And I the elder and more terrible, part 3/4
PART THREE
I.
This is her room, he thinks long before it truly becomes one of Lady Joanna's personal chambers at Casterly Rock.
When their betrothal had been made an official agreement many years ago, Tywin had ordered the rooms on the second floor, the ones that once belonged to his late mother, to be redecorated for his bride. He had wanted them to be ready before the wedding, had wanted her to step into her own home.
In his memory, he stands behind her here, his shoulder pressed to the door frame as she reads or finishes a letter. He watches her struggle with her carelessly bound hair, twisting her head trying to shift the weight of it, keep it up; then she shrugs, as if in defeat, letting the curls cascade over her shoulders and back and he draws a sharp breath, feeling her movements inside him.
In his memory, he stands here, in this very spot a few months ago and kisses her briskly, his thoughts still elsewhere, along the Kingsroad and in the council chambers of the Red Keep. Even Joanna cannot settle his mind lately: there are too many fractions of his consciousness tugging and pulling in different directions and the wine he had been served at supper has merely increased their speed.
“Tywin,” she says in his memory, “Maester Daron tells me I'm expecting another child.”
“Oh, Joanna.” He wraps his arms around her and feels her hands come around his waist, travel up to his back and shoulders. They stand like that for a long time, the rhythms of their bodies falling into each other; then she inhales unsteadily and he can feel, without looking at her, that she is crying.
The memories burn slowly with the setting sun, falling across the floor and dancing on the walls.
There's a book beside the chair even now; it's open but he cannot discern its content from a distance, can't bear to pick it up and disturb the scene.
He stands in the too-quiet room hours after it has been emptied, hours after she has closed her eyes. He doesn't do anything, he has been told several times already that there is nothing to do, Tywin so he merely stands there with his hands useless and empty and his breath catching every time he imagines a movement from the bed, a flicker of light animating the pale smoothness of death.
He has lost her.
She's been torn from him, from this room, from this echoing castle that used to be his home and for a moment he lets the helplessness flood him and he feels tears starting in his eyes. Actual hot, aching, terrified tears. He bites them back, shamed and angry, but it's the sort of desperate anger that has no purpose and no release and gives nothing in return. It merely stays in him, roots inside.
One flesh, one heart, one soul. They were young back then and had found the pompous words so often sung by maidens and bards amusing; he remembers how she had caught his eye over the profuse speeches and grand gestures and grinned at him - her most unladylike smile that had managed to capture all of her spirit, every reason he loves her - and Tywin, feeling something in his chest expand at the sight, had smiled back, thinking the oath that followed the easiest oath a man could ever swear.
One flesh, one heart, one soul.
It seems less sentimental now.
“Is she dead?” Jaime surprises him by waiting outside the bedchamber and Tywin has to pause for a moment, gathering his strength before he looks at his son, who is wide-eyed and pale, pressed up against the wall like a guard on duty. “Is she dead, Father? You said she wouldn't die. You promised-”
“Be quiet, Jaime.”
“But she wasn't supposed to die!” Tears well up in his eyes as he tilts his head back to stare at Tywin, full of the furious grief of a boy. “She promised she wouldn't, you promised, you promised!”
“Do not weep,” he commands, and his voice is so hard the boy's face distorts into a grimace.
“Father-”
He scrambles for the cool restraint that comes so easily to him but it suddenly seems lost somewhere in the images of that wretched room; her voice thick and broken with pain and fever, her eyes burning, her words juggled and torn but practical to the end, asking him to re-marry wisely, to think of the realm. The way she had smiled at his response, his own voice a thing apart, hollow and strange: there can be no one else.
“I was no more than a boy when my own mother died and I did not cry.”
Jaime gives him a heartbroken glance but says no more; Tywin tries to reconcile him by putting a hand on his shoulder but his son jerks away, running ahead of him to the top of the stairs.
*
For several days, he is left alone.
The servants walk in and out of his quarters, announce his meals and baths and lights his fireplaces and he follows their unspoken biddings; he eats and bathes and shaves and reads his correspondence in the light of a fire. Since sleep eludes him he stays up with his accountant books and trade route evaluations and the ever growing pile of petitions from his vassals. Joanna had done that sort of work, but the pregnancy had taken most of her strength and she had left it for later. She would say that - for later - even as her eyes grew dark with fear and her belly stretched the fabric of her dresses.
