fic: Under the shadow of this red rock
Under the shadow of this red rock
Genfic - Tywin, Genna, Kevan | 2500 words | spoilers for ADWD | for hamsterwoman who wanted sibling-fic when I offered drabbles. Unsurprisingly, given the characters and my obsession with them, this is really not a drabble. I hope it will still suffice.
”You will have to stop being such a wilful child now,” the maid announces - red-faced and exasperated - when Genna wriggles out of her dress for the second time. She is to wed a man twice her age in possession of half her wit; only a complete fool would go meekly into such an arrangement, Tywin thinks as he watches from the doorway. ”Once you are married to your lord Frey, you will have to do what he tells you, my lady.”
Tywin frowns, announcing his presence brusquely by stepping into the room. ”Who are you to give orders to my sister?”
“I- oh. My lord.” Startled, the woman all but jumps at his words. Her face is broad and common, her hands nervously fretting about as she turns to him. Even if he cared to, he would be unable to find a name for her in his memory. She's a new servant his lord father has hired recently; Tywin does his best not to think about what criteria he has for staff these days but the trumpet-tongued gossip and laughter always echo between these walls. It disgusts him; he has to turn away his gaze.
”Please forgive me,” she says. “I meant no disrespect, my lord.”
He considers it. “Apologise to my sister then and the matter will be forgotten.”
She obeys solemnly and if she finds it shaming to be taking orders from a boy of eleven instead of the Lord of the Rock, she does not let it show. Certain things are as they should be at least, even in this madness. Tywin takes a bit of pleasure in knowing that.
Then finally his sister stands fully dressed, turning around in front of him - and in front of Kevan, who has also appeared with the message for them to finish preparations and descend to the Hall of Heroes. The castle is brimful of this wedding already, the scent of food and flowers colouring the halls and corridors; it smells like a feast yet there is no feast to be held today, merely a mockery of one. Tywin bites back his anger, thinking of how Lord Frey had sat there in presence of the Lannisters - his superiors - and smiled contentedly as the marriage was announced. Thinking, too, of how Genna had learned that night that she is to be sent off as a bribe to a lesser house, like a spoil of war. He glances at her now, her face powdered and her round cheeks pale. His ignored protest against the match is an itch in him still, a slow-burning fury in his blood.
”You don't have to do anything he tells you,” Tywin says when they're alone. ”You're a Lannister.”
Kevan nods. ”He's right, Genna. If he's not nice-” he glances up at his older brother before cutting himself off.
“He would never dare to mistreat you,” Tywin adds, in an attempt to console that tastes odd in his mouth.
Genna still doesn't say anything - she has not spoken for days, merely glared at them all and pouted, giving their lord father her most devastating looks whenever possible. But Lord Tytos Lannister is too preoccupied being a laughing stock and a drunkard to pay any attention to the fate of his children, Tywin knows by now. He is no more their protector than he is a lion.
Genna is not the first to suffer for it but Tywin swears - to himself and in greatest seriousness - that she will be the last Lannister to ever stand ridiculed.
Before they accompany their little sister out of her bedroom for the last time, Kevan embraces her; Tywin doesn't because he is not a child. But as he leans down to look at her and she whispers “Oh, Tywin, I don't want to” so low only he can hear it and in a tone reserved entirely for him, he hugs her anyway and she trembles a little in his arms.
*
When the dark words reach him, Kevan immediately sends for a carriage.
There is no need to explain the urgent decision; Dorna can read the letter herself and as she does, her face grows sorrowful like he expected. Before he leaves, he gently kisses her and she smiles a little, glad of this display of affection. Kevan smiles back and there is a dark shame in feeling grateful at present but he is, because it is not his wife that has been taken from him, it's not Dorna they will hold a burial for.
He still thinks of Dorna as he arrives at Casterly Rock, as he walks the same paths he used to run up and down as a boy, with Tywin always ahead of him. All of their boy's games he had won - except duelling; Kevan was the better swordsman in close combat even then - but he never gloated about it the way older brothers were wont to do. There has always been something grand in him, Kevan thinks, something far from the ruthless small-mindedness most will find, since they will never dare to look close enough. Joanna had. Unflinching, she had stared right into her stone-faced, untouchable, unrelentingly hard cousin and found a man to love in the tenderest way possible. Only a Lannister would have the bloody nerve, Genna had said when they were drunk on plentiful servings of sweet wedding wine. Only Joanna, Gerion had corrected her.
