenly defensive- it would
be easier to go to war for you than to defy Tywin Lannister- He advanced on
her, and she flattened her back against the wall, cringing as if anticipating a
strike.
"That's enough," he hissed, his body close enough to cage her in.
Sansa's eyes winched shut, and she dropped her chin until it pressed into her
collarbone. "Please," she whispered, and he abruptly recalled the crisscrossing
of scars over her back, the discolored patches of skin that had yet to fully
heal, all given to her by men who served under his command. But to think, to
believe that he would ever- the shaking, the tears, it was all too much- I
frighten her even now; the Lannister Lion-
"Gods, Sansa." He placed his hand on her shoulder with excruciating gentleness;
she flinched, kept her eyes focused on the floor. He watched as a tear flowed
over the slope of her cheek and dropped onto the parapets beneath them.
Apology would be the obvious course of action, but what could he possibly say
that would sound anything but hollow, that would elicit anything but disbelief?
He removed his hand from her shoulder, saddened by the immediate relaxation of
her upper body.
She edged herself along the wall, moving toward the small gap at Jaime's side.
"Let me go. Please, let me go."
And he did. He watched her slip away, darting down the corridor, the heavy
braid thumping against her spine.
 
...
 
Jaime retired to his solar that night, head heavy with drink and distress, and
had an unsettling dream.
Cersei in their bed again, golden curls tumbling over her shoulders, the curve
of her breast visible beneath the thin fabric of her gown. Sansa's skirt pushed
upward, revealing her nakedness below the waist- and then Cersei's long,
elegant fingers, stroking between Sansa's legs, disappearing into her cunt.
Sansa awoke, arched into Cersei's touch, uttered soft little sighs with each
thrust. Cersei looked into Jaime's eyes- not blinking, never blinking- Gods, he
hadn't been so hard in years...
Sansa kept her gaze on the ceiling, breathing in out, in out. Jaime lay beside
her, brushed his lips over her temple. On her other side, Cersei did the same-
their hair enmeshed above her head, a coronet of gold-
Cersei slipped her hand out of Sansa, entwined her fingers with Jaime's.
Between the twins, Sansa remained perfectly still, her mouth shaping a whisper-
"Let me go. Please, let me go."
Her tears rolled down the side of her face and into Jaime's mouth- hot, salty,
bitter.
He tightened his grip on Cersei's hand as he listened to Sansa repeat the words
again and again, each time softer and sadder-
Jaime awoke on the divan to the sensation of bare skin pressed against him.
Sansa sat beside him, a bedlinen draped over her shoulders, her body
silhouetted in the moonlight. Auburn hair curtained around her face, obscuring
it completely, but the steady rise and fall of her chest with each breath
assured him that she had stopped weeping, at least.
He debated whether to touch her, but she reached for him before he could
decide. A tiny hand settled on his groin, and when she found him already hard-
his face burned when he thought of the dream- she hooked her fingers into his
smallclothes and pulled them down past his knees.
Her unusual forwardness alarmed him, but not half so powerfully as the gnawing
guilt, the knowledge that he had to try, empty as the words might sound-
"Sansa. I'm sorry."
She leaned over him, hands on either side of his torso, loose hair grazing over
his chest and stomach.
Her face remained in darkness when she said, "I know."
She shifted to straddle his stomach, placed a palm flat on his heart center.
"Do you want to protect me? "
His heart jolted beneath her hand, his breath tight. In spite of the aching in
his cock, he tried to ease her off of him, speaking through clenched teeth:
"You should try to sleep, my lady."
But she held firm, hands flying to his shoulders and pushing him into the
cushions of the divan. Her voice trembled as she repeated the question, as
though she feared the answer:
"Do you?"
And for the sake of the promise he'd made, for the sake of the thoughtful blue-
eyed girl who shared his name and his bed, for the sake of the honor that might
not be wholly past redemption-
"Yes."
She bent her elbows until her face hovered a hairsbreadth from his.
"Two sons. One for Casterly Rock, one for Winterfell."
He gripped her hips and sat her down, let her dictate the rhythm. His head fell
back, and he gazed up at the shadows moving across the ceiling.
As her breath rose, he imagined that she whispered the words, filled the air
with the plea:
Let me go, let me go.
***** Chapter 10 *****
She was making a fool of herself- that much was apparent. Though others
certainly seemed to believe otherwise, Sansa was entirely aware of the pitying
gazes, the condescending sighs, the mocking smirks. And it was ridiculous, of
course it was ridiculous. Over three months, no sign of anything, and yet the
little trunk that she used to store her sewing projects nearly overflowed with
baby blankets and swaddling clothes.
But she could not bring herself to care. Because for the first time in such a
long time, Sansa remembered what it was like to have a dream.
She hadn't conceived once in the time since she'd been married, but surely
there was nothing to fear. Her womb was just resisting, being temperamental- it
would come around. She found herself whispering to her belly sometimes, as
though her womb were sentient, trying to coax and persuade it to yield fruit.
During these times, her maidservants would let her be, exasperated smiles
spread across their faces as they exited. Even Shae, who rarely left her side,
would disappear behind the door- but her smile was kind, at least.
Sansa daydreamed, something she'd hardly done since arriving in King's Landing,
something she didn't realize she knew how to do anymore. She'd taken to
spending her afternoons away from the sewing room, away from Margaery's maidens
and their giggling, away from Cersei's withering stares. Instead, she perched
herself on the wide sill of a large window toward the rear of the castle- a
warm, quiet, lazy spot where she could stitch and imagine in peace. Sometimes
she'd be joined by her favorite of Tommen's kittens- the little grey one called
North Star. She'd chosen the name.
All she thought about, repeated to herself over and over- Winterfell, North,
home. And with that idea, of course, came the thoughts of her children. The
firstborn remained rather vague in her mind- just a blur of gold and green, the
sacrifice she'd leave for the Lannisters to raise in Casterly Rock. They'd give
him some fool Lannister name- "Ty" something or other, probably...although if
they so much as suggest Tywin, I'll be sick all over.
She remembered the dreams she'd had during her betrothal to Joffrey, a lifetime
ago- dreams of a litter of light-haired babes, all with the Lannister look. The
thought curled her lips now, halfway between a smile and a snarl.
But the second child...the second, her saving grace, her little winter prince.
She imagined him with dark hair and eyes, like her father's- unlikely, as my
hair is the lightest shade of auburn and everyone in Jaime's family has been
fair for generations, but I don't care. Although she knew she'd never be
allowed to call him for her father or her eldest brother- traitors, both - he'd
have a good Stark name all the same- Rickard, maybe, or Brandon.
As she sewed blankets and baby clothes, she realized that everything was grey
and white, occasionally Tully blue- all gifts for little Rickard-or-Brandon.
She began to feel a bit guilty and sorry for Ty-something-or-other, so she
stitched one blanket of Lannister crimson, with a lion emblazoned over the
front. She placed it at the bottom of the trunk and gathered more materials in
the Stark colors.
Her happy window-dreams grew more fanciful as the days passed. Once she had the
first birth over and done, she imagined that her womb would be willing and
ready to bear more children, and more and more. She'd leave Casterly Rock its
heir, then go to Winterfell with her northern son, where she'd rule until he
came of age. And she'd have others, more beautiful babies with alternating dark
and red hair- the Lannisters will have their golden son, they need no more-
 children that she'd keep around her, that she'd teach to be better and wiser
and braver than herself. As soon as one was weaned, she'd go to Casterly Rock-
or Jaime would come to Winterfell, she wasn't quite sure about the particulars-
until she grew large with child again. I'll have a dozen babies, and I'll teach
them to become part of the North, and they'll know nothing of the South and
what happens to people there. She'd breed a new generation of Starks to replace
the one she'd lost- like the Earth Mother of Old Nan's stories, bringing forth
child after child, giving each a piece of the land to claim and grow and
nurture. They will be mine- not Jaime's, not Lord Tywin's- mine.
Of course, logic would eventually buzz in her ear like a gnat, pricking holes
at her dreams until her cheeks flushed with embarrassment at her own
foolishness. But still, it was a goal, something to hope for and work toward.
And for a girl with no family and no friends and no future, that was quite
enough.
I can't be barren, she told herself again and again. After all, her mother had
borne five healthy children, the Tully and Stark women had a strong history of
fertility- the gods can't be so cruel, not when I need this so badly. Of
course, she then remembered that the gods had thought nothing of tearing her
family to pieces, killing her mother, father and brothers, scattering her
sister into the winds, letting her be sold like chattel from one Lannister to
another- and then she'd fall once more into despair.
Since the Seven had done so little to answer her prayers, Sansa tried appealing
to the Old Gods. There were no weirwoods to be found in this southron climate,
so she settled for a gnarled oak tree at the edge of the most distant
courtyard. Using a dagger that she'd swiped from Jaime's armory, she made an
even cut along the fingertips of her left hand and used the free-flowing blood
to stain the bark of the tree, until the streaks almost resembled the red
"tears" of the heart trees. She wiped her fingers clean on the black fabric of
her dress, knelt on the ground, and tried to remember how Father and Jon and
Robb would pray back in Winterfell, the prayers of silent contemplation.
But the ground was nowhere near as cold; the dirt seeped into the cloth of her
skirt instead of remaining firm and solid as it would in the North. She looked
up at her false weirwood, painted with her own blood- and though she'd never
seen her father or brothers do anything of the sort, she crawled to the roots
and wrapped her arms around the trunk, pressing her cheek to the rough bark.
Sansa closed her eyes and listened. Father used to tell them that the heart
trees could talk- but this southron tree said nothing at all.
"Can it be any tree, then?" The voice startled her, and she turned her face so
sharply that the bark scraped against her cheek- she felt a warm rivulet of
blood trickle down over her jaw.
Jaime leaned against an oak several paces away from her, the sunlight
reflecting splendidly off of his pale head and white tunic. He made a pretty
picture with his windswept hair and eyes the color of the leaves surrounding
him, with his upright posture and broad shoulders.
(A night, not long ago, when they'd both had too much wine and all but stumbled
back to their quarters, he'd called her beautiful for the first time- she
couldn't decide how to respond until he asked whether she found him handsome-
he phrased the question as a joke, twisting his lips into a smirk, but she saw
a genuine flash of need in his eyes- she'd only laughed, smoothed his hair back
from his brow- "I think my lord knows what he looks like." He bedded her hard
and fast, and when it was through, she murmured something into the crook of his
neck, something so stupid that she hated herself the minute the words left her
mouth- she told him that he looked like the knight she'd always dreamed of as a
girl in Winterfell. She blushed and hid her face, he smiled and kissed her, but
his eyes grew dark- dark, and infinitely sad.)
She brushed the back of her hand over the blood on her cheek before shaking her
head. "No, it can't. I just thought I'd try." There is nothing I wouldn't try.
Jaime crossed to her- she still had one arm wrapped around the oak tree- and
handed her a handkerchief, which she hastily swiped over her face. He leaned
against the tree, eyes staring far past her when he spoke: "I wonder how much
the gods ever hear- any of them."
"That's blasphemy," she mumbled. He raised his eyebrows, gave a hoarse laugh.
"Hardly a foreign concept to me, my lady."
Suddenly, Sansa wished desperately that he would leave- she felt her stomach go
queasy and her head begin to ache. She found that she could not look at him
anymore, and she stared down at the blood spots on the handkerchief instead. In
her ear, an echo of an overheard conversation that she'd tried and failed to
set aside, its continued presence rankling her more with each passing hour.
She'd heard, as everyone in court had heard, of Stannis Baratheon's claim that
the King had left behind no legitimate heir. The subject was whispered about in
the most secret places, for the Queen had made quick work of punishing those
unfortunate enough to be caught speaking of it. Sansa hadn't known what to
believe- none of Cersei's children favored Robert Baratheon, so perhaps the
idea was not so impossible- but she'd largely dismissed it as nothing more than
talk.
But what she overheard weeks later, from two passing Kingsguard knights- surely
just an ugly rumor embellished for effect, but even so...
What troubled her most about the whole thing was her own initial reaction to
the news. Rather than the expected revulsion and disgust, her immediate
response came in the form of relief. If this is true, then at least I know that
Jaime can father a child. And then she waited, waited for the horror that never
came.
Perhaps she'd seen too much, experienced too much. After the constant barrage
of death after tragedy after atrocity, perhaps she'd grown jaded to the point
where nothing could truly shock her anymore. Yes, it was a crime against the
gods- but the Targaryens did it for generations...
The more she thought about it, the more it seemed to fit together. She'd always
sensed something not-quite-right about Jaime's relationship with his sister-
they never looked at each other, behaved together the way she would with her
own brothers. At first, she'd attributed it to the fact that they were twins;
having shared a womb, they surely had a different sort of bond than ordinary
siblings would. But this- this made a startling amount of sense. There was a
harmony to the notion that she found weirdly satisfying, like discovering the
last piece to a puzzle.
What kind of a person have I become?
Sansa didn't know whether she truly believed it. If there were any proof, they
would surely be dead already- Cersei and Jaime and Tommen and Myrcella. But the
fact that she could conceive of it, that she could hold the idea in her mind
without attacking it with righteous indignation- that was the thought that
unsettled her stomach. She'd become sufficiently corrupt, tarnished enough that
she could manage to think like a Lannister.
And this is why I will take my children far, far away- this is why I will
shelter them in Winterfell, why I will keep them away from this place and these
people. They will not end up like me.
Sansa threw a glance over her shoulder- Jaime was still there, staring off into
nothingness. She almost asked him what he thought about, then realized that she
might not wish to know. There had always been a chasm between them, there
always would be- they'd neither of them wanted this marriage, after all. His
distant gaze, tinged with something hopelessly wistful- she remembered him in
Lord Tywin's chambers; the golden Lion of Lannister, the infamous Kingslayer,
suddenly meek and helpless. Her stare wandered to his golden hand, glowing in
the afternoon sun- she looked back up to his face, the worry lines starting to
form around his jaw- Do you think me handsome, Sansa? A crushing in her chest,
somewhere between sympathy and despondence, as she realized: He may have
created his cage on his own, but he's as trapped as me.
Impulse urged her to take his hand- he flinched as his reverie abruptly
ended. He's broken, we all are, but he wants to protect me.
"Jaime," she said, her voice soft. His eyebrows lifted with surprise- she very
rarely called him by his name. Her grip grew tighter as she gave his arm a
little pull. "Jaime. I want-"
I want you to tell me it's a lie, what they're saying. I want a baby, I want
dozens of babies. I want to go west and walk barefoot on the pebbled beaches
and breathe the salt air. I want Winterfell and the North and the cold ground
and ice-blue sky. I want to go back, back to a time when I could dream and
imagine and really believe it all to be possible.
She felt a knot in her throat, and she paused to swallow it. As she did so,
Jaime braced his back against the tree and slid down until he sat beside her.
He did not touch her, much to her relief, but he looked at her with eyes too