Tywin writes her letters and reads her notes with unflinching, unthinking frenzy, that shuts out everything else. When it is done, all the matters she had not found time to handle, he remains at the desk for the rest of the night, staring out the window at the dawn that is spreading over Casterly Rock. As the rest of the castle awakens, he takes up his quill again and begin anew on something else.
“Brother,” Kevan says after the days of unbroken solitude. “I am afraid we have visitors.”
“I have not invited anyone.” His voice is strange, unwilling.
There's a pained expression on his brother's face and moment of silence stretching out between them before Tywin understands and as he nods and rises from his position where he has locked everything, preserved everything, kept everything at bay, Joanna suddenly floods the room and for a few staggering moments, he cannot breathe.
*
He has watched the Dornish visitors leave without the promises they had come for when he returns to his darkening bedchamber only to find it less empty than he left it.
For a moment the shape in the chair by the window looks so much like Joanna in her favourite chair that he feels his expression crack, and Cersei gives him a wide-eyed stare as she turns her head, to find that she has scared him. He walks up to her; her cheeks are tear-streaked and her voice unusually brittle. She who speaks like Joanna even if she's no more than a girl, her voice loud and strong and confident. Tywin puts a hand on her arm.
“Are they gone?” she asks.
“They have left, yes.”
“I did not like them.” She looks away again, folding her arms across her chest. “The Princess was silly and Prince Oberyn only wanted to see the imp.”
Tywin feels a stab at the word. It is indeed what he suspects the word is on the street. The Lannister imp.
“His name is Tyrion and that's what you will call him.”
Cersei gives him a sceptical glance, as though she is testing him to see if he truly means what he says.
“I would rather have Mother,” comes her verdict after a moment's hesitation.
“You do not get to choose,” he says and he hears the words come out angrier than he intended for them to be. He exhales, tries again. “I believe you should go find Septa Maria now, Cersei. It's time you go to bed.”
Of all the things the twins did, every prank and mischief Joanna accounted for with an exasperated frown, she had claimed that bedtime was the worst. The septa is too old to chase them around Casterly Rock every night, Tywin. And they don't listen to the servants. He begins to see a trace of that obstinacy now.
When she makes no indication of moving of her own will, he leans down to pick her up and notices the tremble of her lower lip, the way her hands are clenched into angry fists on the armrests of the chair.
“Cersei,” he tries, making his voice softer. For a moment it's not Joanna she resembles, but Genna. Stubborn, too-tired, red-eyed Genna curled up outside Mother's bedchamber. “Come on.”
*
He looks misplaced in the crib.
It's the same crib they used for the twins, the same crib with the same crimson and gold and the old rattles he recalls that Joanna had found so beautiful. It's the same room, the same colours. But the child is different and it's a difference that jars in him, a feeling in his chest that refuses to settle.
Tywin has not held the boy yet, barely looked at him. He has been told it's a healthy baby, given the circumstances, but he has not held him and as he observes at him now, he wonders if the child looking up at him with his mismatched eyes knows. It's sheer folly and superstition of course. Fools will say anything about imps - some claim they are in possession of the last scraps of magic, some state they have as little wit as befits their height, most people have never seen dwarves at all.
Low-born dwarfs are sold or killed at birth, given away so they cannot be a burden to the family; he has to forcibly push the thought away, it's too tempting in this room, much too close. He had thought it as Joanna faded away, as her hold of his hand loosened and Genna stood beside him, soft-spoken but firm - let her go, Tywin; she's gone - and he had still thought it as the septa carried the deformed baby in her arms, wordlessly showing him to Tywin who had nodded curtly; a gesture of acceptance, he thinks now. Of defeat.
This wretched creature is undeniably, unchangeably a Lannister and there is nothing to be done for it.
The boy makes a little noise as Tywin walks out of the room.
*
There's a great sense of relief in returning to King's Landing, in leaving the castle behind.
As he's walking up to the squires and the horses, tightening his cloak around his shoulders, he hears Kevan's voice - no, Cersei, come back here - and as Tywin turns around, Cersei comes running and throws her arms around his waist, holding on to him for dear life.
“Don't go.” Her voices falters, cracks.
He means to admonish her childish behaviour, but instead he loosens her grip around him and kneels down to embrace her properly. She's too old for this. Too old to make a scene, too old for her little hands to crumple up his crimson cloak as she refuses to let go; it's the last time he will hold her this way, he thinks, the last time she will bury her face in the crook of his neck and he will cradle the back of her head in his hand.