Now her absence leaves the castle grey and lifeless and Kevan can only imagine what it has done to Tywin, losing her. He remembers how eager his brother had been to return to her after his journeys, how proud he had been of her, how she had seemed to effortlessly lighten his mood and how she remains the only one, save perhaps Genna, who has ever been allowed to openly challenge him. I struggle to say much that is good of him, Kevan had overheard a lesser lord say once, but he is a better man for marrying a woman of Lady Joanna's character.
Kevan finds him in his chambers, slipping between reluctant servants - he has not seen anyone in days, my lord - and unusually quiet corridors.
He finds him in his chambers and the interruption seems to cause a small crack in the quiet composure of the room, a little gasp flickering through the stale air. To anyone else, the Lord of Casterly Rock would appear no different than his usual self: his appearance is impeccable as ever, his hair brushed and clean, his clothes proper, his hands put to work among letters and decrees. He looks nothing like a man who lost his wife mere days ago. No one would sense his grief; in fact, if he could be seen now, slanderous rumours would certainly have it that Tywin Lannister bore the loss of his wife with no more discomfort than he would the loss of a horse - not one tear did he shed for her, not one single tear, can you imagine? But Kevan, stepping closer than most people would, notices the small ways in which his brother is not the same at all, the small ways in which he is barely enduring.
“I am here, brother,” he says, needlessly.
Tywin nods; there is a twist to his mouth, as though he is about to speak but he remains silent.
For as long as Kevan can remember - indeed, from the moment they learned to walk and talk and interpret the world the around them and its many games, Tywin has been leading them. Not only because he has felt the duties of their house on his shoulders but because he has always been keen to supply what deficiencies he finds so easily in others, trusting no one but himself to improve them. And he has. He has fortified them all, shielded and protected them.
With Joanna, Kevan knows, he had not found it necessary. Joanna had been strong enough on her own and Kevan wants to say something about the loss that seems larger and more devastating for every moment he spends in this room, but he can't find the proper words for it. Instead he speaks of practical matters. Of the children, of the castle, of the Handship. Of all the things that his brother is responsible for, the infinite number of things he upholds. Kevan feels the usual sting of awe and jealousy and humility, the odd blend of emotions that he will forever bear in the presence of Tywin who manages to be utterly imposing even when he is silenced with grief.
“I will remain here until you see it fit to return to King's Landing,” he says, almost expecting his brother to protest against such a foolish notion but this is all Kevan has to offer and he keeps his voice firm and convincing.
Tywin nods again, looking up briefly from his work.
Before Kevan leaves the room, he closes the remaining distance, placing a hand on Tywin's shoulder; it is a completely uncommon gesture for him, for them, but there is nothing common about today, about this room. There is nothing familiar about the way Tywin seems to pause under the touch, how his rigid posture relaxes with a small shudder as Kevan's fingers dig into the layers of crimson red and golden fabrics, how his breath catches, ragged and raw. When Kevan looks down, he notices that Tywin's hands shake ever so slightly.
It is merely a moment of indulgence that quickly passes but far more, Kevan suspects, than his brother has allowed himself in days and he feels oddly grateful - honoured - for having been the one to witness it.
*
Kevan's death marks the end of autumn and Genna's return to Casterly Rock.
Insisting on walking the last bit up to the castle, she greets her ancestral home with cheeks that are red from the cold and the effort of climbing the last stairs; she thinks the castle seems smaller, somehow. Perhaps it is merely a trick of light, the bleakness of this winter causing everything to pale, shrink.
She can still see them here, so very vividly in her imagination, as though she has never left this place at all. Little ghost-children filling the rooms with noise and turmoil, racing through the Hall of Heroes and drowning the sound of the thundering waves with their voices. Over there, under the painting of King Loren, she can see them. Kevan holding Gerion's hand, Genna carrying an ever-struggling infant Ty and Tywin standing tall behind them.
She thinks of Tywin's children. The escaped son who has all of Tywin's wretched darkness and the missing son who has some of his light but his mother's heart and the daughter who is caught forever in the game she would have mastered better then all of them, had she not been born a woman. Kevan never saw it. You had too much of a gentle heart for it, she thinks, brushing her hand over the last letter he had sent to her. Asking her to return to Casterly Rock to counsel and guard Cersei - I do believe she has been de-clawed, sister.
I nurse a hope that Tywin would understand, he had written as well. Genna isn't so certain he would but it matters very little now that they are both gone. All of them, all of her brothers' bones buried under earth and sea while she remains, an old fat lady set to guard her niece and the family honour.
We will need lions for that, Kevan. Lions with claws.