full for her to bear.
He finished her sentence for her: "You want to fly away."
Sansa wanted to cry out, to shout "Yes" into the heavens- this place is poison,
I want to go, go, go, westward and northward and onward-
She'd asked him, once or twice or ten times, when they could leave for Casterly
Rock. His answers had always been vague- "soon," "not long" - and he'd
responded the last time with a layer of steel beneath his voice, enough to
dissuade her from asking again. She did not know why he hesitated- or rather,
she likely did know, and she hated that she knew. For Tywin and Tommen and
(probably most of all) for Cersei- but doesn't he see, if he gets away from
here, he might have a chance at being free-
He wants to protect me. Maybe he can protect himself, too. Maybe I can help.
She moved closer to him, until her arm brushed against his. He'd turned his
head to look forward- she rested her chin on his shoulder and whispered into
his ear, "And you with me, Jaime. We'll get away from here, be lord and lady of
our own land, and no one can tell us what to do..."
She was starting to sound like a child again, and she bit down hard on her lip.
Jaime flicked his emerald gaze onto her face. "You forget, little wife, that as
long as he lives, my father is still the Lord of Casterly Rock."
She frowned, both at the words and at the tone of resignation in his voice. But
then a thought came to her, an epiphany both appalling and thrilling at once-
she nearly hesitated to say it aloud, but then-
"But you are the Lord of Winterfell."
She knew the shift in his expression, knew that he was preparing to say
something derisive about the barren northlands- she fixed him with a blazing
stare, as though daring him to slight her homeland, the land of the Starks, the
land she'd give her children.
Something like contrition passed over his face, and he gave a slow nod. "I
suppose that's true."
A Lannister lord in Winterfell- unspeakable. But perhaps he could come with
me...once we were there, he would see, surely, that I must be in the high seat-
I am the Stark in Winterfell. And he'd see why I want to protect the
northlands, he'd see what his son- what  my  son - will inherit...
Sansa pulled Jaime's arm around her shoulders and settled her cheek against
him. "Did I ever tell you about the northern lights?"
She felt his arm tighten around her as they sat together, as she described the
beautiful streaks of color that painted the northern sky bright. She felt his
fingers in her hair- they would lie together that night, he would release his
seed in her womb, and perhaps this time, it would take. Maybe after he was
spent, when he was relaxed and holding her to his chest, maybe then she would
ask again when they could go away.
As she continued the story, she caught sight of a mockingbird in the courtyard
beyond, hopping along over the cobblestone pathways. It tried to launch itself
into flight, over and over, but never hovered more than a fingerslength from
the ground. Sansa noticed one wing, damaged and bent, unable to flap and carry
its body aloft. In spite of the futility, it tried again and again, and Sansa
felt oddly bolstered by its persistence- and then it stopped. It released a
chirp, expressive and impossibly human- a sound of absolute defeat.
She finished her story, sat quietly with Jaime against the oak tree, watched
with a heavy heart as the mockingbird slowly hopped away and out of view.
***** Chapter 11 *****
Cersei Lannister did not like to sleep alone, nor did she like to drink alone.
She wondered sometimes whether this compromised the independence in which she
so prided herself, but she always rejected the idea with a smirk and a scoff.
Her ladies-in-waiting knew it their responsibility to share her bed, and she'd
kept a fairly steady rotation for a while- that is, before she found Taena
Merryweather. Cersei rarely relished the company of other women- she only
wanted a warm body in her bed, and at least with a woman she wouldn't have to
suffer the trouble of pleasuring her bedmate- but Taena amused her with her
stories of lands far away, with her sharp tongue for gossip and her exquisite
beauty, different enough from Cersei's that she seemed exempt from the
bitterness that the Queen usually harbored for comely women. She'd grown fond
of waking in the circle of Taena's arms, the spicy fragrance that she wore
clinging to the bedlinens and the gold and black hair meshed together. She
sometimes believed that she saw Taena's eyes darken with something like desire,
and she even started to find the idea vaguely intriguing.
And so when the Queen Regent informed Lady Merryweather that she would not
require her services that evening, she was unsurprised to see a pang of hurt
cross Taena's magnificent face. Lady Merryweather had followed the frown with a
rather ribald comment, implying that Cersei intended to take a lover to bed
with her that night- she knew she ought to chastise her waiting woman for such
impertinence, but she only laughed and shook her head. "I've a new lady-in-
waiting, my dear, and she must take a turn." With that, she stroked her hand
over the other woman's glossy dark hair and left her to her pouts and sighs.
As she sat cross-legged on her bed, her newest attendant combing her long
golden hair with gentle strokes and barely-trembling hands, Cersei felt quite
pleased with herself. Oh, Jaime had been upset- furious, really- when Cersei
informed him that she'd be plucking his wife from Margaery's little bower and
installing her permanently in her own coterie of ladies. He'd initially tried
to act nonplussed, giving her only a quirk of an eyebrow and a sardonic,
Tyrion-esque comment about Taena: "And here I thought your taste in women ran
more toward the...exotic." But she saw the muscles of his jaw working under his
skin, the tightening of his shoulders- why he even bothers to try and hide
anything from me, I'll never understand. Eventually, he abandoned the
facade and looked her hard in the eye, his voice so serious, tinged with a
plea- "Cersei, please. Let her be."
If she hadn't already made up her mind about it, that certainly would have
settled the matter.
Cersei halted the girl's hands after the one-hundred-and-twentieth stroke and
slid from the bed to retrieve a glass from the table. A syrupy mixture of herbs
and heated wine swirled stormily in the goblet, dark and thick and ominous.
Cersei pushed her nose into the glass and inhaled deeply- Gods keep you,
Taena, you marvelous creature. Lady Merryweather had told her enough of
the Myrish spices and their mind-altering properties to thoroughly pique the
Queen's interest, and after Taena gifted her with a parcel of dried stems and
florets, Cersei resolved to save the tincture for a special occasion.
Special, indeed. Sansa balked, of course, murmuring her tedious fears
about drinking anything peculiar- it had become something of a bad joke around
court, Lady Lannister's desperation to conceive a child. Cersei found herself
torn between genuine pity for the girl's plight and a perverse satisfaction
with the indignity of it all. She knew that Father had bought one of Sansa's
maidservants and instructed her to deliver intricate reports on Sansa's cycle,
what she ate and drank, how often she and Jaime fucked- as if he's
breeding tourney horses.
And she found that she liked it, liked to see Jaime treated as nothing more
than a Lannister stud- this is how it should always have been; were he
born with the cunt and I with the cock, he would have been sold as I was...no
reason for a mistake in anatomy to interfere with our fates...
She could sputter and mutter all she liked, but Sansa obviously had no choice
but to obey the Queen's command. Cersei watched as the girl took a sip of the
liquid- watched her eyes glaze a little as the aromatic spices wafted into her
nose- and frowned when she failed to notice any movement in Sansa's throat.
Quick as could be, she placed a hand on either side of Sansa's face and lightly
pressed her cheeks. "Swallow."
Sansa's eyes narrowed, but the muscles in her face had already begun to
relax...she swallowed, inhaled, exhaled. "What is this?"
"It will relax you." Cersei leaned back against the cushions and sighed with
contentment. So much time spent with a clear head, always sharp and on-guard
and alert- altogether too much lucidity. It felt wonderful to release and float
above herself; she took Sansa's hand and ran her thumb over the short, jagged
fingernails. "Are you not tired, Sansa?"
"Yes," the girl breathed. Cersei closed her hand over Sansa's and nearly
giggled as she realized how comically small it was, especially for such a tall,
long-limbed girl - any smaller, and her hands might be considered a deformity.
That idea tickled her even more, and she did laugh this time.
Sansa's face may have grown slack, but her fingers still tap-tap-tapped- Cersei
gripped Sansa's hand tighter, until she had no choice but to still her
movement. "You're such an anxious child," the Queen mused, her voice suddenly
sounding very far away. She smiled as a memory came upon her- "I was an anxious
child. Hardly anyone knew...Father expected perfect poise from his perfect
daughter, you see. But I used to grind my teeth in my sleep...the nurses tried
everything, it was no use...and sometimes I'd grow so nervous that I couldn't
breathe properly, and I'd have to put my head between my legs like this"-
Cersei moved to the side of the bed and dropped forward at the waist, until her
hair hung nearly to the floor. She continued to speak, still leaning over:
"Jaime would sit with me and rub my back until I could breathe again, and then
we'd go about the day as if nothing had happened."
The blood rushed to her head in a rather pleasant burst of warmth, and Cersei
allowed herself to stay in position for a few breaths. And then a hand rested
on her back, rubbing in circles slow and deliberate- exactly the pressure and
tempo of Jaime's ministrations, all those years ago. Gods, it is so
good...she sighed, let her eyes flutter shut. At once, she imagined Jaime
sitting behind Sansa, tending to the knotted muscles of her bare back. She
imagined the girl sighing as Cersei was doing now, imagined her arching into
Jaime's touch, imagined him leaning down to kiss the side of her neck...
Cersei straightened her back and sat upright. Sansa removed her hand with a
start, but her eyelids grew heavy and a misty smile teased at her full pink
lips.
The Queen drank again from the goblet, waited for Sansa to do the same.
Hands found hands again, and Cersei shook her head slowly, side to side. "So
little," she mused. "But such a lucky little girl. Do you know how lucky you
are, pet?"
"Am I?" Sansa sounded breathless, as though she'd just run circuits around the
castle yards. Cersei nodded, releasing one of the girl's hands to stroke her
auburn hair- thick and coarse, nowhere near as fine as mine...or
Jaime's...
"They all wanted him, sweetling. All of the girls wanted my brother...my
perfect, golden brother. Even now that he's a lion missing a paw, women's eyes
follow him. You've noticed, I'm sure."
Sansa blinked quizzically, as though the thought had never once entered her
mind. Such a peculiar girl. Although she quickly discovered the
futility of caring, Cersei had never failed to spot the women angling after
Robert. She gave her head a quick shake to rid herself of thoughts of her
little-lamented husband before proceeding:
"I would never let him be given to just anyone, Sansa. But you..."
She traced her fingertips over the side of the girl's face. "You are special."
Sansa mouthed the word after her, blue eyes laughably wide, a faint flush
creeping into her cheeks. Cersei nearly rolled her eyes at the naivety-
 yes, you little fool, you're young and pretty and the highest-born girl
in the Seven Kingdoms...but then she considered the girl's broken engagement,
the humiliations before the court, the forced marriage to Tyrion... There had
been a moment before that wedding when Cersei looked at Sansa in her white
dress, fresh as a lily and pure and radiant- and it all felt so terribly wrong,
so miserably unfair- Cersei found herself thinking, I'd marry you myself
if I could, sweetling.
I'd marry you myself.
"Is my brother good to you, Sansa?" Cersei kept her hand on Sansa's face,
stroking her cheekbone in rhythm.
"He is very kind, Your Grace." Her voice sounded just as far away- Gods,
the Myrish must be mad, to take this on any regular basis- mad, or brilliant...
"Just kind?" Her fingers trailed down to the curve of Sansa's neck. The blush
on her cheeks deepened, and her smile grew a bit wider. Cersei kept her voice
low, thrilling in the whisper- "And strong, too, is he not?"
"Yes," Sansa replied. Cersei cupped her shoulder in hand, and Sansa gave a
shudder that clearly had nothing to do with revulsion. Heavy-lidded blue eyes
met heavy-lidded green ones, and Cersei finished-
"And handsome. Jaime is so very, very handsome."
"Yes." Sansa brought her little tiny hand so close to Cersei's face- she barely
brushed the sides of her fingers over a piece of flaxen hair. "Your face...is
so like his."
It pleased her to hear that, even now. Of course, she knew it to be less true
than ever, and not only because of her brother's short-cropped hair and
beard. The years do not deal equally with men and women- yet another
injustice thrust upon us by vindictive gods. Cersei could see herself
fading, day after day after day- every morning a new crease, every evening a
new silver strand of hair. She'd taken to wearing cosmetics- kohl around her
eyes, rouge on her cheeks - something she'd never done before. But whatever
might have befallen the rest of him, Jaime's face only grew finer with age, the
lines and edges adding a masculine gravity that had been lacking in his
prettier youth.
A man in his prime, deserving of a lovely young wife.
Oh, and how lovely she was. Cersei remembered what she'd seen in Sansa Stark,
when the girl had come to King's Landing all those moons ago- a pretty child,
the daughter of the Hand, betrothed to the Crown Prince...herself as she would
have been, if not for Aerys' absurd vendetta against her father. But the dreamy
little lass was gone, replaced by a young woman with long, coltish legs, ample
hips, and a bosom at least as full as Cersei's own. Beneath Sansa's diaphanous
shift, Cersei could see the little pink peaks of her nipples- she imagined
Jaime's mouth on them, his hand skimming over her flat stomach, her perfect,
unblemished skin- Gods, she was beautiful, all russet and blue and white,
innocent and yearning and clean-
Cersei gripped the sides of Sansa's face and drew her close, raking her fingers
through the red curls. She smiled, tried to ignore the pricking in her chest
when Sansa eagerly returned the smile.
"Sweet girl," she sighed.
And she didn't know what she sought, when she pulled the girl closer and
pressed her mouth to Sansa's. But once she felt Sansa's lips, dry and chapped
beneath her own, she felt a desperate desire to breathe in the youth and the
beauty and the possibility, to possess her, to become part of her-
 Jaime's been inside her, I must be inside her, too...
She bit down hard on Sansa's lip, running her tongue over the resulting drop of
blood. She felt Sansa's mouth moving against hers, felt the girl's hand in her
hair- but the tang of the blood, harsh and sharp and bracing- behind her
eyelids, she saw the darkness of maiden's blood on her silver ring, the blood
that flowed down Sansa's back after her beatings before Joffrey, the blood that
spurted from Ned Stark's neck when his head tumbled down-
Cersei broke the kiss, panting heavily, and lowered her face. But Sansa cupped
her chin in a dainty palm, tipped her head up, stared her straight in the face,
spoke in a voice so plain and clear and earnest-
"Cersei. Your eyes... they are so sad."
And she could hold it no longer- her arms coiled around Sansa, and she buried
her face into the lush thicket of red-brown hair. She clung to the girl,
breathed her scent, couldn't stop the tears from spilling over her cheeks as
she sobbed with abandon-
"I am sorry, Sansa. I am so sorry."
She wept for what seemed like hours, days, years. All the while, Sansa's hands
smoothed over her head, cradled her to her chest, rocked her like a child as
she repeated again and again, until her voice failed her-
"I am so sorry."
===============================================================================
Cersei awoke with a throbbing in her head and the crust of dried tears and
mucus on her cheeks. A sickly, squelching feeling seized her stomach as she sat
bolt upright and waited, waited for Sansa to awake, prayed that she'd forget
all that happened between them, that the night could fade into obscurity, never
to be spoken of again.
The redhaired girl stirred, opened her eyes. When she found the Queen awake,
she pushed herself up on the pillows and met Cersei's gaze.
A harsh sting of bile crept into Cersei's throat - she'd seen that exact look
before from Sansa's father, when he'd stroked her bruised skin and spurned her
advances. Cersei felt her muscles and heart harden, for what she saw in the
eyes of Sansa Stark Lannister, the put-upon little victim and powerless pawn-
what she saw was pity.
And above all else, pity was something that Cersei Lannister could never and
would never forgive.
 