“I will come back,” he says. “And when I do, I don't want to see any tears, Cersei. A lioness doesn't cry. You are a lion, are you not?”
After a moment's hesitation, he can feel her nod, like a tremble against his own body.
*
The first time he returns to Casterly Rock after the first long absence, it's Cersei who waits for him in that same spot where he left her, many months ago. He does not admit, even to himself, that he had thought for a brief moment that it had been someone else standing by the Lion's Mouth to greet him.
He does not admit, even to himself, that the reason he has stayed away for so long is because he has dreaded the return. King's Landing is a place of work and rest to him these days, a place of duty and obligation and very little else.
Here, among the rocks and the roaring waves of his childhood, that stilted crack in him springs to life again as life with her comes back to him, walking around in the rooms and corridors he had made hers. It had never seemed the same to him those first days after her death and it still doesn't. It has lost its sense of home.
There's so much he wants to tell her.
He had not realised while Joanna was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he had told her about it.
He had not realised, not fully, how much the castle belonged to her or how much it must change, rearrange itself in her absence. It's not a matter of if, because the world does not bend to the follies of human emotion. It's a matter of how, but the method of it eludes him.
In the evenings after a serving of wine he thinks he can still see her brush past his vision, a ghost, a blur of motions. His breath catches in his throat every time and he shoves the goblet away and goes to bed but it doesn't erase the overwhelming sense of her in between the walls.
He returns to Casterly Rock; he loses her all over again.
II.
“Father!” Jaime's voice is clear and bright, resounding through the corridors. “Father!”
“No, you cannot participate in the tournament, Jaime.” Tywin quickens the pace, as though he would be able to outrun his son's persistence and conviction. “You're too young.”
“I'm ten!”
“And the jousting knights are men grown. They will unhorse you in a heartbeat, there is no point for you to enter.”
He looks a bit wounded at that. “But uncle Gerion said-”
Tywin stifles a groan. His youngest brother is more of a nuisance than he is useful, in particular when it comes to Jaime. While it has been a good thing to have the twins remaining at Casterly Rock and not leaving their upbringing entirely in the hands of maeasters and septas, he is beginning to question the influence of Gerion. At least Tywin has successfully wed Tygett to a woman of good birth, even if it had required a level of patience in the face of foolishness that he does not possess and he knows that without Genna's aid, their brother would still be devoting most of his time to travelling the countryside and drinking costly wine snatched from the cellars of Casterly Rock.
“Uncle Gerion is not your father,” he interrupts. “Nor is he the Lord of Casterly Rock, is he?”
“No,” Jaime admits, if somewhat reluctantly.
They stop outside the Golden Gallery where the preparations for tomorrow's festivities are turning the gilded hall into what looks more like a bustling marketplace down in Lannisport. Tywin looks at his son and heir, who observes the activity with an enthusiasm he usually reserves for dogs, horses and swords he is still too much of a boy to carry. They burn so brightly, Kevan had said once. Like their mother. Jaime already stands tall, with his mother's features and Tywin's build, towering over other boys his age. And Cersei - who comes running towards them now, she is always running, everywhere, even though he hears Septa Maria tell her that ladies do not run - is nearly as tall and just as much a mirror image of Joanna with her golden curls tumbling over her shoulders.
Nobody will laugh at them, he had sworn to Joanna. Nobody will ever laugh at our children.
It was an easier promise back then, he thinks, spotting the child in the septa's arms.
*
They feast the King of the Seven Kingdoms in a lavish fashion that Casterly Rock has rarely seen under Tywin's lordship. The castle is meticulously prepared, decorated to the very last detail and they serve food and wine that tells a proud tale of how the treasury has fared recently. It's brimming again, in much the same fashion as the treasury of the Red Keep which not even Lord Webber, their new Master of Coin, can find fault with.
Tywin is seated beside his honoured guest in the great hall and remembers the prince who once asked if he could come to Casterly Rock. It is arguably not the same man who sits here today, but here they are, in several ways still unchanged.
Aerys glances sideways at him, his attention a flurry of different impulses, judging by the looks he gives everyone nearby. “So, how is your youngest son, Tywin? I had expected to see him.”