They need Tywin, she knows as she steps into her brother's chambers that still look unchanged, as though they have merely paused, awaiting his return. Her gaze travels over the books on his desk, a doublet hanging over the back of a chair - the servants have grown sloppy in his absence - and the portrait of Joanna hanging on the wall above his bed. Genna has the distinct impression of disturbing him even now, as though even the ghost of her older brother would resemble the man he turned into in the end.
They will always need Tywin.
“I miss him,” Kevan had said as he told her of the vigil; his face had looked so old then, so hollow, and the position no one expected him to fill has seemed to spread endlessly around his features, rendering him tiny in comparison.
Genna had not told him she has missed Tywin for many years because it seems at times she is the only one who still remembers him, that boy who was their father and brother and commander all at once. He who taught her how to ride by simply lifting her up in the saddle and then remaining there, by her side, until she had gained enough balance and confidence to steer the horse herself. Her heart had throbbed so hard in her chest, her voice shrill and angry but afterwards she had thrown her arms around his neck, wanting to share her triumph with him.
This room no longer remembers that boy. Or the woman warding it long after her own death; the depiction of her is unable to do her beauty justice but there is a trace of her spirit in there, Genna thinks, walking up to the bed. A little glint of Joanna coming through the paint and she remembers how lonely her death had left them all, how bereaved her brother had been, far more so than the children who at least had each other. Tywin had no one, wanted no one. When their mother had died, it was said behind their backs that their lord father spent the rest of his life looking for her in every whore in Lannisport. To Genna it had always seemed as though Tywin had spent the rest of his life blaming every woman - and indeed most men - for not being Joanna.
What becomes of you when there is no one left who remembers who you are?
Genna shrugs off the gloomy thoughts as she leaves her brother's room and descends the stairs to arrange for her niece's arrival and to write to her husband as well, letting him know her plans of remaining indefinitely. It will cause him great annoyance and she quite enjoys that thought, even now, even though the years have eroded the hardest edges to her dislike and disapproval, softened her in more ways than one.
“I'm a Lannister, not a Frey,” she had told him on her wedding night when they were still children, resting chastely in their bed. They were the first words she ever spoke to him in private, without an audience. They are likely to be the last as well, she thinks, smoothing out the creases on her skirt before facing the remaining household at Casterly Rock.
The weight of this immense fortress is beyond words, its empty corridors and long-winded duties like ropes around her limbs, but Genna straightens her back and braces her heart, thinking of her brothers.
Like the stout walls of this castle, she remembers.
Genfic - Tywin, Genna, Kevan | 2500 words | spoilers for ADWD | for hamsterwoman who wanted sibling-fic when I offered drabbles. Unsurprisingly, given the characters and my obsession with them, this is really not a drabble. I hope it will still suffice.
”You will have to stop being such a wilful child now,” the maid announces - red-faced and exasperated - when Genna wriggles out of her dress for the second time. She is to wed a man twice her age in possession of half her wit; only a complete fool would go meekly into such an arrangement, Tywin thinks as he watches from the doorway. ”Once you are married to your lord Frey, you will have to do what he tells you, my lady.”
Tywin frowns, announcing his presence brusquely by stepping into the room. ”Who are you to give orders to my sister?”
“I- oh. My lord.” Startled, the woman all but jumps at his words. Her face is broad and common, her hands nervously fretting about as she turns to him. Even if he cared to, he would be unable to find a name for her in his memory. She's a new servant his lord father has hired recently; Tywin does his best not to think about what criteria he has for staff these days but the trumpet-tongued gossip and laughter always echo between these walls. It disgusts him; he has to turn away his gaze.
”Please forgive me,” she says. “I meant no disrespect, my lord.”
He considers it. “Apologise to my sister then and the matter will be forgotten.”
She obeys solemnly and if she finds it shaming to be taking orders from a boy of eleven instead of the Lord of the Rock, she does not let it show. Certain things are as they should be at least, even in this madness. Tywin takes a bit of pleasure in knowing that.
Then finally his sister stands fully dressed, turning around in front of him - and in front of Kevan, who has also appeared with the message for them to finish preparations and descend to the Hall of Heroes. The castle is brimful of this wedding already, the scent of food and flowers colouring the halls and corridors; it smells like a feast yet there is no feast to be held today, merely a mockery of one. Tywin bites back his anger, thinking of how Lord Frey had sat there in presence of the Lannisters - his superiors - and smiled contentedly as the marriage was announced. Thinking, too, of how Genna had learned that night that she is to be sent off as a bribe to a lesser house, like a spoil of war. He glances at her now, her face powdered and her round cheeks pale. His ignored protest against the match is an itch in him still, a slow-burning fury in his blood.
”You don't have to do anything he tells you,” Tywin says when they're alone. ”You're a Lannister.”