***** Chapter 12 *****
Like most right-minded people, Sansa had always felt quite repulsed by the
notion of insanity. She equated it with the Mad King, with his deep-seated
paranoia and fondness for burning innocent men alive. She also thought of her
Aunt Lysa, sequestered in the Eyrie, who Mother always called "touched" in a
tone that implied something broken and almost sinister.
These were people to be feared or pitied. And yet when she thought of them now,
Sansa could not help but consider their perspectives, the terror of living
inside a world where everyone is an enemy, where nothing is ever safe, where
keeping oneself in one place, in one piece, seems impossible.
I understand that, I feel it all the time. I suppose I must be mad, too.
She left the Queen Regent's chambers that morning in frantic haste, her head
still swimming with the effects of the drink, her heart pounding and breath
quick. Panic pressed like a stone wall at every side, and she ran through the
corridors, knocking past servant girls and squires and anyone else unfortunate
enough to find themselves in her path.
Her lower lip still throbbed where Cersei had bitten her- her cheeks burned,
tingled painfully- I kissed her back. And then the crying and the
apologies and the morning, when the Queen Regent had looked at Sansa, green
eyes blazing with something angry and cruel and brutal and dangerous-
She ducked into an archway and vomited into a large urn. The liquid expelled
from her stomach was blood-red and thick- she could taste the Myrish herbs in
her mouth afterward. A lift of the arm to wipe the residue from her lips, and
she was off again.
Her maidservants descended upon her at once, but she ordered them all out. When
they hesitated, she began to scream, screamed until her throat went raw. This
frightened away most of them, but Shae kept hold of her shoulders, trying to
look her in the eye and speak to her evenly- Sansa watched as though outside
herself as she lifted her right hand and struck the back of it across the dark-
haired girl's face.
Shae's beautiful black eyes widened, and Sansa felt at once deeply ashamed. But
instead of an apology, she only hissed: "Leave. Now."
When she found herself alone at last, Sansa tore through the chamber like a
tempest, rummaging under furniture, opening wardrobes, digging through
chests. I'm leaving now, I'll go without him, I don't care, I have to get
out, have to get out before anything else happens-
In spite of the chaos she'd created in the room, she opted against bringing
most of her belongings. In the end, she filled her rucksack with only the grey-
and-white Stark cloak she'd worn to her wedding, a brooch that had belonged to
her mother, and the tattered, blood-stained remnant of Sandor Clegane's
Kingsguard cloak. He wanted to take me away from here...he offered, and I
refused him. I was such a fool...
She slung the rucksack over her shoulder and made for the door, exhilaration
sparking through her veins- but then the doubts came, each one slowing her
pace:
Where am I going? How will I get there? Will I make it through the woods
without being attacked or raped? What if the Queen sends someone after me? What
if Jaime comes looking for me?
Logic clogged her bloodstream and seized her muscles, and she shook so
violently that she thought she might break, just shatter like glass. The terror
and the excitement and the disappointment all pushed at her guts and she dry-
heaved a few times, purging only a bit of stomach acid. So splintered and
disjointed, even the slightest breath of wind would burst her apart and carry
her every which way- Let it happen, let me go, she thought boldly,
but then she grew frightened again- I am not brave, I am not Robb or Jon
or Arya, I am just me...just me, here with no protection, without even a child
in my womb to keep me safe...and I am still afraid, afraid to die, afraid of
the pain...but it wouldn't even be death, Cersei and Lord Tywin are too clever
for that, they'd think of some new and creative way to ruin me...
She felt suddenly exposed, overwhelmed by vulnerability. She needed to hide
somewhere, to wedge herself into a little nook and keep her pieces together...
Her eyes lit upon a tiny space between the wall and the huge armoire that
concealed most of Jaime's weaponry. Opening the rucksack, she withdrew Sandor's
cloak and held it to her heart. Although she'd grown tall and her legs and arms
seemed longer each day, Sansa still had the ability to curl herself into a
compact package. She crawled in, the bloody fabric balled in a fist, and drew
her knees to her chest, the tightness of the space making her feel at once
trapped and secure.
She buried her face in the piece of cloak and breathed. The sharp scent of
blood still clung to it, after all this time- she wanted to cry, but the
dryness of her eyes refused to abate.
Voices began to leak into the room- her maidservants returning, whispering
amongst themselves, all concern and confusion and apprehension- people
don't like to be close to madness, in case it's catching.
But Sansa heard none of it. She just closed herself up in her own mind and went
away. This felt different from her other flirtations with eccentricity- the
hunger protest and ludicrously-conservative clothing seemed like childish games
in comparison. And yet there was something familiar; this separation of her
mental and physical beings bore a great similarity to what she'd done to cope
with her beatings at the hands of Joffrey's Kingsguard. When they would strike
her again and again, lash after lash over her back until the skin cracked and
blood streamed over her backside and down her legs, she would simply fly up and
out, staring down at her body with a distant sort of fascination, as though it
all were happening to someone else, somewhere else.
She remembered a story she'd heard once, of a lord who kept his mad wife locked
in a tower for years and years. Even after he'd taken another wife and started
a new family, she remained there, her howls of pain and laughter haunting the
castle until the day she died.
The notion seemed almost romantic in its sadness- the singers would surely
write about me if Jaime locked me away...I always used to dream of being a
character in a song...
Her servants took turns kneeling against the wall, trying to coax her out, but
they may as well have been speaking in tongues for all she understood. She did
feel a little pang of guilt when Shae whispered to her with that velvet-smooth
voice, but she still refused to yield.
After what might have been minutes or hours or days, she heard a man's voice
among the twittering of women, sensed the commotion dwindling, the bodies
filing out of the room until everything grew very quiet.
Peripheral vision showed her a glint of gold, but she kept her head bowed down,
kept her face pressed into the stained cloth.
None of her maidservants had tried to touch her- no doubt out of self-
preservation- but Jaime insinuated his hand into the tight crevice and placed
it on her knee, undaunted by her shuddering.
He spoke in a soft, gentle tone, one that he might have used in the past to
calm spooked horses. "What happened, Sansa? What did she do to you?"
Sansa only squinched her eyes tighter and pressed her face harder into her own
fists. She's breaking me, and she won't stop, not ever...she'll keep
chipping away until there's nothing left...
Jaime sat on the floor and slid over until his face and body filled the sliver
of space between the chamber and her cranny. He stroked his hand over her leg,
his voice dulcet and nearly seductive-
"Tell me, sweetling."
She jolted at that last word, and the back of her head smacked hard against the
wall. His cadence, exactly like his sister's...against her better judgment, she
glanced over and caught sight of green eyes and golden hair and she suddenly
had trouble breathing and her head ached so badly...
His hand tensed on her leg in reaction to the thump of her head against stone
and her continued refusal to utter a sound. When he spoke again, she noticed a
current of urgency beneath his words-
"If you tell me, I can help. Tell me, Sansa. I command it."
She startled herself with her impromptu response: "No. No, you can't help."
He inhaled sharply, but remained silent for a moment. His hand moved to close
over hers, and she felt him brush the edge of Sandor's cloak with his index
finger. If she looked over at Jaime's face now, she knew she'd see confusion,
maybe even consternation- He would have done what you will not, he would
have taken me away...
She could hear the set of his jaw, his patience wearing thin: "You're behaving
like a child."
"I am a child," she whispered in reply.
His finger halted its movement on the white fabric, and she heard him heave a
deep, beleaguered, weighty sigh. You sound so old when you do that...
She half-expected him to retreat after that, but he remained seated against the
wall; she felt his warmth through the crevice.
He did not know what to say to her, that much was obvious. She found herself
growing so tired, so tired of his excuses and his stalling...she remembered
that afternoon in the corridor outside the Tower of the Hand, when she'd turned
to him and asked "What use are you?"
That question seized her brain once again, and she felt cruel words pushing at
her mouth, fighting so hard to come out- she bit down on her lips to keep them
in, nearly crying out when her incisor pierced the bruise from the night
before.
At last, she spoke the words that had swirled in her mind all day, words that
may or may not have been true, but which felt correct in their gravity:
"I will not stay here- I can't bear it. If you don't get me out, I swear by the
old gods and the new...I will do it."
She listened as he sucked a breath in and held it- he understands.
Her volume dropped, and she continued at a volume somewhere between a whisper
and a growl-
"I'll do it, I'll find a way, and it will be on your hands."
She did not need to explain what the "it" was.
After a solemn, eternal silence, she heard him whisper, "Five days. Give me
five days, and we will leave at the end of the week."
A stirring, a shimmering in her chest and belly- but no, he's done this
before...how many times have I heard "soon", "not long"...?
The shouting from earlier had ravaged her throat, but she quite appreciated the
harsh, gravelly nature of her voice when she retorted: "I don't believe you."
A bolt of terror struck her when he pulled a dagger from his belt and placed it
in her hand. She turned to look at him fully, eyes wide and incredulous.
He extended his left hand to her, palm facing up. He raised his eyebrows, and
she knew at once what she was meant to do.
She struggled to disentangle her arm, but eventually managed to swipe the blade
over his palm, drawing a thin ribbon of blood. He waited for her to do the same
to her own hand before gripping it tight, their blood flowing together to
create an unbreachable seal.
"I will take you away in five days. I swear it."
The perspiration from both of their palms burned in the cut, but she welcomed
the pain as further validation of the promise. She held onto his hand- he
let me damage his one remaining hand, offered it as sacrifice- and allowed
him to guide her out from behind the armoire.
She found herself unable to stand, her legs stiff and aching from contortion
and disuse. Jaime lifted her as though she weighed nothing at all, and she felt
a little twinge of desire when her knees locked around his torso. She draped
her arms around his neck and rested her head against his, allowing him to carry
her into the bedchamber.
His beard prickled the shell of her ear as he breathed, "Good girl."
Her hands clenched on the back of his neck, and she felt him flinch when her
nails dug deep into the skin.
===============================================================================
The next day passed gently and quietly. Her episode from the previous day
proved drastic enough that her maidservants and the ladies of the court
refrained from approaching her, and she relished the time alone.
She began to arrange her things, this time in a much more orderly manner. As
she rifled through her dresses, she found a gown that she'd never had occasion
to wear, one that she'd entirely forgotten. It had been a bridal gift from Lady
Merryweather: a beautiful white sheath of Myrish lace. It revealed far too much
skin to wear in polite company, yet it seemed too fine to wear as a nightshift-
she stood before her looking glass and stripped down to her smallclothes before
pulling the garment over her head and fastening the delicate laces.
The material clung to her curves, highlighting her breasts, hips and tapered
waist. It scooped low both in back and front; when she turned around, Sansa
could see the gnarled evidence of her floggings, still violently pink against
her white skin. The sleeves also ended earlier than she would have liked,
reaching only to her elbows. She turned her wrists over and frowned at the
faint scars etched along her veins, put there months ago- a fledgling attempt
that mostly just embarrassed her now. When Jaime had asked about them, she told
him that she fell into a rosebush; she knew that he did not believe her, but he
pressed her no farther.
She swished her hips back and forth, liking the way the lace moved with her.
After checking to ensure that she was quite alone, she twirled about the room,
waiting in vain for the giddy lightness that would have accompanied this
activity back in Winterfell.
I'm leaving in four days...actually, three days, eighteen hours and forty-two
minutes... When the thought failed to lift her spirits to her
satisfaction, Sansa stopped her twirling and leaned against the windowsill.
She could think of several reasons for her continued anxiety. Something
could still happen, Jaime could change his mind, I won't truly believe it until
I ride past the gates of King's Landing.
Yet she knew that none of those accounted for the gnawing at her insides. The
room suddenly felt stiflingly hot, and she decided to take a walk through the
grounds before night descended.
As she proceeded toward the door of the Red Keep, in her lace dress with no
cloak over her shoulders, she wished that she'd "gone mad" far earlier- no one
tried to stop her, no one interrupted. They whispered and stared, but she cared
not a whit about that.
The cool air of evening settled upon her skin, and she took pleasure in the
bracing chill. After she'd crossed several courtyards, she slipped off her
shoes and hose, letting her toes sink into the slightly-damp soil. She noticed
a smattering of tiny white flowers on the ground, flowers that she found
familiar. They used to appear on the hillside where Father performed
executions, clustering around the large, flat rock. Theon told her once that
the blood seeped into the dirt and spawned the blossoms, the flowers coming to
life in the wake of human death. He may have been jesting in an effort to
frighten her, but the whole idea felt upsetting and macabre, and she'd always
avoided the delicate, beautiful blooms.
But now she knelt on the ground and filled her hands with white petals,
twisting the stems together to form garlands. She stood and continued on her
way, draping the death flowers over her shoulders and arms as she proceeded
toward the brook.
The little river flowed through the outer courtyards, eventually emptying into
a pond in a clearing: her final destination. Her bare feet slipped a little on
the stones, but she continued to walk right along the water's edge, her flower
garland trailing in the stream. With her white dress and flowing hair and
flowers, she looked like the heroine of one of Old Nan's saddest stories, in
which the fair lady falls in love with a knight who does not return her favor,
and she pines for him until she perishes from heartbreak. Old Nan would always
describe in rather lurid detail the corpse floating in the water, cold and
beautiful, with flowers strewn throughout her hair.
The story seemed stupid now- she hardly even knew the knight, only saw him
from her window and spoke with him once. Any woman who falls in love with only
a pretty face is a fool and deserves what she gets...but of course, that's
always the way of it in songs.
When she reached the clearing, Sansa stepped away from the brook and stood in
the center of the grassy area. She realized with some shame that she hadn't the
slightest idea which way was north- the sun had set already, and she could not
read the stars. She vaguely remembered being present for one of Father's
lessons, when he taught the compass to Robb and Jon and Theon, but she hadn't
paid attention. I never paid attention to anything important.
She planted one foot firmly on the ground and pivoted her body to face front,
then to the side, then back, then to the other side, one two three four, in
even rhythm-
I stand tonight facing north, east, south, west...
Something about the steady rotation helped her to bring her mind to center,
like the whirring of a pottery wheel, shaping the clay to a single point. As
the moments passed, she at last identified what had been plaguing her all day-
I've felt very sorry for myself of late...I've blamed the Lannisters for
everything, turned myself into a victim...but the septons teach atonement,
taking responsibility for what happens to you...
Northeastsouthwest...
Jaime and Cersei are wrong about me. I'm not a good girl, I'm not a sweet girl.
I've been very, very bad. I've lied and betrayed and coveted and hurt others to
save myself.
Perhaps the gods are right to punish me.
She felt herself begin to slip into melancholia, but she instead clung to one
word and used it to pull herself up and out: Atonement.
If I do penance, maybe they'll let me go away and have my babies and finally be
rid of all of this...
She spun faster as she considered this. It was too late to do anything about
Lady or her father or Arya...too late to do anything about the thoughts she'd
have sometimes about Sandor while in bed with Jaime, too late to do anything
about the fact that she'd let Cersei kiss her and responded in kind...
But there is something else I can do.
Once she made up her mind, Sansa halted mid-turn. She watched the tiny points
of light pop in and out of her frame of vision, breathed in the night air,
shivered with apprehension and excitement and dread and anticipation...
But never once did the daughter of the North shiver with cold.
===============================================================================
Gaining access to the dungeon cells proved simpler than Sansa ever would have
expected. She'd spent the entire day reviewing her plan, forming contingencies,
visualizing it all and screening for error. She knew the guard who would be on
duty that evening; he was younger than the rest, and reasonably pleasant. She'd
caught him watching her once or twice, and she knew the gleam in his eyes, had
seen it often enough in recent months, as her body shed its childish gawkiness
and took on the shape of a woman.
Using this as the focal point of her strategy, Sansa brushed her hair until it
shone like copper, pinched her cheeks and bit her lips to bring a rosy glow to
both, and selected her most flattering gown: a dark-crimson frock that she'd
had for some time, but which fit her quite differently now. She'd worn it to
dine in the Great Hall a week earlier, and she'd felt rather overwhelmed and
more than a little flushed by the attention she received from the men of the
court. Even Jaime, who seldom looked at her with desire outside the confines of
their bedroom, let his eyes wander to the swell of her breasts at the low
neckline.
She dabbed a floral fragrance on her pulse points, checked her reflection once
more in the looking glass, and made her way down the corridors. As she walked,
Sansa felt herself begin to quail- she was useless at flirtation, always had
been. She tried to imagine how a woman like Cersei might handle herself in this
situation, but the thought made her stomach cramp and she shook her head to rid
herself of it. Instead, she looked to Margaery for inspiration- sweet, pretty,
sociable, duplicitous Margaery.
When she approached the guard, she called upon all of Margaery's coquettish
little tricks- she giggled and simpered and twisted a lock of hair around her
finger. She had some whisper-thin story prepared about wanting to bring Tyrion
a message from her husband- something that would never have withstood any sort
of scrutiny. But the guard scarcely seemed to hear her, distracted as he was by
the way her gold pendant necklace dipped into her cleavage.
After several tedious, embarrassing minutes of this, the guard unlatched the
door and gestured her through. "Call for me when you've finished, my lady," he
said with a smile, and she replied with effusive thanks.
Sansa had not known what to expect from Tyrion's cell, but she found herself
thoroughly dumbstruck by the sight that awaited her: Tyrion's small body
huddled against a wall, his wrists and ankles in shackles, his clothing filthy,
an unpleasant smell lingering in the air. She felt suddenly furious- this
is despicable, for a man of his rank to be kept in conditions that wouldn't
suit vermin...
She now understood the Lannister twins' vehement fights behind the heavy door
of Lord Tywin's study- it must make Jaime sick, to see his brother like
this.
The Imp lifted his head to look at her, and Sansa was surprised by the
alertness of his expression, the lucid hardness in his eyes.
His voice sounded a touch raspy and metallic- likely from disuse- but perfectly
clear when he addressed her:
"Lady Sansa Stark Lannister-Lannister. It has been a long time." His mismatched
eyes contained something steely and bitter as they swept over her body and then
back up to her face. "You've grown."
She started to bite down on her lip, but caught herself first. But she could
not prevent a flush of shame from appearing on her cheeks- he's right, I
should have come earlier...
"I would offer you a chair, but as you can see, my accommodations are sadly
spare." He pulled himself upright, struggling a bit with the chains; Sansa
moved to help him, but he waved her aside. "To what do I owe the pleasure,
sweet sister?"
She had some words prepared, but as she faced him, dirty and grotesque and yet
still so proud- she opened her mouth but released no sound, her jaw just
hanging slightly ajar as though she were simple.
He took advantage of her silence, a Lannister-esque sneer twisting his lips-
"My brother speaks of you, when he comes to see me- I think he's growing
attached." His grin became wider and crueler at the sight of her deepening
blush. "I suppose it's easier to spread your legs for a Lannister when he's
tall and handsome, eh, little wolf?"
In spite of her instinct to snap a retort, she lowered her eyes and kept her
counsel. I deserve this, every bit of it.
Tyrion's question hung in the air, seeming less rhetorical with each passing
second. Finally, Sansa met his stare, hoping that her voice sounded as contrite
as she felt-
"I know that there's nothing I can say to...no excuse for..." Her throat went
dry, and all the swallowing in the world could do nothing to budge the knot
forming at the base. "You've every right to blame me, my lo- Tyrion. You've
every right to despise me for what I've done...for the coward and fool that I
was...that I am..." She hoped in vain that he might say something to spare
her, but he kept quiet, still watching her with those uncanny eyes. She took a
few small steps closer, her volume dropping to a whisper- "I'm so sorry,
Tyrion." I sound like her..."I am so, so sorry..."
He watched her in silence for several moments, the flickering light of the
torch exaggerating the hideousness of the crater where his nose once was. Sansa
steeled herself for a barrage of cutting remarks, but Tyrion's expression
quickly softened, and he shook his head.
"I've plenty of blame to go around, Sansa, but very little of it belongs to
you." He slid back down along the wall and seated himself on the filthy stone
floor. "I knew that they'd arrest me, that was always my intention...but I
hoped that you'd make it safely away. And you would have, if that fool Dontos
hadn't gotten himself caught..."
Sansa felt the blood seep out of her face, the memory hitting her harder than
the stone wall she'd smacked her head against just two days earlier. "I thought
I dreamed that..." It had all seemed so like a dream- Ser Dontos sneaking her
out of the Keep, stealing her away toward the river- and then she awoke in that
horrible tower cell, strapped to a bed and surrounded by nursemaids.
"No, I'm afraid not." Tyrion sighed heavily. "The idea was to lock me away and
keep you free, but now we're both prisoners."
Something in his tone prompted her to say, "But I am innocent, and so are you."
He blinked with surprise, and she understood then- he really thinks I did
it, really thinks I killed Joffrey...and then a clammy sweat appeared on her
palms- he would have taken the blame to save me.
Sansa moved until she stood next to Tyrion and lowered herself to sit beside
him.
"I wouldn't, my lady-" he began, but she interrupted:
"I don't care." The grime had already begun to settle in her skirts, but she
merely shrugged it off and looked at the man at her side.
They were quiet together for a time, until Tyrion said in a beleaguered tone,
his voice unusually free of wryness or sarcasm-
"Innocent or guilty, it's all the same now. I think we both know Cersei well
enough to understand that she's not especially interested in actual justice."
"Yes," Sansa murmured. She looked away from Tyrion to stare down at her hands,
but she felt his gaze still upon her.
"She's hurting you, isn't she?"
"I don't think it's only me that she's trying to hurt...maybe not really me at
all." She surprised herself with her own candour- she'd never spoken these
words aloud to anyone. An exhale carried her next phrase, breathy and wistful-
"I just wish that they'd leave me out of it."
Out of the side of her field of vision, she saw Tyrion nod. "I always thought
it something of a blessing, Jaime being named to the Kingsguard. There's not a
girl in the world who deserves such a fate...not even your delightful Aunt
Lysa, who would have been the unlucky one had things worked out differently."
She turned to look him in the eye again. Tyrion pursed his lips, a glistening
of pity joining the torchlight in his pupils. "It's true, you know. Everything
you've heard about them."
She knew it, of course, but the confirmation from Tyrion stung more sharply
than she would have thought. A nod served as her only reply.
"Aside from the situation with Cersei, how has it been, with Jaime?"
She expected to see something lascivious in Tyrion's expression, but was met
only by genuine interest. It had been so long since anyone asked her how she
fared and actually wanted to hear an answer...
Sansa shrugged. "I feel...I feel sad for him, most of the time. There is much
he could do, but he never..."
Tyrion laughed, just a light, dry sound. "To know Jaime is to be disappointed
in Jaime."
She knew that she should come to her husband's defense, but Sansa could not
deny the truth of Tyrion's words.
Sidling a bit closer, Sansa said quietly, "He's going to come and see you
tomorrow. What will you say to him?"
"No more than I've said to him the other two-dozen times he's come, I expect."
"But this might be your last chance." Tyrion raised his eyebrows at that, and
she continued, "We're leaving for Casterly Rock at the end of the week...if you
tell him what he wants to hear, he might be able to convince Cersei..."
And Tyrion laughed again- this time a cold, hard sound. "You haven't grown
quite as much as I thought. Jaime does not influence Cersei- it's the other way
around, always has been. There's nothing he can do for me."
He pushed his right fist into his left hand and cracked his stubby knuckles.
"Casterly Rock, eh? Leaving the lion's den and fleeing to...another lion's
den."
"It has to be better than here," she replied crisply. Another lift of the
eyebrows, and she elaborated- "I won't have Cersei watching me all the time,
I'll be the lady of the house...I'll be safer there..."
At that, Tyrion reached over to grip her arm- she winced at the surprising
force of his fingers.
"Listen to me, Sansa. Are you listening?"
She nodded dumbly, eyes wide, breath short.
"It does not matter where you go, or who you go there with. Whether it be
Casterly Rock or Winterfell or the Free Cities or the ends of the bloody earth,
it does not matter."
A beat of silence, a dimming of the torchlight, an absolute, pervasive sense of
dread-
"As long as you are Sansa Stark, you will be safe nowhere."
***** Chapter 13 *****
Chaos and Jaime Lannister made comfortable companions.  On the
battlefield, surrounded by clashing and screaming and steel and blood and skin,
he used to find this sort of peace, this strange, meditative quiet. 
 