Tywin has no doubt Aerys had expected to see the imp of Lannisport, in fact, he very much expects the king to barely be able to contain his desire to behold the boy, just like most of their visitors. The subdued delight in their stares, Tywin thinks with an inward snarl of fury, the raised eyebrows, the twitching mouths. He has climbed high, there are many who want to see him fall. So he presents Tyrion to the lords and ladies without betraying a single emotion. He has sent guards away from the castle for throwing japes around when they had thought Tywin was out of earshot; when the boy grows older, he will have squires his own age and masters who will teach him what little he can be taught - Tywin prides himself on having done everything that can be expected of him.
“He is a bit too young for the feast,” he replies, smoothly.
“Ah, yes.” Aerys gives him a smile, picking up his mug of wine and putting it down again without drinking. “I suppose he is.”
Jaime and Cersei both sit transfixed at the table opposite them, looking with the same kind of bewilderment at the young Targaryen prince who seems to find them amusing enough to entertain. Tywin lets his gaze linger there. He is very dissimilar to his father even if there is that streak of uncorrupted energy in him that Aerys used to possess, the enthusiastic will to see and understand everything.
“Rhaegar was knighted earlier this year.” The King is not eating, even if he pretends that he is, Tywin notices. His thin hands are working fervently at cutting up every piece of meat into tiny pieces, pushing them towards the edges of the plate. Hoping to catch the poison someone has planted there with the intention of killing him, most likely. It's only if you study Aerys carefully that you can discern his faltering grasp of the situation, Tywin knows. The muscles around his neck that tightens, the little flicker in his gaze as his eyes narrows.
As of late, he has stopped drinking from any cup but his own, carrying it with him at all times. He jumps at his own shadow, too, whenever he catches it in a surface or a mirror.
Tywin nods politely, raising his own cup of wine. “And such a fine knight he is, Your Grace.”
When the dance begins, they sit and watch it too. Aerys doesn't dance unless the occasion truly calls for it - it's one of the many liberties he allows himself - and Tywin has already taken turns with the ladies who expects to dance with the Lord of Casterly Rock.
He swallows a mouthful of wine, looking out over the hall that's still swarming with festivities and crowds dancing and talking; Joanna would have enjoyed this. Whenever she had been away from court for too long, she used to complain - at least half-serious - that they were being too recluse. It had always been enjoyable to attend these things with her, Tywin thinks. They would take care of their social duties as an entity, often separated but never apart and when they had looked up from whatever conversation that demanded their attention, their eyes would meet across the room, the recognition a taut line between them: your world is my world.
He is alone in it now and feels the burden of it more sharply.
“She knows her own mind,” the king says suddenly, nodding towards the youngsters on the floor where Prince Rhaegar bows low before Cersei who clasps her hands over her mouth in delight. Behind them, Jaime rolls his eyes.
“She does,” Tywin agrees.
“A spirited girl. She will make a lovely wife one day. I take it you have higher aims for her than some lord of the Westerlands?”
“I do, Your Grace.”
And Aerys smiles, but there's a hardness in it, a chill in his eyes.
III.
“I stand by my suggestion that you ought to accept Lord Darklyn's demands in this matter, Your Grace. They are not unreasonable.”
Tywin's verdict hangs in the air of the council chamber.
“He is defying me!” Aerys taps his fingers on the table, a persistent, dull sound in the otherwise silent room. Everyone refrains from speaking for a long while, as the King and his Hand uphold the silent war that have coloured every meeting this hot summer. “I should have him hanged for treason, not negotiate with him.”
“Lord Darklyn holds an important city and indirectly controls a significant part of the trade in the Crownlands.” Tywin is calm. There is no valid argument against his claim and any conflict, he knows, will take place outside the council room. Even if Aerys has all but dismissed form and protocol over the past few years, certain things still follow some sort of logic. “Has he been noted to fail to pay his taxes, Lord Webber?”
He turns to the Master of Coins, who reluctantly shakes his head. “No, he hasn't.”
“You ought to grant him the town charter he demands and then negotiate the terms as well as any further claims. The town charter is a generous offer on your part, your grace-”
“A true king need not show generosity, Tywin.”
“He still benefits from it,” Tywin says, not bothering to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “The realm is best served by applying reasonable-”
Aerys's eyes are narrowed to indignant slits, the line of his mouth twitching with held-back rage. “Do not presume you know anything of governing a realm, Tywin. I am not letting you dictate the course of action! I will handle this issue myself.”
“Then I shall withdraw my counsel in this matter, Your Grace,” Tywin says, bracing his voice. He steeples his fingers under his chin and sits back in his seat. “I wish you luck.”
