And I the elder and more terrible, part 2/4
IV.
He returns to Casterly Rock like a hero from a song.
It's not summer and he is ill-suited to wear the virtues of a knight even at eighteen, but as he spurs his horse along the kingsroad, Tywin at the very least feels the weight of myth and expectation accompany him. It's the season for it, apparently. Aerys had been named Prince of Dragonstone since the tragedy at Summerhall left the Targaryens bereaved of their heir and while the event had left a taste of something bitter in Tywin's mouth, he had offered his condolences without betraying anything other than the formal and expected compassion.
When the rider had stormed into the Red Keep to search for Tywin, Aerys had done the same. I wish you luck, my friend.
“I think we had better leave immediately, my lord,” his father's knight had said, handing him the message he had been sent to King's Landing to deliver.
And so they had.
Kevan greets him at the Lion's Mouth. He's fully armoured, carrying the Valyrian steel Tywin had custom-made for his last nameday and sent from Dragonstone. It gleams in the faint sunlight that reaches them through the stretched-out spring clouds.
“Tywin.” He smiles, placing a hand on Tywin's shoulder. “It's good to see you. Father wishes to speak with you before we do anything else.”
Nodding, Tywin walks with his younger brother up the stairs, thinking it odd to be back home while at the same time he feels as though he has never left at all, that he will never truly leave it. This place is in their blood; this is their home, their core, their purpose.
He sees his father at a distance and as he approaches, the sight of him something familiar and strange at the same time. When did he get so old and fat? While Lord Tytos has never been a man made for battlefields, he had at least been a good swordsman and an even better archer for as long as Tywin can remember. The man appearing in front of him now looks like someone who wouldn't be able to fend off a single enemy, let alone raise his banners and march into battle.
“I give you command over our armies, Tywin,” Father says immediately, as though he can read Tywin's mind. “The Tarbecks have rebelled and last we heard, it appears they have made common cause with the Reynes.”
You discarded their honour when you gave your only daughter to the Freys, he thinks, but doesn't say.
“Kevan tells me we have lost fifty men already,” he says instead.
Father nods, slowly. “I'm afraid we have. They managed to take advantage of the element of surprise.”
They hold a war council of sorts in the same room where Father once refused to execute Lord Tarbeck for fear of starting an open conflict. It seems very long ago. Tywin looks at the map of the closest keeps around Lannisport and thinks of the boy he was, the boy who had stood in this room then, thinks of how his father had turned on his heel and left, disregarding all counsel. The old irritation washes over him, fragments in his mind of words already said return to him, but he finds that they pale somewhat in the light of the present situation.
This time, they all listen to him.
The first thing he does is ordering fifty new men from the lords nearby to replace the fallen soldiers. He writes the letter without hesitation, asking for men fitted and kitted to march under his command against Tarbeck Hall the following day and hands it to the rider without as much as a word. It's not until the man has disappeared that he wonders, for a second, if the number is too high, if he demands too much. But it's not an invitation to a Spring feast, he tells himself. It's a muster. He is a high lord summoning his sworn men to his cause and the important thing is that he does it in such a way as to leave no doubt, no trace of hesitation in the minds of his vassals, that he can be trusted to lead them to victory. And that he will not tolerate anyone refusing his orders.
In these decisions, he knows with sudden and perfect clarity, their whole fate is bound.
As he is leaving, he feels his father's hand on his arm and turns around. They look at each other for a moment, both of them silent. Everyone has always told him that he has his mother's face and his father's eyes and as he looks into them now, he tries to see something of himself in there, tries to follow the trace of him in the older man. He sees nothing.
“Good luck, Tywin,” Father says and there is an apology between the words, laid bare in the way his father lowers his gaze momentarily, like an animal admitting defeat. Tywin remembers a journey to King's Landing, remembers Jaehaerys asking his son for forgiveness and the strange scene that had played out between them; he remembers thinking that no father should ever ask his son for forgiveness, begging like a child. Aerys had patted his father's arm, offered reassurance.
His mouth twisting with disgust, Tywin nods; he is not meeting his father's eyes.
*
They reach Twinbrook Keep early the following morning and Tywin is almost impressed to see the crowd that has gathered around it.
The men who stand here are fighting as he bids, he realises for the first time, letting his gaze sweep over them. These are his men, the currency of his war. And they are not doing it for honour, they are not doing it for him or because they care about the fate of the Lannisters, they are doing it because he owns their fields, their cottages, their fishing boats. Casterly Rock owns the mills where they grind their corn, the inns where they drink their ale pays taxes to him and most of the commoners in this area will never, not once in their lives, travel beyond a territory that does not directly or indirectly belong to the Lannisters.