He strode through the corridors of the Red Keep in a hazy cocoon, barely aware
of the sounds buzzing around him- “The Hand is dead,” “The
Imp has fled”, gasps of shock and squeals of panic whirring into a sing-
song melody that nearly made him smile.  I must look quite deranged,he
reflected, but he did nothing to adjust his expression.
 
A pinprick of color in a darkened corner and a muffled sniff returned him to
the present.  He approached the archway and found Tommen huddled in the
shadows, pale-green eyes dewy and frightened. 
 
“What is happening, Uncle Jaime?” he whispered. 
 
And in a moment of impulse, Jaime did something he’d never done
before.  He knelt beside the boy-king and swept his nephew- my son-into
his arms, holding him tight to his chest.  The points of Tommen’s
heavy iron crown pricked at his skin, but Jaime did not loosen his grip, just
raised his left hand to stroke through curls of burnished gold.
 
A drop of moisture fell into the join of Jaime’s neck and shoulder, and
he pulled away from Tommen just enough to take the boy’s round face
between his hands.  Tommen winced a bit at the chill of cold metal against
his cheek, but he held still enough.  Jaime used his left thumb to brush a
tear away as the words came, soft and low- “All will be well.  Do
you hear me, Your Grace?  All will be well.”
 
He repeated the phrase again and again, hoping that he might convince himself
along with Tommen. 
 
A glance to the side revealed the Queen Regent and her ladies, hastening toward
the Tower of the Hand- he met Cersei’s gaze and strengthened his grip on
Tommen, even as her eyes narrowed. 
 
(Sansa scarcely slowed her pace as she rushed along in Cersei’s wake,
but she turned her head to give him her clear, comprehending blue stare, and he
felt at once strangely bolstered.)
 
Tempting though it was to retreat to his chambers that evening and avoid the
inevitable, he found himself drawn to the opposite end of the castle, where
Cersei awaited him in the hidden, all-too-familiar alcove near her
apartments. 
 
She stood still before the small window casement, pale moonlight painting her
loose hair with a spectral glow.  When she lifted her face to look at him,
Jaime quailed at the pure, naked despair behind her eyes. For a brief, mad
moment, he wished to hold her to him as he had Tommen, to whisper assurances in
her ear until she could breathe easily.
 
 
But instead he stood apart and waited.  She crossed to him slowly, coming
to a halt directly in front of him, so close that their chests nearly
touched.  Without thinking, he leaned into her, their faces less than a
hairsbreadth apart, until they breathed the same air, warm and thick and
tremulous. 
 
She began, as he knew she would-  “You went down to the dungeons
this morning.  You went to see him.”
 
An ache pressed at his heart as it occurred to him that Cersei spoke not in the
Common Tongue, but in the language they’d devised together as
children.  Perhaps she chose to do so in the interest of caution- there
are ears everywhere-but he let that idea fall away as he watched the swirl of
emotion in her eyes. 
 
He remembered a time, not very long ago, when he and his sister could
communicate easily without so much as a word.  They would merely sit
opposite each other and stare, passing their thoughts back and forth, and they
knew,understood completely, for his mind was her mind and hers his...
 
Her voice cried out in his head, although her lips never moved-
 
Tell me you didn’t do this.  Tell me that you did not betray me.
 
Jaime’s right arm extended of its own volition, the golden hand resting
on Cersei’s shoulder.  And she flinched, wrinkled her nose even as
her eyes continued to plead-
 
He felt at once incensed, and he leaned his weight into the gold until it
pushed hard into his sister’s soft skin. 
 
And what have you to say about betrayal?  You, who spread your legs for
Lancel and Kettleblack and Gods know who else...you, who forced me away, even
when everything I’ve ever done has been for you...

Jaime’s next words echoed aloud in their invented tongue- “Ask
what you mean to ask, and let’s have done with it.” 
 
She shifted her shoulders, but he refused to relinquish his hold.  When
she attempted to turn her face away, he lifted his left hand to hold it in
place.  A brightness appeared in her eyes that seemed, for a brief and
tormenting moment, like brimming tears-
 
And then she smiled at him.  The twist of her lips, the flashing of her
eyes- he’d seen it all before, two decades earlier, when he drew his
sword across Aerys Targaryen’s throat.  The Mad King had died with
his eyes wide open and a grin on his face, a grin just like the one Cersei wore
now...
 
“I am told that Sansa went to see him yesterday.” 
 
Jaime tightened his grip on Cersei’s hair, but she did not so much as
blink.  She only continued, and he realized for the first time how
bizarrely serpentine their language sounded-
 
“She may have knowledge of his plans to flee...I suppose we shall have
to sit her down before the septons and find out for certain.”
 
An image pasted itself before his eyes, of Sansa as he saw her when he first
returned to King’s Landing- thin and pale and weak and shaking, her hair
patchy and snarled from where she’d torn at it, her cheeks dampened with
desperate tears-
 
He shook his head, his sweat-dampened brow brushing against Cersei’s
with each back-and-forth.  “I will confess.  If you question
her, I will stand up and tell them that it was me...”
 
The second and third fingers of Cersei’s right hand pressed against his
lips; he felt the coolness of her rings on his chin.  “It is to be
expected, that you would come to your little wife’s defense. 
I’m afraid you’ve little credibility where she is
concerned.” 
 
And then he read her eyes again, heard her and felt her-
 
As long as I draw breath on this earth, so too will you.  I would kill a
thousand Sansa Starks to keep it so.
 
He nearly laughed at the blatant, ironic ugliness of it- how many innocents
must suffer to keep us together, sweet sister? 
 
She started to whisper, and the words twisted in his gut- “The things I
do...”
 
The golden hand slid upward and pressed against her throat with enough force to
make her cough.  She clawed at his forearm, her breaths growing thinner
and thinner as they glared at each other in unison-
 
He released her and waited as she sucked air frantically into her lungs. 
A traitorous little tear made its way out of the corner of her eye, tracing the
curve of her cheek. 
 
She stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over her skirts.  Her steps
carried her toward her bedroom door, and he made no move to stop her.
 
She spoke only one more phrase aloud, and it reverberated in his bones until he
knew not whether he wished to scream or laugh or cry-
 
“I will have justice done, Jaime.”
 
And he knew how she defined justice, how he once defined it- The rest of the
world can burn so long as our hearts still beat. 
 
Something in her eyes reached out and clung to him, begging for validation or
acquiescence or approval- but the revulsion pushing through his veins proved
too strong a current, and he dropped his gaze. 
 
When he looked up again, half a moment later, he caught sight only of a flash
of golden hair disappearing behind her bedroom door. 
 
He paced the alcove for a moment or two, his mind and senses full with Cersei
and justice and Cersei and right and wrong and together and apart and Cersei
and Father and Tyrion and punishment and consequence and Cersei, Cersei,
Cersei-
 
Then a rush of blood to his legs, and he crossed the castle with the abandon of
a madman- Cersei justice fire blood Cersei Jaime Cersei Jaime
 
Sansa.
 
 
 
Soft fingertips brushed over his burning cheeks, back and forth and back and
forth.  The fingers trembled intermittently, causing a little tickle on
the skin beneath his beard. 
 
He had managed to compose himself very slightly before entering their chambers,
but Sansa still approached him as though she’d seen a ghost, eyes
saucer-wide and face blanched.  He spoke not a word, but he clung to her
as he sank down to sit on the side of the bed.  Then she began the anxious
whispering-
 
“Jaime- Jaime, I’m so sorry about your father...it is a terrible
thing...”
 
His laughter filled the space between them, so hoarse it might pass for a
cough- of course, she thinks this is about Father....a sudden pinch of shame
twanged at him as he realized how little thought he’d given his
father’s death...how little inclined he felt to mourn.  Surely the
time for sorrow will come- there are more pressing issues now.
 
Green eyes searched her face as Jaime struggled for words- he had no wish to
frighten her, but she had to know, had to understand the gravity of the
situation, the very real danger about to befall her-
 
But before he could speak, Sansa pressed her palms to his cheeks and drew his
head toward her.  Her whisper in his ear bore a different tone from the
awkward, courteous apologies she’d been delivering, something more
grounded and forceful-
 
“Tyrion did not deserve what was being done to him.”
 
You cannot even begin to know. “No,” he replied, so quietly
that he doubted she even heard.
 
Sansa pulled away from him just enough to give him her eyes- those open,
earnest eyes.  “It was right, what you did.  You were
right.”
 
And he was grateful- grateful for whatever validation he could find, grateful
for her measured conviction.  But at the same time, he felt a pang of
frustration- haven’t you learned yet, that nothing is so simple? 
There is nothing that is purely right or wrong...
 
As little as he’d been able to give her, Jaime might have done well to
strip her of those shreds of idealism that still lingered about her- her
innocence had done her no favors, and had in fact wrought suffering beyond
belief-
 
But there was a part of Sansa Stark that would always need to believe in these
simple principles, just as her father did until the day he died.  And he
understood- he too would prefer simpler rules, a world without nuance. 
Above all else, he recognized this core of solidness in her soul as something
valuable and infinitely precious, and he could not help but wish to preserve
it. 
 
She deserves to live long and well,he found himself thinking as he brushed his
hands over her arms. Not just to exist, but to thrive.
 
His left hand clasped her right, and he felt a vague ache in his palm when the
thin dagger-cut from earlier in the week scraped against its fellow on
Sansa’s hand.  She jolted a bit at the contact, shaking her ruddy
head. 
 
“If we...if we can’t...I would not hold you to that oath, I
understand that things must be different now...”
 