Kevan nods. ”He's right, Genna. If he's not nice-” he glances up at his older brother before cutting himself off.
“He would never dare to mistreat you,” Tywin adds, in an attempt to console that tastes odd in his mouth.
Genna still doesn't say anything - she has not spoken for days, merely glared at them all and pouted, giving their lord father her most devastating looks whenever possible. But Lord Tytos Lannister is too preoccupied being a laughing stock and a drunkard to pay any attention to the fate of his children, Tywin knows by now. He is no more their protector than he is a lion.
Genna is not the first to suffer for it but Tywin swears - to himself and in greatest seriousness - that she will be the last Lannister to ever stand ridiculed.
Before they accompany their little sister out of her bedroom for the last time, Kevan embraces her; Tywin doesn't because he is not a child. But as he leans down to look at her and she whispers “Oh, Tywin, I don't want to” so low only he can hear it and in a tone reserved entirely for him, he hugs her anyway and she trembles a little in his arms.
*
When the dark words reach him, Kevan immediately sends for a carriage.
There is no need to explain the urgent decision; Dorna can read the letter herself and as she does, her face grows sorrowful like he expected. Before he leaves, he gently kisses her and she smiles a little, glad of this display of affection. Kevan smiles back and there is a dark shame in feeling grateful at present but he is, because it is not his wife that has been taken from him, it's not Dorna they will hold a burial for.
He still thinks of Dorna as he arrives at Casterly Rock, as he walks the same paths he used to run up and down as a boy, with Tywin always ahead of him. All of their boy's games he had won - except duelling; Kevan was the better swordsman in close combat even then - but he never gloated about it the way older brothers were wont to do. There has always been something grand in him, Kevan thinks, something far from the ruthless small-mindedness most will find, since they will never dare to look close enough. Joanna had. Unflinching, she had stared right into her stone-faced, untouchable, unrelentingly hard cousin and found a man to love in the tenderest way possible. Only a Lannister would have the bloody nerve, Genna had said when they were drunk on plentiful servings of sweet wedding wine. Only Joanna, Gerion had corrected her.
Now her absence leaves the castle grey and lifeless and Kevan can only imagine what it has done to Tywin, losing her. He remembers how eager his brother had been to return to her after his journeys, how proud he had been of her, how she had seemed to effortlessly lighten his mood and how she remains the only one, save perhaps Genna, who has ever been allowed to openly challenge him. I struggle to say much that is good of him, Kevan had overheard a lesser lord say once, but he is a better man for marrying a woman of Lady Joanna's character.
Kevan finds him in his chambers, slipping between reluctant servants - he has not seen anyone in days, my lord - and unusually quiet corridors.
He finds him in his chambers and the interruption seems to cause a small crack in the quiet composure of the room, a little gasp flickering through the stale air. To anyone else, the Lord of Casterly Rock would appear no different than his usual self: his appearance is impeccable as ever, his hair brushed and clean, his clothes proper, his hands put to work among letters and decrees. He looks nothing like a man who lost his wife mere days ago. No one would sense his grief; in fact, if he could be seen now, slanderous rumours would certainly have it that Tywin Lannister bore the loss of his wife with no more discomfort than he would the loss of a horse - not one tear did he shed for her, not one single tear, can you imagine? But Kevan, stepping closer than most people would, notices the small ways in which his brother is not the same at all, the small ways in which he is barely enduring.
“I am here, brother,” he says, needlessly.
Tywin nods; there is a twist to his mouth, as though he is about to speak but he remains silent.
For as long as Kevan can remember - indeed, from the moment they learned to walk and talk and interpret the world the around them and its many games, Tywin has been leading them. Not only because he has felt the duties of their house on his shoulders but because he has always been keen to supply what deficiencies he finds so easily in others, trusting no one but himself to improve them. And he has. He has fortified them all, shielded and protected them.
With Joanna, Kevan knows, he had not found it necessary. Joanna had been strong enough on her own and Kevan wants to say something about the loss that seems larger and more devastating for every moment he spends in this room, but he can't find the proper words for it. Instead he speaks of practical matters. Of the children, of the castle, of the Handship. Of all the things that his brother is responsible for, the infinite number of things he upholds. Kevan feels the usual sting of awe and jealousy and humility, the odd blend of emotions that he will forever bear in the presence of Tywin who manages to be utterly imposing even when he is silenced with grief.
“I will remain here until you see it fit to return to King's Landing,” he says, almost expecting his brother to protest against such a foolish notion but this is all Kevan has to offer and he keeps his voice firm and convincing.