The Lord of Casterly Rock offers coin for their swords in battle, reasonable compensation for their widows and children if they fall and that is all they ask for. In return, they fight when he tells them to. He has no right to demand any more from them and they have no right to defy him. It's a simple agreement though rarely popular. Few men enjoy the thought of death; few men enjoy ordering the death of others.
Such is the burden of command. His father would return to those words during the long hours they spent in his office because Father has never been able to stand the idea of being hated, Tywin knows, and so he tries to avoid mustering the commoners and fights with his own guardsmen, his own knights, his endless compromises stretching thin over their lands. Tywin is not his father. The men that have gathered here hate him without hesitation; Tywin sees it in their eyes. Their wives hate him. The children would hate him if they understood. To the lord of the keep Tywin's call for men means his own land will suffer for as long as the fight continues and far beyond it if they are unsuccessful.
He feels their dislike spur him on as he rides up to them, feels it settle around him as a set of armour, of conviction. People hurry to forget the hardships of war when the land stops burning just as they forget the rigours of winter with the first ray of spring sun - but they will never forget a weak leader. Father's shadow hangs over these lands, but Tywin is not his father's son and he is eager to prove it.
He swings down from the house and goes to Lord Twinbrook who gives a curt bow.
“This is what I could muster up, my lord.”
Tywin looks at the men and nods back. “You have done well.”
A faint flicker of surprise passes over the man's feature before he nods again, only this time he bids farewell.
“I shall pray for your victory, my lord.”
*
On the first day of battle, they defeat two dozen men fighting under the banner of Castamere.
On the seventh day of battle, they corner a small part of Lord Tarbeck's forces in a glen, forcing a battle that leaves the Lannisters with a few losses but the enemy flattened. Tywin divides his army into two and sends Kevan with one large troop to surround the remaining army at Tarbeck Hall and starve them out. A very bold move, Ser Payne, the young Captain of the Guards, tells him. Or a very foolish one.
On the twentieth day, the battle comes to a halt as Ser Payne and Tywin captures Lady Reyne, fleeing the castle with her three sons. Payne rides back to their camp with the woman who remains silent all the way, while it falls upon Tywin and Tygett to hoard the boys. The youngest sits in front of Tywin on the saddle, crying quietly and he wonders if the boy's father will bend the knee without a struggle; as the boy turns his head and looks at him, wide-eyed and pale, he almost hopes for it.
On the thirtieth day of battle, Tywin stands face to face with the Red Lion of Castamere who eyes him with a half-smile. He stands surrounded by Lannister guards, overpowered and disarmed, but unbowed.
“I have not seen you since you were a suckling babe,” he says, spitting blood on the ground between them. “It was not so long ago.”
“You have lost,” Tywin says, calmly. “Will you accept my terms of surrender and bend the knee?”
Lord Reyne scoffs. “No stripling boy will play lord over me.”
“I understand.” Tywin nods.
The following day at dawn, Lord Reyne hangs together with his entire household. The boy that rode with him hangs beside his mother and Tywin allows himself to look at him one last time before he orders the men to take everything of value from the small castle before they leave.
On the final day of battle, they ride up the alley leading to Tarbeck Hall where Kevan waits for them and Tywin feels a rush of relief at the sight of his brother.
“You're a boy, playing at war,” Lady Tarbeck curses when Tywin enters the keep. The Lannisters have defeated all of the soldiers sworn to the Tarbeck and their cause, have taken their estates and pillaged their lands and the only thing that remains is a bitter old woman and her half-dead husband who are both holding on out of sheer stubbornness.
“Lord Reyne would disagree,” Ser Payne interjects. “Well, he would, if he still had his head.”
Her death, he thinks, is long overdue and he would march up to her and cut her throat himself but this is not the way it's done. He is surrounded by men, watched by his brothers and his Captain of the Guard and he will show them today, just as he has shown them every other day of this war they've fought, what a Lannister of Casterly Rock truly is.
Tywin takes a step forward. “Do you accept my terms of surrender-”
“Never, boy.”
Again, Tywin nods, before turning on his heel.
Later, they stand on top of a hill in the dusk, their gazes straight ahead not to miss a second of the scene taking place before them. There's a chill in the air but he can nearly pretend that the flames from the fire are enough to warm him up, their heat reaching over the entire land. It's over. A slice of history is done with, forever extinct and he is the reason. He has changed a portion of the Westerlands with his deeds; he has made a difference, forged it. When he closes his eyes tonight, he will see this, he knows. This: the fire, the destruction, the faces of those who did not bend to his will, the faces of everyone who fought on his orders and won - their wild relief. He will see it and he will remember everything.