Her voice remained impressively steady, but Jaime noticed a shift in her focus-
she tilted her gaze just enough to hide the disappointment that had surely
appeared in the crystalline blue.
 
But he gripped her hand harder and pulled a bit, startling her with a gravelly
utterance. “No.” 
 
He had her full attention now.  “I swore a blood oath, and I will
see it done.  You will be free of this place, you will leave and need
never return.  I swore it then, I swear it now.”
 
A flash of understanding passed across her face as she processed his choice of
words.  He felt a pall of sadness settle itself upon his shoulders when
she bit her lip and nodded before reclining against the pillows and pulling him
down over her. 
 
Jaime lowered his head to kiss her softly, as he might kiss any talisman before
releasing it into the depths of a pond or the swift current of a river. 
 
She toyed with a wisp of golden hair that fell over his brow.  A wistful
smile, and she murmured, “I think there may be some North in you, after
all.”
 
The statement was ripe for mockery, but he could not even entertain the
possibility when he realized that this was the highest praise that Sansa Stark
of Winterfell would ever give. 
 
It may have been a gross lapse of propriety, considering the turmoil of the
day, but Jaime made slow, deliberate love to his little wife, all the while
imagining her soft skin turning to dust, blowing away on the wind, north and
south and east and west.
 
He began to draw her over him afterwards, but she instead straightened herself
up on the pillows and lowered his face until it rested on her breast.
 
“Will you let me hold you?” she asked in that clean, guileless
voice that still sounded so like a girl’s.  He nodded his
agreement, wrapped his arms around the lower part of her waist as she settled
beside him.
 
Jaime nestled his head into the soft fullness of Sansa’s chest,
peppering the freckled skin with a few quick kisses before turning until his
ear pressed against her heart. 
 
He drifted into sleep with the thrumming of her heartbeat echoing in his head
like footsteps, carrying her farther and farther away.
 
 
 
After a fitful slumber, as his mind stirred to full consciousness but before he
opened his eyes, Jaime decided what he must do.
 
He let his eyes remain closed for a time, hiding in the blackness.  The
smoothness of Sansa’s skin beneath his good palm, the softness of her
body under his head- he strengthened his grasp on her and hovered there for a
moment, indulging himself in a brief fancy that he might keep her safe simply
by holding her too tight to budge. 
 
One breath, two, three, and he blinked himself awake.  He slowly
extricated himself from Sansa’s arms and sat apart, watching the rise
and fall of her chest.  Impulse leaned him into her, and he realized his
mistake as soon as his lips closed softly over hers; she breathed into the
kiss, moving her mouth along with his.  He felt entirely unprepared for a
farewell, and he scrambled for something, anything to say-
 
But when he broke the caress, she only nestled her face back into the pillow
and kept her eyes firmly shut. 
 
Jaime slipped from the bed and walked toward his dressing chamber, glancing
over his shoulder at the “sleeping” girl.  And for the first
time, he wished himself a pious man, that he might pray to the gods for her
safekeeping and believe that they would hear.
 
 
 
 
His plan was reckless, impromptu and dangerous- in other words, all that a
Jaime Lannister strategy ever was or would be.  Nothing but conjecture
could support his theory; he based it entirely on whispers and murmurings
he’d heard about Sansa’s first escape attempt on the night of
Joffrey’s passing. 
 
When the castle guards fished Ser Dontos out of the river and lifted the
unconscious Sansa from the bank, they found a mockingbird signet wedged in the
mud nearby.
 
He hadn’t the slightest idea how he would approach Baelish about this-
Jaime had little fondness for double-talk and witty evasion, so he generally
avoided conversation with the former Master of Coin.  Had he the
conversational skills of Tyrion- or even Cersei- he might have been able to
cushion his request in innocuous banter.  As it was, he stood awkwardly in
the door of Baelish’s apartments, exchanging shallow pleasantries as the
other man oversaw the arrangement of his belongings- he was, apparently,
preparing to depart for the Vale within the fortnight, to be wedded to Lord
Arryn’s widow.  Jaime muttered congratulations, accepted
condolences, parried words for as long as he could stand it before drawing
Baelish into a private enclosure and blurting out his purpose.  Baelish
reacted to the proposal with the expected slipperiness, until Jaime quite
literally backed him into a corner and hissed-
 
“I don’t care what your reasoning was- whether you wanted to
honor her mother’s memory or gain a valuable ally in the heir to
Winterfell or whatever else- but if you can still find it worth your while to
help her, I would be...”  He breathed in and out, then continued,
“...in your debt.”
 
Petyr Baelish pursed his lips very slightly, his grey-green eyes still filled
with a gleam of amusement that prompted Jaime to clench his fist. 
 
“Surely you realize that what you ask is treason, Lord
Lannister?” 
 
“What I ask is justice,Lord Baelish,” he corrected. 
Cersei’s voice began to ring through his headspace again, but he forced
it aside.  “Now that my father has passed on, I stand to inherit
Casterly Rock and all of its holdings.  If you do this, you will be
rewarded however you see fit.”
 
Baelish smiled, tilted his head.  “And if the girl will not come
willingly?”
 
“She will come,” Jaime replied, his tone clipped and quiet. 
 
“And what do you propose I dowith her, my lord?” 

Jaime felt a hot flush of temper rising in reaction to the lilt in
Baelish’s voice, but he kept his composure. 
 
“Hide her somewhere...anywhere safe and secret, where she won’t
be found by anyone.”
 
“Not even you?”
 
He lowered his eyes for a moment.  Baelish waited for him to swallow the
thickness growing in his throat, waited for him to reply-
 
“Not even me.”
 
 
 
The septons could burn incense all they liked, but none of their efforts could
mask the heavy, unyielding rankness of the air.  Jaime glanced this way
and that- the other men standing vigil over Lord Tywin’s body had their
heads bowed low, and he could see the tightness in their chests as they tried
to hold their breaths as long as possible.  One younger knight had his
tunic pulled up over his nose; Jaime raised his eyebrows at the boy until he
lowered the fabric and blushed.
 
He’d made it quite clear to Baelish that Sansa would be alone tonight
and pointed out the most effective escape route, but he left the rest to the
other man’s discretion.  Slippery and untrustworthy though he may
be, Baelish is no fool.  He has enough self-interest to know that it is no
small thing, to have the Lord of Casterly Rock in his debt.
 
The men stood in a silence punctuated only by the occasional cough or release
of breath.  Therefore, the choked sounds coming from the small figure
beside him proved highly conspicuous. 
 
Upon Cersei’s ridiculous insistence, King Tommen was to stand vigil
before his grandfather’s putrid corpse.  Never mind that he was a
child, never mind that he could barely keep to his feet from exhaustion, never
mind that his face went green with nausea each time he inhaled- Jaime watched
through peripheral vision as the boy bit hard into his lower lip, obviously
fighting to keep his tears at bay. 
 
He placed a hand upon the King’s shoulder and guided him away into a
corner, kneeling down and whispering-
 
“Would you like me to have you escorted back to your chambers, Your
Grace?”
 
Tommen shook his head violently.  “M-Mother says that I must
stay...she says that kings must be strong, that they must never be weak and
must never cry...”
 
Jaime felt his jaw tighten, and he cupped the boy’s face in his
hand.  “Your mother-” But he stopped, the harsh words dying
on his tongue.  “You are the King.  If you wish to go to the
corner and have a good cry, none will dare to question.  And if they do,
they’ll have me to contend with.” 
 
The King’s lopsided, bleary smile stirred something in Jaime, and he
leaned forward to kiss Tommen’s plump cheek.  “Take the time
you need, Your Grace, and come back when you’re ready.”
 
He rose to his feet and stepped back toward the center of the room.  The
stench assailed his senses once again, and he let his eyes flutter shut. 
As the flickering candlelight changed the quality of darkness behind the lids,
he saw a cavalcade of faces and figures- Tommen in despair, Cersei in
desperation, Tyrion in rage, Tywin in death- and Sansa, Sansa in flight.
 
When he opened his eyes again and stared down at the dais where his
father’s body rested, Jaime cursed the incense, blaming the billowing
smoke for the hot tears leaking from their ducts and spilling over his cheeks.
 
 
 
 