*
Duskendale is relentless, choking sunlight and dusty streets. And here they stand, a large force from the King's own army, lined up, ready for battle, but entirely powerless for as long as the defiant lords of Duskendale hold Aerys hostage. Lord Deny's terms had not left any room for interpretation.
It's hot even in the middle of the night, Tywin thinks, looking out over the camp that has settled behind a wall of clattering metal and soldier's voices. He feels the now familiar flare of resentment rising at the thought of the king who has brought shame on the Iron Throne - and on his Hand - for this folly.
“You have until tomorrow,” he says.
Ser Barristan gives him a glance that at the same time is proud and servile, he's the kind of man who takes pride in serving well. He reminds Tywin vaguely of Kevan, but he's entirely without Kevan's sense of pragmatic reasoning; he tries to imagine his brother here, suddenly wishes he was beside him now instead of this hopelessly gallant man. Then the knight nods, narrowing his eyes.
“And what happens if I fail?” he asks, in a tone that tells Tywin he already knows about - and disapproves of - the continuation of their actions.
“Then I will have no choice but to storm the city gates and sack the town.”
The other man looks troubled but Tywin has no patience with the tender consciences and gentle souls of men who ought to know better so he refrains from speaking more on the subject. Unbidden, his thoughts go to Lord Arryn who, years ago, had saw fit to inform Tywin of his personal opinions regarding the matters of justice.
I believe killing should not be so easy, Lord Tywin.
Tywin had responded that a lord can afford a headsman just as he can afford soldiers and knights, but his answer had not appeased the Lord of the Eyrie. Yet, he thinks with dry amusement, even men like Ser Barristan go to war to butcher enemies and high lords like Jon Arryn send thousand upon thousand of men to kill under their banner and suddenly it is not so important who holds the sword or why, as long as the man at the other end of it dies properly. All men who carries a sword dream of glory; no man wants to shoulder the burden of being a butcher so they keep at their make-believe like children playing war games, hiding behind honour and duty when all it comes down to is winning or losing.
“I suggest you leave while the hour of the wolf is still upon us,” he says; the knight turns around, frowning. “The hour of the wolf. The blackest part of night, when all the world's asleep.”
Ser Barristan gives a curt bow.
“What an apt name, my lord Hand,” he says, before disappearing into the grey swirling shadows.
*
“Spare the boy, Your Grace.” Ser Barristan says in the smoke and ash of Duskendale. He carries the blood-stained cloak of Gwayne Gaunt in one hand, his sword in the other. “I beg you to show mercy.”
“You will have me sparing the life of a boy whose father openly defied me?” Aerys gives the member of his Kingsguard a wavering, undecided look. He still appears to teeter dangerously close to whatever edges his mind possesses, a shrunken, ashen-faced regent without his throne nearby.
The boy in question - Dontas Hollard, son of one of Lord Darklyn's sworn vassals and no more than a slip of a child - stands silent and pale in between two of Tywin's guardsmen. If he were to become a squire in King's Landing he would serve as a reminder of the King's victory - or his ill-advised quest to Duskendale. It is difficult to tell which it will be and Tywin cares very little either way.
“Ser Barristan did save your life, Your Grace,” he reminds the king.
Both men give him a long, searching glances; then Aerys waves his hand in a half-hearted approval and Ser Barristan bows.
“Prepare the men for departure,” Tywin commands, sheathing his sword and returning to his horse. “We need to cover some distance before nightfall.”
IV.
He chooses a bad time to bring Cersei to court, he realises too late, as they dine in the Tower of the Hand and all she has seen for a handful of weeks is political turmoil. It's seeping in from the council chamber, from the King's private chambers, from outside where the king's subjects grow restless and worried and the unrest increases.
Rumour has it Aerys Targaryen has gone mad and for the first time the words aren't slander, but written in the stone underneath the houses, on the cobbled streets of King's Landing.
It is, Tywin thinks as he looks at his daughter over the table, difficult to dispel rumours that carry nothing but truth.
“What will happen to Ser Payne now?” Cersei asks. If he had ever thought her delicate and in need of protection, she has certainly erased all such notions in him after today's events. She had stood there, beside him, watching as Aerys had demonstrated his power by having his guards cut out Ser Payne's tongue in front of half the court. Tywin had looked at her but she had looked straight ahead, a glint of something in her eyes. Excitement, perhaps.