Here's to you, father, he thinks as he watches the towers of Tarbeck Hall crash to the ground with a rumbling, thunderous groan; the sound of victory like a thunder in him, too, leaving its distinct mark in his bones, spelled out in blood.
“Seven hells, brother,” Tygett comments, riding up behind him.
“Hear us roar,” Kevan adds and gives a short laugh.
Turning his head from the destruction, Tywin looks at him, looks at the smile that appears beneath a thick layer of dirt and blood and ashes on his brother's face and suddenly - feeling more light-hearted than he has in years - he smiles, too.
*
Before he returns to Casterly Rock as a victorious commander of his father's army - such brilliant ruthlessness, Ser Payne says in his memory, his voice thick with admiration - Tywin makes a stop at uncle Tyrion's estate.
Joanna is the one who greets him, her steps hurried as she walks down the stairs and she stops in front of him, close enough for him to feel her breath on his skin.
“You won.” The relief in her voice is so evident, so overwhelming that he almost loses his composure immediately.
“Yes,” he says, thinking it a rather foolish thing to affirm.
She steps even closer, studying him. There are servants about, walking past them; there is a noise coming from the great hall of the keep and Tywin is certain he had seen a glimpse of his lord uncle as he entered. And furthermore, this is a foolish indulgence no matter what uncle Tyrion says, no matter what Genna has convinced Father to agree to: marriages are made out of politics, not passion. Yet he stands here, seeing nothing but her, with no desire for anything beyond exactly this. She smells of rose water and spices and he has just won his first victory, it hits him again here like a jolt to his chest; Joanna seems to read his mind because she smiles, raising one hand to the crest on his breastplate. Her fingers look pale against the golden lion.
“I hoped you might come before you went to battle. I wanted to wish you luck.”
Tywin holds her gaze. He certainly is ill suited for gallantry and courting, now more than ever before, but Seven help him if he isn't going to try at least once. “Would you have given your favour?” he asks, wondering if his discomfort is visible.
She laughs, a soft and uncharacteristically gentle sound.
“By the look of things you don't need my favour,” she says. “But you always have it, dearest cousin.”
A rare hope unfurls in his chest at her words, spreading like flames from a fire. He doesn't know what Genna has said or to what extent she has intervened, but he knows that he does not intend to bind Joanna to him in a marriage mirroring his sister's. And he knows that he is not going to disgrace her with any castles built on air and lies and the follies of his father.
“My father has not left me with much,” he says bluntly, feeling her gaze on him while he speaks. “But I - we - could change that. I will change things. And I would do right by you, Joanna, I swear it.”
Joanna looks at him for a long time, her hand that rested on his chest before is moving up to touch his cheek, very lightly. “I have never doubted that.”
*
He is no longer a boy, innocence is long past him, and on the eve of the feast thrown in celebration of his victory over the Raynes and the Tarbecks, Tywin finds his father in the Stone Garden. It's late; most of the visitors have gone home and those who have not are sleeping in their chambers for the night.
Father sits slumped on a bench in the middle of the garden, like an overgrown child who has escaped his own bedtime.
“Tywin, hello.” Even his smile is unsteady; he had at least five cups of wine during the supper and by the look of it, he has had at least another five since then. He appears softened in more ways than one, in more ways than Tywin can remember from before he left for Dragonstone. He's fatter and the edges of his features are blurred, but the change is on the inside more than anything, it's inwardly, looking at Tywin from behind those watery, bloodshot eyes. “Did you enjoy your celebration? It was a good feast, wasn't it? That song...” he shakes his head, as though in disbelief. “They have written a song about you and you are barely a man grown.”
There's a sadness in his voice that has always been there. Tywin can see now as if from a distance; he can see the ugly swelling behind his father's words, a blend of guilt and endless pity for his own fate. There's something greedy about it; it leaves nothing but contempt for everyone else.
“Go inside, Father. The servants will find you here-”
Father waves his hand dismissively. “What do I care if they find me?”
Looking around, Tywin almost expects to see Father's whore somewhere as well but the garden is empty except for the two of them. While he was away, his brothers have told him, she had taken even further liberties with the servants and Kevan has seen her entertain at least one of the knights. Even Gerion had sounded troubled by the way things are.
“I wanted to speak to you, Father,” Tywin says, swallowing his resentment.
Father's gaze is faraway, roaming over the contours of the rocks forming a mountain in miniature in the north of their garden. “We are speaking.”
“I wish to have your permission to marry.”
There is a long pause, then his father's voice hardens. “I hardly think you require my approval any longer."
I cannot remember ever having it.
“You are the Lord of Casterly Rock,” Tywin retorts, sharper than intended.
“That I am.” Father raises an eyebrow as though this is a revelation to him. It might as well be, for all he seems to care about it. “So you wish to have my permission to marry? Am I wrong in assuming it is your cousin Joanna you wish to wed?”