 
***** Chapter 14 *****
Under very different circumstances, Cersei would have found the entire
situation hilarious- or, at least, she would have laughed heartily at the
version of events as told by the bards of the court.
The minstrels and poets interpreted the flight of Sansa Stark not as a solemn
ballad of abduction or a dark tale of treachery, but instead as a tragicomic
love story. According to them, the beautiful young Lady Lannister pined
desperately for her grotesque former husband, enough that she stole away to his
dungeon and aided in his escape plot. And then, of course, she ran away the
very next night to join her beloved Imp, leaving her husband, the handsome
golden lion, a shamed cuckold.
There had been no sign of a struggle and no one to witness what occurred- just
an absolute disappearance, silent and flawless. The gossip swirled among the
guards and maidservants- some claimed that she'd left Jaime a note of apology
and farewell, others said that she made off with all of the Lannister jewels
that she'd been given at her wedding, still others that she'd been dabbling in
the occult and had vanished through the use of sorcery.
The Beauty and the Imp proved a vexing and inconvenient pair of folk heroes,
but Cersei felt reasonably confident that the sum of money offered for their
bounty would be enough to sway even the most romantic of sympathizers.
Jaime claimed to know absolutely nothing about his wife's whereabouts- claimed
it again and again and again, no matter how many times Cersei asked. Her nails
dug deep into her palms as she faced him, summoning every bit of restraint left
to her to keep from launching her fist into his nose, into the area near the
bridge where it had been recently broken, the bump that changed his entire
profile so that it no longer really resembled hers at all.
At the end of an especially circuitous conversation on the subject, Jaime
raised his eyebrows and said in an infuriatingly casual manner, "My wife has
left me for our brother, and I'm now the kingdom's most pitiful figure. The
sisterly thing to do would be to let me drink away my sorrows in peace,
wouldn't you agree?"
She gritted her teeth, stared hard into his eyes. You're lying, you must
be... Cersei searched the green depths of her brother's eyes, expecting to
discover the truth within, just as she always had- a repulsive, alarming shiver
clenched at her back when she encountered only blankness.
If I cannot read him anymore...
For all of his evasiveness, Jaime did dispel one of the myths about Sansa's
escape: the girl took nothing with her. Not her clothing, not her cloak,
certainly not the Lannister jewels- when Jaime returned to his bedchamber after
the vigil, he found everything exactly as he'd left it, with only the
conspicuous absence of his wife.
But, of course, Cersei had to see for herself. It's impossible, that she
could have disappeared without a trace - there must be something here,
something that these fools have missed.
Tingling with a sense of purpose, she waited for Jaime to depart for the
training yards, accompanied by that aurochs from the Stormlands that he
insisted on keeping around. He spent an inordinate amount of time with the
homely knight, more than ever since Sansa's departure. Cersei's lips curled,
more in a grimace than a smile, when she thought about the other songs, the
ruder ones, featuring the Kingslayer and his burly new mistress. House
Lannister has become a laughingstock once again. She thought on the
stories she'd heard of her grandfather, of the shame that her father had worked
tirelessly to destroy, and she felt her stomach grow heavy.
Cersei pushed open the heavy door and entered her brother's apartments. There
was the solar, filled with training equipment and maps and the occasional book,
strewn about in the haphazard manner that was Jaime's tendency. A slip of
weathered parchment caught under her heel; she plucked it from the floor and
found a note in Sansa's meticulous hand, instructing Jaime to change the
bandages on a scrape he'd received on his shoulder-blade. As she proceeded
through the solar into the dressing chambers, Cersei found a number of similar
letters scattered throughout. Some were Sansa's, but an equal number were
written in the wobbly scrawl that now passed for Jaime's handwriting. Notes of
reminder, notes of jest, notes of flirtation, notes about nothing at all-
Cersei clenched her fists around the parchment pieces, her head aching as she
thought on what she'd found.
She knew, of course, that Jaime was growing fond of the girl, in the way that
he might be fond of a lost little puppy-dog. But the air between them always
felt so strained, so fraught and uncomfortable and difficult- nothing
to suggest the simple communication of these letters, the warmth building
behind the closed doors of their chambers. Well, perhaps
not nothing...she scowled at the memory of a sunny afternoon one moon
past, when she'd heard merry voices in a normally-vacant corridor. She turned a
corner to investigate and beheld Tommen, sitting on a dirty stone floor with
several kittens crawling over his lap and shoulders, chatting with two figures
silhouetted against a large window. As she moved closer, she saw Jaime perched
on one side of the wide windowsill, Sansa's legs draped over his lap, rubbing
her ankles with his left hand as he laughed and smiled at the boy king. And the
girl herself, holding a grey kitten to her chest, her face relaxed and soft and
quite nearly happy-
Given the choice, she would have much preferred to come upon the two of them
fucking in an archway.
The Queen Regent entered Sansa's dressing chamber and immediately set to work,
opening wardrobes and chests, sifting through jewelry boxes, running an
inventory in her mind of the clothing she'd seen Sansa wear in the past-
Gods, she did not even bring her shoes.
Cersei rather liked puzzles; when she lived in the Tower of the Hand with her
father, they would sit together sometimes and play riddle games, games meant to
stimulate the mind. A knot started to form in her throat at the memory, and she
choked it down, replacing sadness with frustration. She's not this clever,
Tyrion's not this clever, Jaime is certainly not this clever.
Finally, her search led her into the bedchamber. While most married couples of
high rank kept separate sleeping quarters, Cersei had very deliberately offered
Jaime and Sansa only one bedroom, only one bed. The original suggestion had
been Lord Tywin's, in the interest of speeding along the production of a
Lannister heir. She recalled the furrow in Jaime's brow when he realized what
was happening, remembered raising her eyebrows and waiting, just waiting for
him to object-
But he never did. Oh, Jaime could be willful too, and he'd sooner force himself
to grow used to sleeping with the girl at his side than humble himself by
requesting separate chambers.
And it was not so difficult growing used to it, was it, brother?
While Cersei enjoyed logic puzzles and strategy puzzles, she had no fondness
for emotional puzzles, and she felt quite exhausted sometimes when she tried to
parse through her thoughts on Jaime's marriage. She'd been
so satisfied with it all at first, for so many reasons- her father's
approval, the chance to make her twin feel what she'd felt, when she'd been
handed to Robert Baratheon quite without her consent, the opportunity to punish
him for his constant, galling, perplexing insolence...
But then she'd think sometimes: Who punishes a man by placing a beautiful,
young, high-born maiden in his bed?
She was growing hot and angry again, and she needed to clear her head and
return to her task. Cersei stepped to the window casement and hurriedly opened
the glass panes, breathing in the bracing chill of the air.
A trunk rested on the floor beneath the windowsill. She knelt to open it,
nearly smiled when she realized what it was: Sansa's little hope chest.
She removed each item one by one: more of those ridiculous, frilly
nightdresses; a few sheer veils, meant to be worn beneath a circlet; a lace
slip that might have been modest enough at the time of her wedding, but which
would surely cling too tight and end too soon now-
Beneath the undergarments lurked a more private collection, one so infused with
desperate longing that Cersei nearly hesitated to touch: the baby blankets and
swaddling clothes. Each item carefully fashioned, perfect little stitches over
the grey and white material, forming patterns of running wolves and winter
roses.
Beneath the embarrassing wealth of Stark clothes- enough to outfit an entire
litter of wolf cubs- Cersei discovered a single blanket of scarlet wool, with a
beautifully-crafted golden lion embroidered into the fabric.
Her breath hitched in her throat as she tentatively lifted the blanket and
draped it over her lap, fingertips tracing the outline of the lion. As a child,
she'd had a blanket almost exactly like this one, sewn by her mother when she
and Jaime were only infants. Even after she outgrew the desire to sleep with
it, she kept it among her belongings, and it was the first piece of fabric used
to swaddle Joffrey after his birth.
She'd been proud, the day her son declared himself too old to sleep with a baby
blanket, and she suggested that he pass it along to his sister. But Joffrey
flew into a rage at that notion, choosing instead to fling the crimson cloth
into the blazing hearth. Cersei had leaped from her chair with a cry, but there
was nothing to do for it- she could only watch as the lion's proud visage
disintegrated under the flames.
And yet she could summon no anger toward Joff- that was just his way, her bold,
brash little princeling. When he fell, her beautiful golden boy, she'd wept
until no tears remained to her, a dark cavern opening inside her body, plunging
deeper and deeper- and then the rage, the desire to dig her nails into Tyrion's
hideous face and slash until she saw only red, the desire to clench her hand
around Sansa's slim white throat and squeeze until her blue eyes went dull. She
had them locked away, the vile little troll in the dungeons and the trembling
little wraith in the tower, she implored Father to try them both, but he told
her no, no, she's only a weak and stupid little girl, she knows not what she
does, and she's too valuable to destroy...
Cersei had no choice but to free the frightened damsel from her tower prison,
but she never stopped watching. And as she watched, she found herself less and
less able to define what it was about Sansa Stark, why she felt so
drawn to her and yet repulsed by her, why she wanted to cradle her against her
breast and dash the life out of her all at once, how she could fear and envy
and want and hate and care...
She sat cross-legged on the floor, head against the wall, and felt it coming
again. There were more and more days like this of late, days when the darkness
would seep in through every orifice, when the fire inside her flickered and
waned, the desperation and momentum giving way to despair.
She is gone. She is gone, and I'll not find her. No one else even cared to
look- Jaime seemed completely disinclined to search for her, as did the
Tyrells. And now that Uncle Kevan was arriving to replace his brother as Hand
of the King- condescending, useless Uncle Kevan- she'd have even less support-
And so here she was, facing threats from within- Margaery Tyrell, so pretty and
charming and very, very hungry, surrounded by powerful friends and family and
working tirelessly to court Tommen's favor- and threats from without- every day
a new story about the Targaryen girl across the sea, supposedly the fairest
woman in the world, the liberator of the weak and the literal Mother of
Dragons-
And, perhaps most alarming of all, the silent threat, the threat that could be
anywhere- the vanishing girl, the winter rose growing bolder and lovelier by
the day, the girl who dared look upon the Lion Queen with pity in her eyes-
Girls, girls everywhere. Not even full women yet, just an abundance of
stripling queens-
And then a chill, deeper and more terrifying than any that had come before-
" ...until there comes another, younger and more beautiful..."
Cersei bit down hard on her lip, pulled the lion blanket over her face- she
nearly choked on the thick scent of juniper, the weird sylvan fragrance that
followed Sansa everywhere.
I wanted to be in her, but now she's in me- I'll see her in every shadow,
around every corner, whenever the light is too bright or my sight too weak-
She recognized the spiral, had experienced it often enough in recent days- she
wrapped her arms around her knees and pressed herself against the wall, waiting
for it to pass.
And it would pass. She would rise again as Cersei Lannister, Lady of Casterly
Rock, Dowager Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, the hot blood of battle flowing
through her veins.
But in that moment, as she sat quiet and curled into a ball, visions of young
girls, beautiful girls, deadly girls rushing through her head-
She felt so very tired of fighting.
***** Chapter 15 *****
The Stark words, usually spoken in the South with derision, sometimes even
twisted into crude, rude japes, now proved incontrovertibly true. There had
been a persistent chill in the air for weeks, growing sharper and harsher by
the day. But in the Red Keep, Sansa had thick woolen shawls, a large hearth in
her chambers, her husband's body to keep her bed warm.
Now she lay on a pile of straw, wrapped in swaths of burlap and a few ancient,
mildewed furs. The wagon bumped down stony roads, and she felt her stomach
shift and squelch. But she forced herself to hold it down, knowing from
experience that the wagon wouldn't stop, no matter how ill she became. One long
day sitting in the darkness with the smell of vomit surrounding her had taught
her all too well.
The men who came for her were quick, efficient, and completely unfamiliar. They
wore heavy cloaks with hoods that all but obscured their faces, and while their
behavior toward her was taciturn and stern, there was no animosity in their
silence. She wondered briefly whether they were the Faceless Men of whom she'd
heard tell, but then she realized how silly that idea was; the Faceless were
assassins, and if she'd been placed in their custody, she'd surely be dead by
now. As they stole past the gates of King's Landing, one of the men handed
Sansa a piece of parchment, which she waited to read until they'd put some
distance between them and the city walls.
The letter was brief, concise, written in a flourishing hand and pressed shut
with a mockingbird seal. She scanned the words and learned that she was en
route to the Vale, under the protection of Petyr Baelish.
Petyr Baelish...strange. The former Master of Coin had paid her little
attention since her second Lannister wedding; he was pleasant and courteous
enough, to be sure, but he never attempted to engage her in conversation. The
only exception occurred one night two moons past, when the Lannister family and
a handful of courtiers retired to a sitting room after evening meal. Lord
Baelish began to ask the group a selection of riddles, none of which Sansa had
heard before. And yet she answered them all more quickly than anyone else; she
shuddered when she recalled the cold glint in Cersei's eyes and its perfect
match in Lord Tywin's.
(Jaime only laughed and patted her shoulder, lamenting the fact that there had
been no wager placed on the outcome of the game.)
When everyone rose to retire for the evening, Lord Baelish approached Sansa and
asked her how she'd guessed the answers to each riddle. She tried to explain,
tried to parse through her thought process as best she could. Littlefinger only
tilted his head and listened, and when she was through, he declared:
"You're quite a clever girl, you know."
That surprised Sansa; she'd grown so used to Joffrey and Cersei telling her how
very stupid she was. No one had ever called her clever before- pretty and
gentle and sweet and accomplished, but never clever. She felt her cheeks grow
warm, not with embarrassment, but with a flushed sort of pride.
She remembered hearing that Lord Baelish planned to wed her Aunt Lysa; the
latter was one of her only surviving relatives, and she supposed it did make
some sense, that she'd find refuge in her home. And yet she couldn't ignore the
uneasy memories of whispers between her mother and father, whispers about poor
addled Lysa, poor fragile Lysa, poor peculiar Lysa...
She can't be worse than Cersei.
The journey passed uneventfully; Sansa couldn't help being impressed by the
facile way that her companions moved from town to town, gathering supplies as
needed but never stopping in one place for too long. But she was rarely
permitted to leave the wagon- only a couple of times a day to pass water. She
felt her legs weakening from disuse, knew that her skin must be snow-white from
lack of sun exposure- and Gods, the nausea, the hideous sickness that never
seemed to end.
At last, the tiny caravan halted, and one of the men wrapped Sansa in a dusty
carpet and slung her over his shoulder. They entered the Eyrie in the dead of
night, through a tiny back staircase that led into a vertiginous tower. Too
languished to speak or move, Sansa let her body go as limp as a cloth doll's,
her head and arms bumping against the man's bony back with every step up the
stairs.
The thump of her body landing on stone, a pull to unwrap the carpet, and Sansa
found herself sprawled on the floor of a dim chamber, looking up at the figure
of a woman.
Lysa Tully Arryn peered down at her niece, blue eyes small and glassy within
her plump face. She blinked, tilted her head, spoke in a tone that made Sansa's
skin prickle- artificially high-pitched, bizarrely complacent-
"My goodness, child. You do look a fright."
Lysa lowered herself into an armchair and waited for Sansa to find the strength
to rise to her feet, but made no effort to help her. Sansa felt her legs
tremble as she stood before her aunt, a woman she hadn't seen since earliest
childhood. She brushed a hand over her hair to clear out the dust and bits of
straw, and her voice came in a clumsy mumble:
"My lady aunt...I thank you for...I know that this must be a terrible
imposition-"
The Lady of the Vale scoffed before replying, "Petyr would never ask unless it
was important. And how could I refuse to help dear Cat's little daughter?"
There was something in the glint of her eyes and the lilt in her voice that
Sansa immediately misliked, but she only nodded and continued to murmur her
thanks.
Lysa stood and waddled to the far wall of her chamber. A light push on the
stones revealed a concealed door, leading to a tiny, windowless room. "We'll
have to keep you in here for the time being. Petyr made it very clear that no
one can know where you are, not until he arrives."
Sansa peered into the narrow space- barely more than a cupboard, really- and
felt her stomach churn again. It's like the room in the tower, the room where
they locked me up, where I thought I was going to die...
"And...when might that be, my lady?"
A misty glaze passed over Lysa's eyes, and she breathed a strange, sentimental
sigh- "Soon. Very, very soon."
Lysa granted Sansa the use of her bathing chamber- although she paced and
tapped in obvious impatience, which made the experience less than relaxing.
When she was through, she clothed herself in a hand-me-down nightdress of
Lysa's, one that absolutely dwarfed her in its voluminous folds.
Before she disappeared behind the hidden door, Sansa felt Lysa's hand in her
damp hair; she looked her aunt in the eye, quailed a bit at the intensity of
her stare, tried not to think how strongly it reminded her of Cersei's.
"You look so like her." Lysa tightened her grasp on Sansa's hair, nearly
pulling the auburn strands. The younger woman held fast, in spite of her desire
to recoil. And then an abrupt release and a saccharine smile- "Sleep well,
little niece."
But while Sansa was no stranger to restless nights and reluctant slumber, she
truly believed that she'd never slept so poorly in her life. The impenetrable
darkness of the chamber should have made it easy, but it had the opposite
effect; she'd stir and think that her eyes were open, but only the tiny clicks
of her eyelids when she blinked could serve as proof. Open or shut, the
blackness was the same either way: thick and smothering and invasive. Sansa
would curl on her side, tight into a little ball with her arms folded over her
head, afraid to expose her body lest the darkness seep in through every
orifice.
With no window, she could not measure time- she could have been lying on this
uncomfortable cot for hours or days or weeks, she'd not know the difference.
Once her eyes adjusted a bit, she discovered a chamber pot, a small pile of
threadbare linens, and a flagon of water. She guzzled the water greedily, and
when she found herself parched sometime later, she cursed her impatience and
hoped that Lysa would open the door soon to deliver provisions.
Unfortunately, the Lady of the Vale seemed to lack a proper sense of time
herself. The door to Sansa's chamber could not be opened from within, and Lysa
possessed the only key. But much to Sansa's horror and surprise, Lysa would
frequently forget her entirely, letting hours and possibly days pass without
sending in food or water. She scratched at the stone until her fingernails
broke, she wished to scream and holler until someone came in to help her- but
the fear of alienating her aunt, the fear of being sent back to King's Landing
to face whatever Cersei planned next-