“He has served the Lannisters well,” Tywin says. He wonders if he would have felt that rush of excitement if he had been witness to such a scene at her age. All he had felt today was a weary sort of anger weaving threads of resolve in him - it is time to act, soon. The Seven Kingdoms are biding their time, he can sense it in the many subtle ways the political game has shifted, in the game spelled out in ink and fought with ravens; he can sense it even in the Keep, the slow undermining of a madman's reign.
“Why didn't you do anything?” She tilts her head, reaching for a slice of bread.
“The Hand can't openly defy the king's orders, Cersei.”
She looks satisfied with the explanation, but there's an uncertainty to her, a few unspoken questions in the room. Tywin cannot imagine that she cares enough about his Captain of the Guard to worry for his well-being, but even so he tells her that he's sent the best servants of the keep to care for the man.
“Prince Rhaegar will be a good king,” she says when he's done. “He's so gallant. And brave.”
It's a child's illusion but Tywin can't bring himself to take it away from her just yet so he nods, reaching for his cup of wine.
*
The Prince of Dragonstone marries Elia of Dorne a splendidly warm spring day.
“She is ambitious,” Kevan says, nodding towards the mother of the bride, standing tall and proud beside her daughter who still looks as pale and frail as Tywin remembers her from their brief stay at Casterly Rock.
Sly, devious and irresistible, Joanna had dubbed her friend once, and she always had a talent for recognising people's nature, as though she could look straight into their souls.
“Be that as it may, her daughter is sickly.” Tywin glances at his brother. “Cersei is young.”
It had brought Aerys great and undeniable pleasure to turn Tywin's offer down, of course. You have served me well, Tywin. But a Prince of Dragonstone cannot marry a servant's daughter. He is proud for a man they call King Scab behind his back and mock in the corridors of the Red Keep, Tywin thinks, letting his own indignation at the memory slip back behind his composure. There's a story often told among the guardsmen about how one of them once caught the king running around in circles in his throne room, chasing his own shadow and attacking it with a sword.
It's a great pity though, Aerys says in his memory, as conceited there as he is in person. Cersei has the beauty of a queen. Just like her mother. Such a waste to keep her at Casterly Rock, I always thought.
“She is,” Kevan agrees. He takes a swallow of wine. “Perhaps you ought to think of a marriage for yourself in the meantime?”
His voice is calm, but Tywin can sense the trail of apprehension in it, spot the doubt lingering between the words that are often spoken, he supposes, though rarely where he can hear it.
“No,” he replies coolly.
Kevan hesitates for a moment, before continuing. “I know that you always put the realm before anything else, brother. Now would be a good time to strengthen the bonds to the North, if at all possible.”
They watch Lady Whent and her yongest daughter walk past them; Tywin thinks of the offers he has received and refused over the past few years. One letter at first, then another, then an endless stream of them. He has turned down widows and maidens, heiresses and second daughters, old women and young girls who have barely flowered.
It is Jaime who ought to strengthen the bonds. The Lords of Highgarden are Aerys's lapdogs, but Tywin has reached an understanding with Lord Tully recently. It will be a good match for both families, he thinks, tying their houses together and strengthening the Lannister name in the Riverlands. Jaime himself had seemed less convinced as Tywin brought him there, but he will make a good husband for Lysa Tully. He has grown up considerably at Crakehall and in a year or two, when he has won a few tourneys and basked in the glory young men crave, he will settle down as the future Lord of Casterly Rock and do his duties. Reluctant and headstrong though he may be, Tywin knows his heir to be a true lion, loyal and fierce once he has set his mind to something.
Jaime will be their bridge to Riverrun.
“I have a wife,” he tells his brother who resigns by dipping his head slightly and taking another mouthful of wine.
They will never speak of the matter again.
v.
“You might be interested to know that your brother is coming to visit.”
Cersei looks up from the book she's reading, curled up in a chair, resembling her mother more than ever. Her eyes are burning even if she attempts to show him the usual calmness she's been adopting as of late. “When?”
“Soon, I should think.”
Tywin has had reports from the already famed clash between the members of the Kingsguard and the Kingswood Brotherhood outlaws, telling him his son had been knighted on the field of battle. A remarkable young man, Ser Arthur Dayne had written.
“Will you tell him he has to wed Lysa Tully by the end of next year?” Cersei stands tall now, imposing for a young woman; she is a good match for anyone and she is fully aware of this fact. A lioness, for good or ill, Genna had said once. Never underestimate her, dear brother.