“No,” he looks out over the garden. “That would be correct.”
“She's a lovely girl, your cousin,” Father concedes.
No, Tywin thinks. Joanna isn't lovely. There is nothing loveable about her at all - she is remarkable.
It had been Genna who sought him out the night before he rode off to Tarbeck Hall; it had been Genna who had taken the issue in her hands, stripped it of all other implications and associations and simplified it by asking him if he could imagine anyone but Joanna as the Lady of Casterly Rock - his lady of Casterly Rock. On the eve of battle, the choice had been simple.
It still is. Out of all the choices he has made in his life, all the choices he is yet to make, he cannot imagine anything being simpler than this.
PART TWO
I.
For their first year as husband and wife the storm clouds rarely leave the sky. It's a year of grey autumn that never truly seems to give in to the cold from the north but remains in the landscape, shivering.
They travel a lot, that year. To introduce themselves and get used to their duties, together and apart.
“It does feel good to be home,” Joanna jests as they once again sit in a carriage on their way to King's Landing. Even now summer lingers on her skin; Tywin observes her for a long while, still somewhat unused to her presence, the ease with which they have merged their lives.
The first time they attend a royal feast as a couple wed, they stand together awaiting their names to be called with the rest of the high lords and ladies and Tywin finds it odd that it should feel almost like their wedding, the same silly sensation of being watched by a hundred pair of eyes. He brushes a hand over the front of his doublet. Beside him Joanna adjusts a stray golden curl that has escaped her intricate hairdo, muttering something when it falls back into her eyes.
“You will have to wear it down next time,” Tywin says, leaning in to assist.
“That would please you, would it not?” The corners of her mouth twist with amusement. She always lets her hair down for him when they are alone, lets it fall over her shoulders and back and the mere sight of it makes him wish they were not surrounded by people.
He steps back, formal and correct again.“It would, my lady.”
Joanna chuckles. She is clad in fine silk and Myrish lace this evening, wearing a dress that is made to match his own clothes; Tywin feels his chest tighten when she looks at him again over all this pomp and glory and she smiles - that defiant, toothy smile that she carries under her lady's face and saves for him.
“Oh,” she adds in a soft whisper, “if Lord Woodville corners me again to discuss his inestimably pleasant journeys to Dorne, you have to save me, my dear husband, or I shall not answer for the consequences.”
“You have my word,” he assures her, not able to hold back a fraction of a smile. Joanna nods, straightening her back and raising her head, preparing for their entrance. Within a heartbeat she is a lioness: composed and commanding, with the grace of a queen and that edge of clever irreverence that makes her stand out among the well-behaved women of court.
And when the heralds call out for them, she clutches his arm and Tywin leads her inside, feeling like the most important man in the Seven Kingdoms.
*
What surprises him the most is how there is a certain kind of life - slow, unassuming, seemingly unimportant - that creeps up on them when they stay at Casterly Rock for a longer period of time. They still tend to their duties of course, there is no escape from those. Tywin works especially hard that first year of their marriage, trying to establish a better control and use of the many gold mines on their land. For most of Father's rule, they have fallen into neglect but Tywin intends to change that with the help of Lord Twinbrook; offer a man a share - however small - of your spoils of war and he will extend his duties to include whatever you need assistance with. Men's greed is constant, Tywin thinks sometimes as he sits with his ink and paper, and at those moments the world seems so clear to him as it's unfolding at the back of his mind, every corner of it seemingly within reach.
When the winter never comes, they go hunting together, staying close to the castle so they never have to bother finding lodging for the night. Joanna is a good rider and not bad with a bow; during their first hunt she fells a few grouses and insists on having them cooked when they return to the Rock - Gerion and Tygett cheer for her hunting skills all the way back and she humours them by betting that they can't catch half as many the following day. They can, but she accepts defeat.
In the evenings, they work and read. Tywin keeps up with his correspondence in his chambers while Joanna goes through the library, finding the selection of books at Casterly Rock a vast improvement over the collection in her childhood home. Despite the expenses, Tywin orders a few rare volumes on Valyrian history from a bookseller in Oldtown as a gift for her and Joanna devours them in less then two days. For most of those days, she sits in her in her favourite chair by the largest window in her private chambers, feet dangling mid-air and her hair held back with a ribbon and he will always remember her exactly like that: absorbed in her own thoughts and then looking up at him when he enters the room, running her tongue over her bottom lip. And there is something grand in these small things, he realises, something just right in her simple gestures in this room, in the curve of her lips as she grins. In the midst of the commonality of their everyday life, she is anything but common.
She reaches for him and he walks up to her, pulling her to her feet.