Tywin nods again, looking up briefly from his work.
Before Kevan leaves the room, he closes the remaining distance, placing a hand on Tywin's shoulder; it is a completely uncommon gesture for him, for them, but there is nothing common about today, about this room. There is nothing familiar about the way Tywin seems to pause under the touch, how his rigid posture relaxes with a small shudder as Kevan's fingers dig into the layers of crimson red and golden fabrics, how his breath catches, ragged and raw. When Kevan looks down, he notices that Tywin's hands shake ever so slightly.
It is merely a moment of indulgence that quickly passes but far more, Kevan suspects, than his brother has allowed himself in days and he feels oddly grateful - honoured - for having been the one to witness it.
*
Kevan's death marks the end of autumn and Genna's return to Casterly Rock.
Insisting on walking the last bit up to the castle, she greets her ancestral home with cheeks that are red from the cold and the effort of climbing the last stairs; she thinks the castle seems smaller, somehow. Perhaps it is merely a trick of light, the bleakness of this winter causing everything to pale, shrink.
She can still see them here, so very vividly in her imagination, as though she has never left this place at all. Little ghost-children filling the rooms with noise and turmoil, racing through the Hall of Heroes and drowning the sound of the thundering waves with their voices. Over there, under the painting of King Loren, she can see them. Kevan holding Gerion's hand, Genna carrying an ever-struggling infant Ty and Tywin standing tall behind them.
She thinks of Tywin's children. The escaped son who has all of Tywin's wretched darkness and the missing son who has some of his light but his mother's heart and the daughter who is caught forever in the game she would have mastered better then all of them, had she not been born a woman. Kevan never saw it. You had too much of a gentle heart for it, she thinks, brushing her hand over the last letter he had sent to her. Asking her to return to Casterly Rock to counsel and guard Cersei - I do believe she has been de-clawed, sister.
I nurse a hope that Tywin would understand, he had written as well. Genna isn't so certain he would but it matters very little now that they are both gone. All of them, all of her brothers' bones buried under earth and sea while she remains, an old fat lady set to guard her niece and the family honour.
We will need lions for that, Kevan. Lions with claws.
They need Tywin, she knows as she steps into her brother's chambers that still look unchanged, as though they have merely paused, awaiting his return. Her gaze travels over the books on his desk, a doublet hanging over the back of a chair - the servants have grown sloppy in his absence - and the portrait of Joanna hanging on the wall above his bed. Genna has the distinct impression of disturbing him even now, as though even the ghost of her older brother would resemble the man he turned into in the end.
They will always need Tywin.
“I miss him,” Kevan had said as he told her of the vigil; his face had looked so old then, so hollow, and the position no one expected him to fill has seemed to spread endlessly around his features, rendering him tiny in comparison.
Genna had not told him she has missed Tywin for many years because it seems at times she is the only one who still remembers him, that boy who was their father and brother and commander all at once. He who taught her how to ride by simply lifting her up in the saddle and then remaining there, by her side, until she had gained enough balance and confidence to steer the horse herself. Her heart had throbbed so hard in her chest, her voice shrill and angry but afterwards she had thrown her arms around his neck, wanting to share her triumph with him.
This room no longer remembers that boy. Or the woman warding it long after her own death; the depiction of her is unable to do her beauty justice but there is a trace of her spirit in there, Genna thinks, walking up to the bed. A little glint of Joanna coming through the paint and she remembers how lonely her death had left them all, how bereaved her brother had been, far more so than the children who at least had each other. Tywin had no one, wanted no one. When their mother had died, it was said behind their backs that their lord father spent the rest of his life looking for her in every whore in Lannisport. To Genna it had always seemed as though Tywin had spent the rest of his life blaming every woman - and indeed most men - for not being Joanna.
What becomes of you when there is no one left who remembers who you are?
Genna shrugs off the gloomy thoughts as she leaves her brother's room and descends the stairs to arrange for her niece's arrival and to write to her husband as well, letting him know her plans of remaining indefinitely. It will cause him great annoyance and she quite enjoys that thought, even now, even though the years have eroded the hardest edges to her dislike and disapproval, softened her in more ways than one.
“I'm a Lannister, not a Frey,” she had told him on her wedding night when they were still children, resting chastely in their bed. They were the first words she ever spoke to him in private, without an audience. They are likely to be the last as well, she thinks, smoothing out the creases on her skirt before facing the remaining household at Casterly Rock.
The weight of this immense fortress is beyond words, its empty corridors and long-winded duties like ropes around her limbs, but Genna straightens her back and braces her heart, thinking of her brothers.
Like the stout walls of this castle, she remembers.