Finally, an elderly maidservant, at least as aged as Old Nan and significantly
more senile, entered with a tray of foodstuffs. Sansa devoured everything in
obscene haste, but quickly realized her stomach's inability to handle dense
fruitcake and clotted cream; she vomited all over the floor. The maidservant
tried to gather her in her bony arms and pat her back as if she were an infant
who'd spewed a bit of milk- Sansa separated herself and used her tiny
collection of linens to clean up, all the while pretending to listen to the old
woman's barely-coherent babbling. When she finished, she asked whether she
might have fresh linens; the crone just patted her hair and stretched her face
into a toothless grin.
"You'll have all you need in the Land of Fae, little lamb. They'll come for you
soon, they'll spirit you away into the woods, and you'll be a princess
there..."
She began to lose track of her own delusion, combining riddles and fairy
stories until her speech slurred and her head nodded forward. Sansa hoped for a
moment that she might fall into slumber entirely; she'd left the door open, and
Sansa's heart pounded wildly at the prospect of spending some time alone in
Lysa's sunny apartments. But alas, the old woman roused herself and exited,
taking the light with her.
There was no consistency to the temperature of the chamber. Sometimes the lack
of ventilation would render it stiflingly, oppressively hot. And other times,
like this one, the chill seeping through the stone walls would attack her from
every side, until her trembling threatened to pulverize her bones. Sansa
wrapped her thin woolen blanket tight around her and nearly welcomed the heat
of the tears streaming down her cheeks. She silently cursed stupid, daft
Lysa...cursed the mysterious and still-absent Lord Baelish...and most of all,
she cursed Jaime.
You got me out of King's Landing, but for what? For this? To waste away in a
hole in the wall of a frozen castle with only a madwoman and a walking corpse
for company?
Her thoughts spiraled into a dark, bitter abyss. In a terrifying burst of
inspiration, she found herself wondering whether it was all some sinister plot,
whether Baelish and Jaime were in league with Cersei to destroy her, not on the
steps of the Sept of Baelor, but in this vacant, silent place where no one
would hear her scream.
She sat in the dark, seething and weeping, letting evil suspicions seize her
brain and deepen her despair- but then she'd think of sunny mornings lying in
Jaime's arms, his lips soft against her temple...she'd think of reaching her
hand into her cloak and discovering silly notes in sloppy handwriting, notes
that made her blush and giggle until the Queen Regent's ladies started to
stare...she'd think of fierce green eyes and the firm clasp of a left hand in
her right and earnest, ardent promises...
It can't have all been a charade. He doesn't...he couldn't hate me that much.
One night, as she shuddered beneath her blanket and passed in and out of
shallow sleep, Sansa felt a hand brushing the side of her face, stroking her
hair back behind her ears. She grained toward the warmth and felt a little
smile tug at her lips- "Jaime," she breathed.
But then a cold sting of metal against her neck; her eyes flew open, and she
dropped her jaw to scream- then a snip, followed by silence.
Lysa stood beside her cot, silhouetted in the faint candlelight spilling in
from her chamber. She held a pair of shears in one hand, and in the
other...Sansa's hand flew to her hair, and when she felt the bluntness beneath
her fingers, the missing chunk on one side...
Her aunt began to shake her head before whispering in that uncanny, girlish
chirp- "It serves you right, Cat- Mother keeps telling you to pin your hair up,
and you keep wearing it down...it's wanton and vain, don't you know?"
Sansa felt the blood draining from her face as she replied-
"Sansa. My name is Sansa."
Something flickered in Lysa's eyes, a flash of lucidity, but then she was gone,
slamming the door, the long hank of auburn hair still wrapped around her fleshy
hand.
The icy sensation dropping into Sansa's stomach had little to do with
cold. This is real madness. Not Cersei and her paranoia, not my little episodes
and experiments...
Oh Gods, my  hair ...
While Sansa had long ago realized the uselessness of vanity, she had found a
perverse sort of pleasure in keeping her hair unbound at court, letting the
loose waves fall nearly to her backside, rejecting the braids and coils that
were the fashion in the South. She knew that she could command attention simply
by entering a room and letting everyone register the sight of her; flaming hair
against white skin and ice-blue eyes, without elaborate fripperies or gaudy
jewels to distract from her remote, glacial beauty. When she walked into the
Great Hall at the end of the Queen Regent's train, Sansa noticed gazes landing
on her long before they moved to Cersei, and she could not help but feel a bit
victorious.
She clenched her fist in the short, prickly pieces of hair still clinging to
her scalp as another memory came upon her-
Jaime's chest rising and falling beneath her cheek as he draws his hand through
her hair. Fingers catch in the curls, again and again, stroking and twisting;
he suddenly gives a little tug, and she laughs.
"Have you ever been North of the Wall?" she asks, her fingertips lightly
dancing over the smattering of tawny hair on his chest.
His laughter rumbles beneath her head. "As I've no real desire to freeze to
death while being mauled by direwolves and savages at the same time...no, I
have not."
A little poke to his sternum, and Sansa continues- "My Uncle Benjen used to
tell us stories about the wildlings who live there...he said that they consider
red hair very lucky, especially on women. 'Kissed by fire,' they call it."
"Fire, indeed." He pulls her hair again, and she turns her face up to look at
him. "I'd have to agree with them on that point- you gingers are a hot-blooded
lot."
"Hmm." She turns her head to press a kiss to his throat as she moves her leg to
rest between his; she can feel him hardening against her thigh.
"Redheads were scarce in Casterly Rock...I don't think I ever saw one before I
went to squire at Crakehall." He begins to trail his hand down her back, and
she shivers in anticipation- "There was a girl there...just a servant girl, a
few years older than me. Very pretty, in a common sort of way- and her hair was
like yours." He cups his palm over her hip and drops a kiss on the crown of her
head as she hums contentedly. "But she always wore it up, twisted at the back
of her head. The other squires used to go and spy on the servant girls when
they went behind the barns to bathe...I went with them only once, because I
wanted to see her take-"
"Stop!" Sansa begins to dissolve into giggles, delivering a light slap to
Jaime's shoulder. He draws his hand back up and grips her chin, forcing her
face out from the crook of his neck.
"Her hair down, Sansa. I wanted to see her take her hair down." His lips spread
into a slightly-lopsided grin, and she feels her stomach do an eager little
flip. "What did you think I was going to say?"
"I don't know. Something vulgar."
He laughs and draws her over him until her knees rest on either side of his
hips. "Gods, for such a little lady, your mind does go to some surprising
places."
Before she can come up with something indignant to say, he pulls her face down
for a kiss, sliding his hand back into her thick, wild, fiery hair-
Sansa cried, just a little, embarrassed that something so insignificant could
do so much to weaken her spirit. She threw the blanket over her head and kept
her hands folded on the outside, willing herself to stop fussing with the shorn
ends. It's gone, there's nothing to do for it now.
The next morning, Lysa opened the door and drew Sansa into her chamber. The
light assaulted her eyes, and she squinted hard to relieve the pain; her aunt
had to take her shoulders and steer her into the bright room.
This was a different Lysa than Sansa had encountered before; more settled, more
clear, more of this world. She immediately launched into a string of effusive
apologies, again and again and again, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry"-
She guided Sansa to sit on a pouf before a large looking glass, and she
withdrew the shears from a drawer.
"Now just stay still, sweetling- it shan't hurt at all, and it will be better
to keep it all at one length...it will grow back, don't you worry..."
Sansa kept her eyes shut tight, couldn't bear to look- at last, she felt Lysa
move away from her and heard her place the shears down.
Her eyelids felt heavy as lead as she reluctantly opened them-
The sight of her reflection with its close-cropped hair caused a rise of bile
in her throat, caused a tightness in her chest and a stinging pain behind her
eyes-
I look just like Robb.
She endured the continued apologies from Lysa, which grew more and more anxious
with each repetition. She assured her aunt- lying as neatly as she could- that
no, she wasn't cross, and yes, she knew that the hair would grow back, just as
pretty as before-
Lysa finally allowed Sansa to retreat back into her little room, much to the
girl's relief.
Is this what it's like, to look at your own face and see someone else? Of
course, she and Robb were not Jaime and Cersei, had been nothing like Jaime and
Cersei-
But if anything should happen to her, will Jaime feel this kind of emptiness,
this kind of loss when he catches his reflection in the mirror?
Her arms encircled her knees, and she tried to pull her body tightly into
itself, hoping that she might crush the rapidly-blossoming pain in her chest-
Old Nan's tales of spectres and wights were nothing but silly, superstitious
fancy- these are the real ghost stories.
She fell against the stone wall and stared out into the blackness, and she
remembered-
She props her head on one hand while using the other to trace the lines of
Jaime's face. Her fingers brush across his forehead, trail down to the defined
cheekbones, skim over the strong jaw. He's pretending to sleep, but she can see
his lips twitching with pent-up laughter.
Her index finger lands on the bridge of his nose, and she rubs the tip over the
one flaw that she finds. A bump, small but distinct, interrupts the straight
downward slope; obviously the result of a break.
One green eye opens, and he peers at her with bemusement.
"How did this happen?" she asks, the pad of her fingertip still resting on his
nose.
Jaime fully abandons the pretense of slumber and opens both eyes. He huffs a
little sigh, and she notices the tightening of his jaw when he replies, "Your
brother's men were responsible for that."
She removes her hand, bites her lip. "...Oh." Absurd as it seems, she forgets
sometimes that he'd gone to war with her brother, that he'd spent time as
Robb's hostage.
"Did Robb fight you?" And a part of her desperately hopes that he will answer
in the affirmative- she wants to validate the idea she's formed of Robb in his
last months of life: strong and powerful and courageous, the Young Wolf, the
King in the North...
"Not personally, no." Sansa feels a little sinking within her, one that must be
clear in the slump of her shoulder and bowing of her head. Jaime moves away
from her- he's annoyed, she can tell-
"You've never asked to hear about this before now."
There's a chill in his voice, and she shivers.
"I never wanted to know about it."
"And now?"
Her face twists into a scowl, for she finds that she does not like this, not
here, not while she's naked with her husband in her marriage bed- it's easier
to keep things simple here, and she has no real desire to do the work of
reconciling the man with the soft touches and gentle kisses with the man who
has brutally slaughtered hundreds, who would have gladly plunged his sword into
Robb's chest if he hadn't been taken prisoner first-
But the subject is in the air now. She looks over at Jaime, registers the
tension in his shoulders and the narrowing of his eyes- he is on the defensive,
and some perverse part of her wants to give him the fight he's expecting-
But when she thinks of Jaime facing Robb and his forces in battle, she has only
one question:
"When my brother...when you saw him with his troops, did they respect...did
they see him..." She loses her words and swallows in an effort to bring them
back into her throat- "Was he..."
"Was he a leader, you mean?"
She cannot look at him, but she nods.
"He was a boy, thrust into a situation far beyond his level of readiness or
experience." Sansa feels a hot flush of loyal rage, and she prepares to retort,
but he speaks before she can- "But from what I saw, he was bold and brave and
much loved by his men."
She does not realize that she's trembling until she feels the warm pressure of
Jaime's hand on her shoulder.
They sit silently like that for a time, until Jaime tightens his grip on her
shoulder and says in a voice quiet and low-
"He'd have made a good king."
Her breathing grows laborious and irregular as she fights to keep from crying-
but Jaime notices. He pulls until she falls into his shoulder, whispering in
her ear- "Cry if you want to. There's no one to hear."
And so she does.
It may have been guilt or loneliness or just one of her aunt's eccentric whims,
but something suddenly motivated Lysa to release the girl from her windowless
cell on a fairly regular basis. While this would have thrilled Sansa prior to
the mishap with her hair, she now thought that she'd prefer to spend her days
sitting alone in the dark.
These afternoons- Mornings? Evenings? It is so hard to tell... were never
exactly unpleasant; the women would sit on Lysa's bed, where the Lady of the
Vale would feast on sugared plums and mince tarts while Sansa hesitantly picked
at the edge of a lemon cake- the nausea, the damnable nausea just grew worse
every day.
When Lysa was feeling particularly blithe, she'd try to engage her niece in
insipid, giggly gossip- Sansa found herself reminded of Margaery's twittering
little birds. But Lysa had no need to even put on a pretense of delicacy; she
often interspersed her talk with lewd stories that made Sansa's cheeks glow
crimson.
After one such occasion, Lysa shook her head and said with an impatient laugh,
"You're as prim as a septa, little one. No need to put on airs- there are no
maidens here, after all." Her tone spiked a bit higher, to a pitch that Sansa
recognized as the harbinger of a mood change- "Jaime Lannister. Our fathers
wished us to wed, did you know?"
Sansa thought back to her conversation in the dungeons with Tyrion, and she
nodded. "I heard something of that, yes."
"Such a handsome man. When he was young, he was positively pretty, pretty as a
girl...but fierce, too." Lysa popped another plum in her mouth and spoke as she
chewed- "He came to visit Riverrun, and Father seated me beside him at every
meal and bid me dance with him as often as possible." Sansa noticed a darkening
in her aunt's eyes, and she hoped beyond hope that it was just a trick of the
light. "But Cat was there too, of course. And oh, did he like her. Him and
everyone else."
Sansa felt a flutter of panic in her chest- mentions of her mother never, ever
ended well here.
But Lysa only frowned, shrugged, moved onto another point. "Frankly, pretty men
aren't really to my taste. So entitled...and I'm told that they've no interest
in bringing pleasure to their lovers, so long as they get it for themselves."
She grinned at Sansa, her mouth stretching so wide that it appeared nearly
grotesque. "You'll have to tell me if that's true. Did your pretty husband
bother to pleasure you?"
Sansa knew that it was her embarrassment that Lysa wanted, and she gave it
freely- a thorough blush, a lowering of the shoulders, a meek, squeaking little
reply.
Her aunt reached behind her and lifted her brush from a small table. She fixed
Sansa with a penitent stare and bade her turn around.
"It will look prettier when we comb it out...then when Petyr comes, I'll send
for ribbons, and we'll tie your hair into bows. Won't that be nice?"
"Yes, my lady," she whispered. The gentleness of Lysa's hands surprised her;
she could almost imagine herself back in her mother's chambers at Winterfell,
sitting on the side of the bed while Lady Catelyn's combed her locks again and
again until they crackled and shone.
"I always wished for a daughter," Lysa sighed wistfully. "My Sweetrobin is the
light of all my days...but it would be nice to have a little girl, to dress her
and brush her hair and make her pretty, like a little doll." She paused to
replace the wide paddle brush with a finer comb, which she used to shape the
uneven licks of auburn hair into tidy curls. "Perhaps when Petyr and I are wed,
I'll bear him a beautiful daughter as well as a healthy son."
"Gods grant it, my lady," Sansa replied. Lysa's fingers, unexpectedly quick and
clever, felt so pleasant on the tender skin of her scalp, and she let her eyes
flutter shut.
As she drifted into a relatively relaxed state, she heard her aunt say,
"While we're on the subject, Sansa, you must make more of an effort to eat.
You've grown entirely too skinny, and it isn't good for a breeding woman to
deprive herself so."
Sansa jerked her head, sharply enough to make Lysa drop the comb. As the older
woman bent to retrieve it, tsk-tsking all the way, the girl replied, "That's
not possible, my lady. I...I am barren."
Lysa stood upright and resumed her combing. She met Sansa's eyes in the mirror
and tilted her head, her voice impossibly casual:
"Oh, I don't think so, child."
Her mind spun everywhere at once- the nausea, the aching...when was her last
moonblood?
Gods be good, what sort of a cruel jape is this?
She began to laugh- a savage, shrieking sound. She laughed until her muscles
ached, laughed and shook her head and pounded her palms on the vanity table
over and over again.
And if she were an outside observer peering in at these two figures, there
would be no doubt in her mind about which was the madwoman.
***** Chapter 16 *****
A raucous clang of metal on stone echoed through the courtyard, far louder than
Jaime would have anticipated, but he scarcely even flinched. Brienne, however,
gave a jolt of surprise, nearly dropping her own sword, and looked Jaime in the
eye with a focus that had been missing throughout their entire training
session. Her brows knit together with confusion, but Jaime only glared back in
silence. Finally, he managed to hiss-
"You aren't even trying."
Brienne's pretty blue eyes grew wide at that, adopting a baleful expression
that put Jaime in mind of a torpid she-cow. She sheathed her sword and sighed-
he only crossed his arms over his chest and tapped the fingers of his left hand
on his right bicep, glowering all the while. These meetings with Brienne in the
courtyard, these hours spent clashing steel against steel and drowning out
everything else- he needed this, he relished this...and yet his opponent never
quite seemed there. She went through the motions, and he knew her more than
capable of keeping up with him (more than capable of besting him, if he forced
himself to be honest), but she persisted with this sluggish, half-hearted
movement, her ugly face alternately blank and sullen.
She sighed again, and he rolled his eyes. "Well? Out with it, wench. What's the
trouble?"
"I-"Words weren't Brienne's strong suit, and Jaime knew it well. But his blood
was boiling for a fight- a fight of any kind. He took a step in her direction,
jaw set and eyes sharp, fingers still drumming out his impatience on the
leather of his surcoat.
But then she continued her thought, and he felt a little pang of pity at the
simple words- "I hate it here."
Jaime replied with a dry laugh, but stopped when he noted the flash of hurt in
her eyes. "Everyone hates it here. You're hardly alone in that."
She twisted her lips and shifted her weight from side to side. Jaime bent to
retrieve his sword, which he sheathed before gesturing to a stone bench in the
corner. He waited for Brienne to sit before lowering himself down- she
obviously had more to say; her mouth kept twitching and the color in her cheeks
kept changing: ruddy one moment, ashen the next.
"I just...I don't have any purpose here anymore. As long as she was here, I
could at least make myself useful by keeping an eye-" Jaime lifted his brows,
and Brienne fell silent. The air between them felt suddenly tremulous and
awkward- Gods, I never know whether I want to curse those bards and minstrels
or fall to my knees and kiss their feet.
"You can say her name, Brienne. No need to worry about wounding the poor
cuckold's feelings." He offered her a half-smile, which it took her several
moments to return.
"As long as I had...Sansa...in my sight, I almost felt like- I could almost
convince myself that I hadn't failed Lady Catelyn. But now-"
Brienne lowered her face, nearly obscuring it from Jaime's view, but he caught
a glimpse of something shining in her eyes, something that could well have been
tears. At once, he felt a rush of impulse- What if I told her? She's
trustworthy, she's proven that much...but then, what would I tell her?
'Sansa's...somewhere...under the protection of...someone...no, I don't know
where she is or who she's with...' She'd be furious- at least I'd get a proper
fight out of the wench then...
"Well, think of it this way,"he began, shifting a bit closer to her on the
bench. "King's Landing is a miserable cesspool of a snake-pit. There isn't a
place in the Seven Kingdoms more foul or poisonous. We can agree on that, yes?"