“Husband,” she says, smiling. “I have an idea I like to discuss with you. About the trade routes to the Iron Islands.”
The following day, they make changes to his office so it will fit two people rather than one.
II.
The message that Aerys Targaryen is named King of the Seven Kingdoms reaches them the same day as the first snow falls and the storm clouds dissolve like smoke in the cold winter air.
The message that summons Tywin to court arrives within a fortnight. He reads it with a slight unease that shifts gradually into triumph as he understands what the summon is likely to mean for him.
“I will go with you,” Joanna announces as she, too, has read the letter.
“Are you certain?” He looks up, frowning. Memories from their wedding surface unbidden, whirling at the edges of his mind at all times but especially now. It does not matter what he did, Joanna had told him when Tywin had asked about it. It's unimportant. He's unimportant. Even now he is cold with anger at the thought of Aerys in that room, drunk and stumbling.
But Joanna merely nods. “Of course. I have always wanted to see the Tower of the Hand.”
“He might have something else in mind,” Tywin folds the message again and puts it away on his desk.
*
The King of the Seven Kingdoms looks more imposing in the council chamber than he does on his Iron Throne. Perhaps they ought to present him to his subjects like this instead, Tywin reflects briefly, scribbling a note to remind himself to speak to someone about Lord Rykker's last complaint regarding the newly built ships for the fleet.
As a king, Aerys is not unlike the solitary boy Tywin once befriended - constantly aware of his own weaknesses, never trusting his strengths to make enough difference, always drawing up plans in his head that will seat him far above the others. He wants to be untouchable. Tywin can spot it in the spaces between his glances and his words; he can sense it in the way the king speaks and moves.
“They think we are mere boys,” Aerys says to him once when they are alone. His face looks pale, his hands pressed flat against the surface of the table. “I am their king, Tywin.”
“No one questions that, Your Grace.”
When it comes to life at court, they are not so very different: neither of them have a taste for pleasantries and small talk but those are the meat and mead to the men in the small council and Tywin masters the art of it, whereas Aerys does not. Tywin speaks of the tedious matters, asks the correct questions, moves in the gilded halls and long corridors of the Red Keep as is expected of him. He makes no friends, but he is careful not to cause hostility. And of course Joanna is by his side during these events, too, providing an enormous aptitude for the game outside the throne rooms and council chambers that he would otherwise lack. Against their combined efforts, Tywin knows, the King on the Iron Throne stands no chance and it's a pleasant thought that he indulges in after long hours of handling the consequences of the king's less well-considered decisions.
Aerys looks about to speak, then he frowns and seems to get a hold of his own emotions.
“It's good that you're here, old friend.” A sudden smile appears on his face. “You will dine with me tonight.”
“I'll be glad to, Your Grace.”
Hours later, Tywin crosses two inner yards and passes quickly under a portcullis, sorting through the thoughts and impressions from a day's work and a night's dining. The chill in the air is welcome after an evening spent in the King's private dining hall, where the fires are burning no matter how warm and dry the night and he can feel the faint suggestion of an approaching headache. It's not unusual but it eases somewhat once he is rid of the stale, hot air of the king's chambers.
He's tired.
His work - his life - requires such steely precision and absolute dedication; it takes it toll on him, he admits in the evenings as he returns to the Tower of the Hand. It would take its toll on anyone, of course. Lesser men have failed spectacularly in the past. Tywin knows all about them by now, he still has piles of the old journals and chronicles on his desk. Governing a realm without giving in to temptations of leniency or too-simple brutality is not done without effort - he has learned this past year that the heart of the matter is to uphold a balance, disperse the weight of the Seven Kingdoms equally and find a way to contain it all without letting it consume him.
A thousand eyes, and one they say of one of his predecessor in these chambers. They still speak of his spies and spells between these walls, an echo or a whisper from years past. Another Hand is said to have slipped into madness as he slowly realised that every letter he wrote, every conversation he had in these corridors could be overheard and that there is no such thing as a true ally in the Red Keep. He had the secret passage built, Tywin remembers reading in one of the old tomes he's been given. He was the Hand that in secrecy demanded the passage that leads out of the Tower and into the wilds, as a feeble attempt to feel less surrounded but in the end it had killed him - one winter's night he had been found, half-buried in snow, just outside the ladder that would take him back to his chambers.
Tywin knows that the games they play don't end at the Iron Throne; they cut deeper than anything in the realm, a blood-red trace of ambition and disappointments running across generations and colouring entire legacies. It knows no honour or blood rights, it knows only power and acknowledges only those who are strong enough to wield it. It's a game older than the keep itself and it is the way of the world.
In the Red Keep and indeed in the whole of King's Landing, there is only one living soul who is not his enemy.