“He already knows about my intentions in that matter,” he says, thinking Jaime might not have realised precisely how advanced the negotiations had been, last time they spoke. But he cannot see why it would pose such a horrible prospect for him, marrying a beautiful young girl of noble birth.
Cersei gives him a long, searching glance but she says nothing else.
*
Jaime smiles as he dismounts and walks inside the Red Keep; he smiles as he greets guardsmen and lords and he smiles as he catches the gazes of every woman he passes by and Tywin watches him, thinking he has never before bore such a resemblance to Gerion. The pride of young lions need to be tamed, he had overheard Father say once and back then he had found it a silly notion; he understands it better now.
Jaime still smiles as he sits down with his father in the Tower of the Hand.
“I have a gift for you,” Tywin says, without preamble. “It's a new sword, fit for a knight. Master Tyr tells me it will be ready tomorrow, before you depart.”
“Thank you, Father.”
The word is that they are riding out again, and his son's glittering eyes tell him that Jaime is looking forward to it, like a boy looks forward to his first tourney. And Jaime is still young. He dreams of the same things he has always dreamed of - battle, bravery, greatness. Tywin thinks of what Genna had said once about him - that boy would do anything for love, Tywin. Everything. It's a thought that moves in his mind even now, unsettled and unresolved. He has spelled it out for Jaime over and over: a high lord will never be loved. A lord with your skill and your name even less so.
This is what his own father had never understood. Tywin searches for the same sort of leniency in Jaime's eyes, the same kind of hopeless delusions, but he finds only pride and a new sort of experience that seems to swirl in him, not yet settled. What he can hope for - what he must aspire to achieve - is to be no less hated than the other lords and if he is hated, then he must be much more feared.
In the courts and castles, the inevitable tension demands balance.
“You will be a man grown within a year, Jaime.” Tywin offers him a cup of red summerwine; Jaime takes it with a half-smile, raking his free hand through his hair. “It is time you return to Casterly Rock. Your uncle Kevan will resume your education there.”
“Already?”
“You cannot expect to be treated as a boy forever,” he says, pouring a glass of summerwine for himself as well, crossing the floor to stand beside the fireplace.
Jaime makes a sound of protest, rendering himself at least three years younger. “I'm a knight.”
“The realm has more knights that it can put to use. What you are is a Lannister.”
Jaime sits quiet; he's looking into the fire, his eyes burning like gold in the light from it and he is so much his mother's son tonight. You would be proud of him, too, Joanna, he thinks. If she had been born a man, she would have unhorsed all competition at the tourneys and rescued maidens for no other reason than the chance to see their blushing faces, looking adoringly at her. There is no doubt about it in his mind. I would wear your favour, husband, she used to say. It had remained a jape between them - the knight, the maiden, the masks they never managed to fit behind. Their son has her confident gallantry, her vanity, her sharp tongue. And the same stubborn refusal to settle for anything other than what he wants.
“So that's what I should do?” he asks eventually, his voice is dry and sulking and for a moment he sounds uncannily like his sister whenever she is given an order she is going to attempt to evade. “Go back to Casterly Rock instead of riding with Ser Dayne and the White Cloaks?”
Tywin shakes his head. “You seem to be mistaking this for a proposal, Jaime. It's not. It's your birthright. You were born as the heir of a high lord in the Westerlands, you're not the son of a cheesemonger's.”
He thinks of his brothers' travels again, of the endless desire to escape that seems to run like a curse in their family, tainting their blood.
“Perhaps a cheesemonger's sons would be free to life as he saw fit,” Jaime mutters so quietly Tywin isn't certain he means for him to hear it.
“No men are truly free,” he says, regardless. “Only children and fools think elsewise.”
His son says nothing else, but as he turns his head to put down his wine, the ghost of something seems to cross his face, altering it slightly.
Tywin watches him in silence.
*
Less than a moon's turn later, the room seems hollow around them, an echo of oaths that cannot be forsworn and the clatter of chains forged by Jaime's own hands.
”Why?” Tywin demands.
His son stands motionless before him, his head lowered for a second but then he straightens his back again, ever the truculent little cub.
“Because I asked to join.”
It sounds like a declaration of war, but when their eyes meet, there’s no anger in Jaime's gaze, only a raw sort of disappointment that bares the little boy he still is. He rushes headlong into everything, Joanna had told him once, over supper or as they walked the paths of the Stone Garden. He doesn't think until afterwards. Now he's sworn to protect a mad king in a kingdom that slowly prepares itself to go to war and Tywin can't do a single thing to prevent what has already happened, so he turns on his heel and leaves.