He waited for Brienne to give a jerky nod, then continued- "So wherever Sansa's
gone, it can't really be worse than here, can it?" This is what I tell myself,
anyhow.
Brienne scowled in silence, and Jaime wondered for a moment whether he'd get
that fight after all. But her face soon drooped into a melancholy frown, and
she spoke in a tone to match. "That may be true. But in any case, there's
nothing for me to do here anymore. And the Tyrells...Gods, Jaime, they hate me
so- they've never forgiven me for what happened to Renly. Between that and
those horrible songs-" Her blush deepened to an alarming shade of violet, one
that Jaime had only seen before on hanged men- and on Sansa.
"So why not leave?" As soon as the words left his mouth, Jaime felt a twinge of
panic- don't go, wench, don't leave me here with these dolts and climbers and
the beautiful golden queen, the greatest fool of them all-
"There's nowhere for me to go. I can't go back home...there's nothing for me
there, either." The small wave of relief that washed over Jaime was immediately
tempered by the despair writ across Brienne's homely face. "I just...I feel
like I'm-"
"..rattling around like a single kernel in a dry husk, aimless and in the way
and completely damned useless?"
Brienne lifted her head and looked Jaime in the eye, her jaw slightly slack
with surprise as she nodded. Jaime rose from the bench and clapped his hand on
her shoulder- he wanted to follow the statement with some phrase of
encouragement, but he could only think of one thing to say:
"I know the feeling."
A series of pats on Brienne's shoulder, then he removed his hand and turned on
his heel, striding away toward the Red Keep. Restlessness coursed through his
limbs, and the idea of sitting through a council session made him want to
thrash against the walls and scream until his throat went raw. This sort of
pent-up energy, this lion-in-a-cage anxiety- it came upon him often and
entirely without warning. These were the nights when he'd grasp at Sansa with
desperation, tearing at her shift and gripping her too tight, moving against
her and in her too fast and too hard- she'd been frightened at first, and he'd
leave their bed the next morning with a heavy stone of guilt and disgust
sitting in the pit of his stomach. But at some point along the way, she started
to match his fierceness- she'd push back against him, coiling her arms around
his neck and pulling him close, grasping and panting and frantic and beautiful.
And the flash of her eyes, the glint of candlelight on her sharp white teeth-
 the blood of the wolf.
This train of thought only served to string his nerves even tighter, and he
threw his shoulder hard against the door to the council chamber, appreciating
both the dull pain and the sound of the door's collision against the back wall.
For the first time ever, he found himself early for the session; the hall was
empty except for Tommen, still so small in that big chair, his elbow on the
table, his curly head slumped into his hand.
"Well met, Your Grace,"he called from the doorway, and the little boy gave a
jolting start, whipping his head around to stare at the entrance. When he
recognized Jaime, he gave a wan little smile.
Jaime strode over to the boy-king, trying to force his tone into one of good
humor. "You're quite punctual today- your mother will be well pleased."
Tommen sighed and shrugged. "Lessons ended early. The other children are
playing out in the yards, but the maester said I couldn't go with them. He said
I'd get dirty, and I can't sit in council with dirty clothes."
When Robert Baratheon bothered to attend councils, he'd do it with wine
spilling down his doublet and a serving maid on one knee. Jaime seated himself
beside the King and patted the child on the shoulder. "This shouldn't go too
long. You'll be able to join the others in the yard before it gets dark."
When Margaery Tyrell had suggested that Tommen take his lessons with the other
court children, Cersei had protested vehemently- the King should be educated
privately, it would be unseemly for him to spend too much time mingling with
children below his station. But the young Queen's argument had been sound:
Tommen would need these children one day, these sons and daughters of lords and
high-ranking knights, his future allies and vassals. Jaime had spoken in favor
of Margaery, and they'd won out in the end- Cersei refused to even look at her
twin for days afterward.
A peculiar squirming in Tommen's lap caught Jaime's attention. He lifted the
cloth of the table to find a grey kitten on the boy's knee, tiny claws kneading
the fabric of his breeches.
Tommen blushed sheepishly. "Don't tell Mother- North Star's just been so lonely
since Sansa left."
"I shan't say a word,"Jaime promised. He reached over to rub the cat's downy
head, then lowered his index finger to scratch beneath its chin, as he'd seen
Sansa do so many times before. The kitten purred, and Jaime felt a little
sinking in his stomach.
"The little girls at court all say that the fairies came to take Sansa away.
They've made up all sorts of stories about it- about how the fairy king fell in
love with her because she's so beautiful, so he sent his servants here to steal
her."
Jaime tilted his head to look in Tommen's wide eyes, one finger still stroking
the kitten's soft fur. "And what do you think, Your Grace?"
Tommen hesitated for a moment. Then he set his full lips into a flat line and
shook his head. "There aren't any such things as fairies."
A current of sadness pushed its way into Jaime's chest at that matter-of-fact
declaration, but he had little time to dwell on it; the doors to the chamber
pushed open, and the council filed in.
Jaime stood and smiled at the sight of Kevan Lannister; he'd seen little of his
uncle since his arrival in King's Landing. Ser Kevan had been absent for the
official vigil over Lord Tywin's body, but he more than made up for it by
spending three consecutive evenings praying over the embalmed corpse. He nodded
to his nephew and gave him a smile that reached only his lips. Dark pouches of
flesh hung heavily beneath his bloodshot eyes, the bones of his face pressed
starkly against his thinning skin- Gods, he's gotten old.
Cersei had announced to the council weeks ago that Ser Kevan would step into
his brother's position as Hand of the King- and yet Uncle Kevan did not take
the seat designated for the Hand, instead positioning himself on Jaime's other
side. As Kevan settled himself into the chair, Jaime glanced at his doublet and
noticed the conspicuous absence of the Hand's badge.
"Should you not be seated at the right of the King, Uncle?" Jaime inquired.
His uncle responded with a lift of the eyebrows and a tiny shake of the head.
"I am here only to observe,"he replied crisply.
Jaime turned his attention to the other side of the table, where Cersei stared
at their uncle with confusion and consternation etched across her face. She had
so little agency over her facial expressions now; Jaime could recall a time in
the not-so-distant past when his sister could flawlessly conceal her emotions,
keeping everything sealed behind a still and beautiful mask until she and her
twin could retreat behind closed doors.
Not so anymore, he reflected as he watched her lips grow tight, her eyes
panicked. She dropped her hands down below the table, and he knew without
seeing that she was twisting them into her skirts. Nervous and frightened and
angry, his sister had never seemed more volatile- Jaime would be lying to
himself if he denied the little twinges of arousal that the sight inspired, but
they were more than tempered by concern and disgust.
The session began, but Jaime scarcely heard a word- nor, it seemed, did Cersei.
She just flicked her gaze back and forth between the empty chair where the Hand
of the King should sit and Uncle Kevan, who very deliberately refrained from
meeting her eyes. He knew the source of her panic- if Uncle Kevan doesn't take
the post, it will go to Mace Tyrell, there's really no other choice. In a
brief, mad moment of fancy, Jaime wondered whether Cersei would try to
reintroduce the old idea of naming him the Hand of the King - I'd be a mess of
a failure, but I would try. For Tommen, I would try. But no. Too much had
happened, too much had changed; she would never ask it of him now.
Eventually, the other lords at the council started to notice Cersei's silence-
she'd never been so quiet for so long in the past. She quickly collected
herself and began to speak again, although the tension never left her jaw.
Jaime felt a sudden pricking at his thigh, and he nearly jumped with surprise-
North Star had crawled over from Tommen's leg and settled herself on Jaime's
lap. Tommen's lips twitched with pent-up laughter, and the sight of a genuine
smile on the boy's face, however small, lifted Jaime's spirits. He rubbed the
top of the kitten's head, hoping that the purring wouldn't grow too loud, only
returning his attention to the council at the sound of Cersei's voice, uttering
a pair of names-
"..Tyrion Lannister and Sansa Stark Lannister."
He tilted his head upward in a jerky motion; Cersei's lips were pressed into a
cold, determined line, her hands slightly twitching as she folded them on the
table. The rest of the council shifted and murmured- even the normally-
implacable Margaery Tyrell wore a frown on her pretty face.
Cersei continued- "They are fugitives and criminals, and they must be brought
to justice. I propose that we increase the bounty on their heads and allot more
men to the task of hunting them down and bringing them back."
He wasn't sure what possessed him next- Cersei had expressed this view several
times before, and the council usually tried to placate her with non-committal
agreement before ignoring the issue entirely- but for some reason (maybe
Sansa's kitten in his lap, maybe the conversation with Tommen, or the one with
Brienne...), he couldn't help but speak-
"If I may, Your Grace...I do feel compelled to point out a flaw in this
proposal."
"And what might that be?" Cersei's tight lips spread into an expression that
might pass for a smile- the most unpleasant, unnerving smile possible. He'd
seen her use it before on Robert, on Tyrion, but never on him...it distressed
him, but it only served to push his words along-
"You speak of adding more coin to the bounty. And if you wish to send more men
out on this task, that will cost a few more golden dragons as well."
"And?" Her voice grew shrill, and Jaime studied her weird false smile for a
moment, just long enough to replicate it exactly on his own face.
"And, as I'm sure Lord Slynt here can verify-"He nodded over to the Lord
Treasurer, who looked very startled and reluctant to become involved in the
conversation- "the Crown remains in very substantial debt. Very substantial.
And I'm sure you know where most of that debt is due."
"What are you saying?" Cersei half-raised herself from her chair and leaned
across the table, her eyes latched onto Jaime's. He could feel the bristling of
discomfort from everyone else in the chamber, but he had to do it, had to go in
for the kill-
"I'm saying that Casterly Rock won't be your personal coin coffer any longer."
"If the King commands it, then you have no choice, my lord."
"I don't hear the King commanding anythi-"
"I am the Regent! If I order you to lend me more coin, you have to do it!" She
reminded him of nothing so much as a squalling child- it was at once painful
and perversely satisfying to behold.
"I don't think I do. Lord Slynt, considering the vast amounts of money that the
Crown owes to Casterly Rock, am I under any legal obligation to keep lending?"
The man blustered and blushed for a while before giving his tremulous reply-
"No, my lord."
"Well." Jaime leaned back in his chair and folded his real hand over his golden
one. "There you have it."
Cersei closed her eyes for a moment, taking a long inhale through her nose. Her
head must have been throbbing- he knew it, for he could feel a pressure
knocking at his own temples. Your pain is my pain, my pain is yours...
She rose. "My lords" Margaery bristled a bit, but remained silent- "I believe
we've discussed all we need to discuss. If it pleases the King, the council
shall disperse-"
"Wait!"
The room directed its full attention toward Tommen, and for good reason; he'd
never spoken aloud at a council session, not once.
"..was there something else, Your Grace?" Cersei asked, trying and failing to
erase the displeasure from her face before addressing her son.
"Yes." Tommen glanced over at Margaery, who offered him a sweet, radiant
smile. She's a sly one, that one is.
The little King pushed himself up in his chair. "I need a Lord Commander for my
Kingsguard. Ser Meryn is just the interim commander, and I don't want him."
Tommen smiled at Margaery again, then declared- "I want Ser Loras."
Jaime snorted with laughter, and the sound echoed conspicuously through the
hall. That little upstart, named to the Kingsguard only a year ago...absurd.
Cersei seemed equally appalled by the idea, but she collected herself enough to
give Tommen an almost-smile. "The council will have to deliberate over this,
but I'm sure we'll find someone suitable..."
Tommen began to protest- "Not someone, I want Ser Loras!" And in spite of his
distaste for the idea, in spite of the bruising to his pride, Jaime started to
consider the positives. They may be a pack of flatterers grasping far above
their station, but the Tyrells are powerful. Cersei's been trying to push them
away, trying to fight their influence, but if they have no reason to defy
Tommen, he'll have strong allies in them.
And Cersei's grasp on Tommen will grow weaker and weaker by the day.
"As a former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, I'd like to officially place my
support behind the promotion of Ser Loras Tyrell and encourage you all to do
the same." A bustle of surprise ruffled the council- Jaime glanced across the
table and caught Margaery Tyrell's eye, and the dazzling smile that she offered
him caused a pang of nausea at the base of his stomach.
But Tommen was grinning, and Jaime gave him a wink, placing North Star back on
his lap.
The council decided to vote on the motion at the next meeting, and they
adjourned. Jaime walked out with his uncle, accepting Ser Kevan's invitation
for an after-dinner nightcap before the older man retreated to his chambers.
Jaime was about to head to his own apartments when a hand closed around his
upper arm and drew him into an alcove.
Cersei dug her fingernails into his skin, and Jaime narrowed his eyes at her,
his blood heating up once again- I wanted a fight from the wench, but this will
be even better.
But then he noticed the whiteness of his sister's face, the despair etched
across each feature. Her breaths sounded shallow and labored, and her voice
cracked when she finally spoke.
"I want you gone."
He leaned into her, unable to keep the venom out of his whisper- "And where
would you have me go?"
"I don't care." A chill seeped into his bones at the stillness of her tone- no
pique, no rage, no temper.
She continued, still so quiet and hollow- "I don't care where you go, Jaime. Go
to Casterly Rock. Go to the Free Cities. Go find Tyrion and your little lady.
The two of you can take turns on her." His eyes flared, but she scarcely seemed
to notice. "I don't care. But I want you gone."
"Cersei-"
She held up a hand and shook her head, and for the first time, he noticed the
furrows in her brow, the worry lines forming around her mouth.
"Jaime. Just go."
And then she turned on her heel and swept away, leaving almost four decades of
need and closeness and completion in her wake.
===============================================================================
"I've been commanded to leave King's Landing as soon as possible."
Ser Kevan raised an eyebrow and took a sip of Dornish red. "Surely the King
would never issue such an order?"
"No. This one came from my sister."
Kevan's other eyebrow shot up at that.
"Well,"the older man began, reaching over to refill his nephew's goblet, "if
you'd rather not go back to the Rock right away-" Jaime pursed his lips with
distaste, and Kevan nodded- "I do have a task in mind. I thought to mention it
to Her Grace, but she's not especially keen on me at the moment."
Ser Kevan had explained the situation to Jaime- he had never actually agreed to
assume his brother's former position- "Your sister assumes too much,"he'd told
Jaime. "I've no interest in being the King's Hand, so long as she remains
Regent. I've come here to advise her to pass the Regency along to me and either
stay on as Queen Mother or find refuge at the Rock."
Jaime didn't believe for one moment that Cersei would ever agree to such terms,
but after their encounter that afternoon, the possibility of returning to
Casterly Rock with his sister was more than he could bear.
"What sort of a task?"
"There are still a number of Robb Stark's former allies who have yet to
officially declare their fealty to King Tommen. The most notable and immediate,
of course, are the Tullys of Riverrun. I would ask you to take a small group of
men and pay Edmure Tully a visit."
The prospect of riding into Riverrun, of threatening and invading and
confiscating, of looking into pained, disappointed Tully-blue eyes
again...Jaime felt his head swimming, and he placed his goblet down.
Kevan continued. "It shan't be a pleasant errand, I can tell you that. The
Tullys won't release control willingly- and besides, they're still rather sore
at you for misplacing their niece."
"Misplacing." He huffed a breath through his nose and lowered his head- he
could sense his uncle's quizzical stare, but he did nothing to address it.
A few long moments of silence passed before Kevan spoke again, his tone almost
hesitant.
"While we're on the subject of Lady Sansa...there is something else we must
do."
Jaime raised his head, his chest growing tight and tense. "Yes?"
"There's been...talk coming from the North. Apparently, Sansa's disappearance
is being heralded by some as a sign of hope. There are rumors that she is
rallying forces to retake the North- the Lady Wolf, they're calling her."
He opened his mouth, a thousand questions poised on his tongue, but he found
himself unable to make a sound.
"There's no evidence whatsoever that these claims hold any truth. It's nothing
but fancy...no one has seen hide nor hair of the girl, from what I can tell.
But if there's a possibility that she's still alive somewhere, then she can be
used as a symbol, a standard. That makes her very dangerous indeed."
"What are you saying, Uncle?" He tried to swallow, but his throat proved far
too dry.
Kevan paused. He reached his hand toward Jaime's, but then thought better of
it. "We must spread word that Sansa Stark has died. We'll say that she drowned
while trying to stow away on a ship headed east."
"She won't believe it." He blurted the words out before he could think, and
Kevan furrowed his brow in confusion.
"Who won't? We're trying to convince the smallfolk of the Nor-" The implication
finally settled upon Ser Kevan, and his eyes clouded.
Cersei will never believe it, not without a corpse in front of her.
Finally, Kevan blinked. "There are many who won't believe it. They'll assume
that it's royal propaganda. We just need to convince enough people to quell a
rebellion."He sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I'm sure we can find a
redheaded corpse to pass off as hers, if we must."
Jaime winced-it was easy to forget, given Uncle Kevan's mild nature, that he
was the brother of Tywin Lannister. But then he would say something like that,
and it would all become clear.
"Or, if we give out that she drowned, we'll just claim that the body
disintegrated in the water." Kevan seemed rather more comfortable with that
idea. "Do you have anything of hers- a piece of jewelry, perhaps, that she
often wore? Something that we can claim to have taken off of her body when we
fished her out of the sea?"
He slipped his hand into his pocket and closed it over a tiny silver ring- from
their wedding day until the morning before her escape, Jaime had never seen
Sansa without her engraved ring upon the fourth finger of her right hand. It
had been given to her in Winterfell, and the rune-like symbols etched in the
silver were supposed to bring good luck.
"I can't say it's worked very well so far,"she'd told him once, lips curving
down into a solemn frown. "But it's pretty, and it reminds me of home."
When he returned to their chambers after the vigil, he'd found the little ring
resting on his pillow, and he'd carried it in his pocket every day since.
"Yes, I have something,"he told Kevan, and the other man nodded.
"But what if she reappears, and we're all exposed as liars? What will we do
then?"
"I do not know, nephew,"Kevan replied with a world-weary sigh. "We'll take it a
day at a time." He leaned across the table again, a soft expression on his
creased face. "I sincerely hope that Sansa is safe somewhere. Truly, I mean her
no harm at all. She is a sweet child, and I'm rather fond of her. But for the
realm's sake, for Tommen's sake, this 'Lady Wolf'figure must die."
She's safer this way...the Tyrells will be eager to believe this story, the
council will believe it, and Cersei will have even less reason than before to
keep searching for her.
The best thing I can do for her now is to "kill"her.
Jaime clenches his hand around the silver ring, so tight that the etchings will
undoubtedly press patterns into his skin.
And he nods.
 
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