Her presence calms the very halls of this keep, calms him too, like a voice of reason or a hand in the centre of his chest quieting everything in him. He steps into the chambers they share and Joanna takes over. It's something they never acknowledge in words, but an understanding between them all the same, unshakeable as the stones of Casterly Rock or the city walls surrounding King's Landing.
“Your sister writes to tell us everything is well with the baby,” she says or: “Cousin Gerion is still trying to plot a course for the Smoking Sea.” It's a simple form of conversation that he does not even have to partake in, if he is too tired for it.
“I made some changes to the expenses of Casterly Rock,” she says another night, “Kevan has promised to see it carried out.” Tywin nods his approval and pours himself a cup of wine.
“I have missed you, husband,” she says some nights with her lips brushing over the bared skin of his throat, his hands already around her waist.
In her company, Tywin lets go of his duties. He hears her advice, shares confidences, asks for her opinions in matters of the realm as well as matters of a less important nature and she, in turn, releases him from his obligations and removes his lord's face with a smile or a touch of her hand. Trust me, she grins and he cannot find a single reason why he shouldn't.
He steps into their life and breathes.
III.
For a long time it seems the gods won't give them any children.
It's not so noticeable to him because his days are full of work and his thoughts barely brush over domestic matters. When they do, he finds that it does not truly concern him if they have sons and heirs, not as much as it concerns Joanna whose face grows tauter and thinner for every year that passes by without her wish being granted.
No one at court would dare to mention these things to their faces, but Tywin is the Hand of the King and he hears even the faintest of whispers; he hears that she is a remarkable woman but barren behind the curtains of the gilded halls, hears the badly concealed glee in so the young lion hasn't put a son in her yet.
“What sort of life is that, to die childless?” she asks him once, anger directed at him and everything around them.
He assures her that he has brothers, that Casterly Rock will flourish even under a nephew's rule and she listens to what he says but doesn't seem to hear.
When she does fall pregnant, it's the height of summer around them and they travel through the Westerlands to attend their cousin's wedding and Joanna takes his hand and places it on her stomach that has begun to grow under her dress.
“I did not want to say anything before,” she explains in an unusually tender voice.
“Oh, Joanna,” he says, finding no appropriate words.
He is not a demonstrative man, nor does Joanna expect him to be, but he feels in this moment an almost overwhelming affection for her. As she smiles and he spreads his fingers, carefully and slowly, to touch her in a fashion that somehow seems entirely new, he loves her with all the strength he possesses; it's a love that forces out everything else in him, rendering it insignificant.
And he is grateful, beyond words.
*
“She wants to call him Jaime,” Genna says when she's placing his son in his arms. “At least that's what she said before she started to curse the Seven and wish eternal torment upon whatever power that forces women to suffer through childbirth.”
He had not been there to witness it. As soon as the rider arrived at the Red Keep with the message that Lady Joanna was giving birth, Tywin had left, but of course he had not made it to Casterly Rock until a couple of days later.
“Jaime?” He looks down at the boy in his arms who has a pink face and golden hair and a tight grip around Tywin's finger, as though he wishes to tear it off his hand. His sister had screamed as he held her before, but the boy is silent, his big eyes observing the world. The heir of Casterly Rock, Tywin thinks, unable to hold back a smile. A pink-faced, tiny heir.
“Apparently he's a knight from some old tome she's read.” Genna smiles, too and he is suddenly very glad that she's here. “Frankly, I think she just wants to name him after herself.”
“Jaime Lannister,” Tywin says, gently prying open the tiny hand that holds him in an iron grip. “Yes.”
“She thought you would protest. Of course, I told her you would let her name him after a mug of mead if that's what she truly wanted.”
Jaime's twin sister, the firstborn, has a similar hold of his hand when he picks her up again. There's an even thicker mane of hair crowning her head, otherwise she looks exactly like her brother, her eyes bright and green like Joanna's.
“That is Cersei.” Genna forestalls his question.
Cersei, after their late mother. It seems like an apt name for a little lioness; Father will be pleased, he thinks, adjusting her in his arms. The girl is meeting his gaze now, without screaming this time, and Tywin smiles again. She looks like Joanna. They both look like mirror images of each other and of Joanna and there's a swirl in his chest when the realisation hits him, with full force, that these are his children.
“Tywin.” The note of seriousness in Genna's voice as she puts Jaime in his crib and reaches for Cersei makes him straighten his back, pushing aside everything else in his mind. “It was very hard for her. We feared she wouldn't come out of it alive.”
There's nothing he can say to that, nothing that will suffice, so he simply nods.
Later he stands quietly by the bedside, taking in the sight of her. She's still very pale and his stomach tightens when she opens her eyes. There will be no more children. He is not even going to make it a matter of discussion.