VI.
“Jon Arryn has raised his banners.”
Kevan speaks the words as though he delivers an invitation to a Spring feast, but Tywin can hear the true meaning in his brother's voice, the heat and weight behind the announcement.
“We will remain here,” he responds without hesitation.
Tygett stands in the doorway, too, listening intently. “You intend to bleed out the Starks and the Baratheons before you join?”
“That is not my main concern,” Tywin says. “But I would welcome it.”
“And then choose the winning side, brother? Once the battle is done?” There's a streak of reluctant approval in Gerion's voice but Tywin is in no mood for it. He folds his arms across his chest, looking at his brother.
“Aerys has my son.” The mere thought that Jaime is a glorified hostage at the king's court enrages him to the point of having to clench his teeth, forcing himself to remain calm. “We will not act until we are certain of victory. Jaime should be safe as long as Aerys believes he can gain an advantage through him.”
Tywin has no intention of putting another Targaryen on the Iron Throne unless it truly cannot be helped and he does not think Prince Rhaegar capable of leading his army to victory. Without Rhaegar, the mad king is nothing. He will remain at the Red Keep, Tywin knows, hiding like a wounded animal - and Tywin still has ears in King's Landing, he will know when the time has come to act. Until then, he explains to his brothers, they are staying in Lannisport, gathering their army.
Kevan frowns. “It is a hazardous game, Tywin.”
Aerys is nothing without his son and no hostage, no matter how important, can alter that fact.
“Not if I win,” he says, closing the conversation with an unshakeable confidence he doesn't quite feel.
*
Afterwards, they gather the spoils of war and picks up the pieces of Seven Kingdom's worth of broken alliances and betrayed promises. Tywin stands with his son in an empty corridor in the Red Keep, feeling the lack of sleep as a low hum in his body, the hollowness of war spreading around them.
“Rhaegar's children.” Jaime doesn't look at him; he doesn't look up, as though he is afraid to catch a glimpse of his own reflection.
Kevan had been the only one there when Tywin received the bodies of the dead children, presented to them as gifts wrapped in the finest of silks. In his memory, they had looked at the corpses without saying a word. They are maimed, not killed, Tywin remembers thinking. He had not given orders to torture them and the sight had been revolting and still is, but he had said nothing about that, not in that room. Those are questions for peace; war is war and always the same. He had merely nodded at Clegane and Lorch, sending them away. The Princess of Dorne was Joanna's dearest friend, he had said to Kevan without knowing why; the words had found their way out of him. I know, Kevan had replied and then neither of them spoke more of the matter because there was nothing else to say.
There still isn't. They are dead because Robert Baratheon went to war for the Iron Throne but did not want his own hands bloodied; they are dead because Tywin had counted on just that.
He is a man of few regrets. Regret is a wasteful sort of sentiment, a twisted shape in a man's mind and it does not serve a purpose save for meaningless self-flagellation. It is one thing to wish for the possibility to make a different choice - he has wished for that a number of times and some of them very recently - but quite another to be foolish enough to wish the deeds away. Boys have dreams of war, men must tend to reality.
It is a weakness in a man not to be able to endure the weight of what he has done.
When he tells his son this, the only response is a sound that gets stuck between a scoff and a curse, heavy in the air between them.
“He was going to burn down King's Landing,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Burn them all. That's what he told them.”
Tywin is silent for a moment.
“You had good reason,” he says eventually. “It was a foolish, damnable thing, of course, but undeniably brave all the same.
“Is that approval?” The edge of bitterness in his son's voice is a sharp, double-edged sword.
“Yes.” Tywin observes him. He waits for him to say something derisive or clever as he is prone to do, but he stays silent as though he, too, is waiting. “There is no need for you to sound so surprised.”
Jaime gives a humourless laugh. “So I was right to kill the mad king but you wish I had done it differently?”
“I wish you had done a lot of things differently, Jaime, but that is beside the point.”
He shakes his head, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand as though he wants to rub something off. “What happens now?”
“You will receive a pardon from the new king on the Iron Throne.” Tywin puts a hand on his son's shoulder, squeezing it. “I gave him a throne; he will release you from your oath. And then you will go back to Casterly Rock and be the man you were meant to be.”
It sounds so simple in that moment, so clear.
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