“Tywin.” She speaks his name as a weary sigh. "I missed you."
“I'm here,” he says, sitting down beside her; he feels grateful and oddly humble, but he has no words to acknowledge it so he takes her hand and kisses the back of it. “I'm here now.”
IV.
The following year is a year of spring clouds and heavy rain.
In King's Landing, Aerys begins to involve himself in the matters of the Kingsguard to such an extent that Lord Commander Gerold Hightower finds it insulting and the council meetings quickly develop into long sessions of debate, leading nowhere. What the King dreams, the Hand builds, Tywin thinks, arranging and rearranging his irritation behind the composure that has earned him quite a few epithets since he was named Hand.
Eventually, the White Bull himself decides it's enough.
“You are a man of reason,” he says, looking sternly at Tywin over the desk in the Hand's private council chamber. “Surely you understand why we cannot blindly accept everyone the King suggests.”
The knight in front of him is a thoughtful, dogged sort of man who takes his duty seriously; as he sits back in his seat, his breastplate glitters in the light from the afternoon sun pouring in from the high windows.
“Do you have anyone in particular in mind?” Tywin asks, even though he is almost certain he knows the names.
“Amory Lorch and Gwayne Gaunt.” The names sound like curses in the Lord Commander's mouth. “One is a wild animal without a shred of honour, the other is a boy. Forgive me, I do not understand why His Grace would want their presence in his personal guard.”
Because he is Aerys Targareyn, the second of his name, Tywin thinks and steeples his fingers under his chin. This is a never spoken truth among the men in the small council: their king is not always to be trusted. He is often competent, occasionally brilliant, but there is always a thread of darkness in him that Tywin recognises from Dragonstone, a pull from a different direction that's slowly gaining ground. They never speak of it. They devote a good deal of their time compensating for it or trying to cover it up, but they never mention it in words.
“I will convince Lorch to make a different choice,” Tywin says eventually, after having considered the options. “But the Gaunt boy is young still, surely men as skilled as yours can make a White Cloak of him yet?”
They observe each other in silence for a while; the Commander is the first to look away and give a curt nod.
As darkness falls over the Red Keep that evening, Tywin meets the king in the very same room. This time they are surrounded not by afternoon sun but by dusk that wraps itself around the contours and shapes and Tywin can't see Aerys's facial expression as he looks out the window. Today is apparently a relatively good day, judging by the tone of his voice; he has not even showed up for the last dozen of council meetings and Tywin has sat on the Iron Throne twice in less than a moon's turn. It's not a seat he particularly envies his childhood friend. When he goes to bed at night he can still hear Lord Merryweather's inane flattery, nagging at the back of his mind - His Grace is a wise and worthy ruler - and Lord Rykker's slow-witted expounding on matters great and small. If not for the brief but indispensable relief he finds in writing letters to Joanna about the affairs of the court, Tywin is certain he would go as mad as the man who turns around now, looking at him.
“All men have need for creatures like Amory Lorch from time to time,” he says. “Would you not agree, Tywin?”
“I would, Your Grace.” He pauses, rearranging his papers on the desk before continuing. “He will be knighted. But the Kingsguard is no place for him.”
It had been simpler than expected, turning the young Lorch's mind away from a lifetime of service in the Kingsguard. Whatever Aerys had offered - and Tywin is certain there must have been an offer - he had seemed content to put it aside for the promise of becoming a landed knight in the Westerlands.
“And he came to this insight on his own?” Aerys turns around. For a short while there's something open in his gaze, a gash in the way he presents himself, and Tywin can spot the boy he still hasn't forced out of his bones. An honest, curious boy asking his friend for advice.
“Apparently he did, Your Grace,” Tywin says, thinking that King's Landing is no place for boys.
*
A mere fortnight after the twins' first nameday, Father dies as ignobly as he has lived for the second half of his life. It must, Tywin thinks when the news reach him, be a glorious time for the slanderers. Tywin returns to Casterly Rock - his lordship, his birthright towering in front of him - and finds that it is all in a bit of disarray.
Not surprisingly, he thinks as he looks at the pile of unfinished matters before him.
He puts the lid over the ink bottle and closes the account book for the evening, getting to his feet after having spent every moment since his arrival working and giving orders to the servants of the household. His household. The thought does not yet sit right in the fabric of his mind; he had thought it would, had expected it to be very much the same as it has been for the last couple of years during which Tywin has made the decisions and asked his father to sign the document as a formality. But it is not the same and he has to repeat the thought to himself a few times, as one would to a child.
When he was a boy and his dreams were feverishly bold and angry, full of banners and swords, he used to think about the day when the castle would be rightfully his and the lords and ladies of the Westerlands would bow to him. Indeed, in his dreams he had sat in his Father's place, much as he did today and accepted the homage of his bannermen. He had promised them protection in return for their sworn loyalty, in the same fashion as he always did in his dreams; his vassals had given him solemn oaths and shown due reference to him as he rose.
He had dreamed of extracting revenge on the candlemaker's daughter, too. And he had stood there and watched the self-seekers in the vulgar crowd that titled themselves her friends scatter as the woman had been stripped and forced to walk the streets of Lannisport. A common whore should know her place. It is not at Casterly Rock. The mob had cheered for her demise, of course. He had expected them to. The affection of the smallfolk is a fickle thing, they are quick to judge and quick to forgive, and easy to appease once you remember this. Tywin himself had watched her parade without any amusement and Joanna by his side had pursed her lips but said nothing.
Yet a boy's dreams are weightless in these old halls.
Casterly Rock does no more belong to Tywin than it had belonged to his father. Casterly Rock is theirs but it's a place in its own right, it's their history and their future, it's the home of generations of lords before him who has learned the same things he has learned: everything you do, you carry with you but what matters is the name behind your deeds because that name is your whole purpose and intent.
He is a Lannister of Casterly Rock and for the first time, he knows exactly what it means, a message hammered into him.
In the corridor, voices from the hallway downstairs catches his attention before he has taken more than a few steps. He stops, listens.
“... Gerion says the new knight he installed down on Mad Yoren's lands has been riding around tormenting the farmers.”
It's Tygett's voice, carrying all the resentment of a young man trying to wring himself free of the bonds of family and obligation without much success.
“That's hardly Tywin's fault,” Genna says, her voice calmer and clearer.
There's a ruffling sound and something that sounds like a sigh, followed by footfall before he hears his brother again.
“... but soon he is in King's Landing again with his pomp and glory. What is it to him if some wretched knight rapes some farmer's wife here - we're the ones who have to listen to the farmer's complaints.”
“Kevan is doing well here and Joanna-”
“Kevan.” Tygett laughs, humourlessly. “He's never doing anything until our dear brother has specifically stated it in a letter.”
“Don't be such a petulant child,” Genna retorts and Tywin can almost see the irritated frown appearing on her face. “It does not suit you.”
She's wrong about that. Ungratefulness does suit their younger brother. He seems to conveniently have forgotten the tour of the Free Cities that Father had wasted much of Tywin's first hard-earned gold upon, mere years ago. Tywin had not protested against the journey, although he had found it a ridiculous frivolity to meet with the spice lords and cheese kings. Nor had their sire - or Tywin, so far - forced any useful occupation on Tygett and Gerion as they had come of age, but rather allowed them all the freedom a young lord should not posess.
He will remedy that, he thinks. A useful occupation will serve them both well.
“This reverence for Tywin.” Tygett's voice is muffled now, as though he has buried his face in his hands; he used to do that as a boy, Tywin recalls. When he was too angry - usually with Gerion or Genna - to endure anyone's gaze upon him. “You and Kevan both. And Joanna - though I will never know why, have you seen him deign to offer her any appreciation lately? But you all worship him. Even Father, in the end... Seven hells, Genna, I cannot draw a breath here without having his permission. One of my earliest memories is of him, berating me for something. I swear it.”
“That's not fair, Tyg,” Genna says.
He hears the ruffling sound again, footsteps approaching and he promptly removes himself from where he stands, feeling increasingly like the child he once was, a child who would eavesdrop because he did not want to miss anything important.
It feels less difficult to walk away from this.
Joanna is still dressed when he enters her bedchamber; she's sitting in her favourite chair by the window and looks up, smiling as she usually does when he approaches. He lets his gaze run over her body, her face. She remains the most beautiful woman he has seen, even now, years into their marriage when experience and familiarity has replaced the initial sense of wonder; she says the children have marked her body - carrying two at the same time is simply cruel, Tywin she had claimed once, wrinkling her nose - but he would not even have noticed until she had pointed it out to him.
Childbirth may have given her scars but her head is still unbowed and she is still looking at him with eyes that are clouded and knife-sharp all at once and he can barely refrain from making a defeated noise every time she runs her hands down his chest, asking him if they should go to bed.
His answer is as always an undeniable yes and afterwards they lie together for a long while; his hand is still entangled in her hair, her leg crooked around his hip.
“I am thinking of going with you to King's Landing,” Joanna says suddenly. “For a little while now that the children are older. Once everything is settled here, of course.”
Her fingertips brush back a strand of hair from his forehead and he catches her gaze, tilting back her face with his hand. “I would be glad for your company.”
“Oh, I know,” she says with such natural confidence that he has to smile.
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Part 1 | Part 2| Part 3 | Part 4