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The Great Sept of Baelor had been deserted – and blessedly quiet, after the chaos that the royal wedding had brought along with itself – for hours by the time the last visitors of the day unceremoniously barge in.
“It’s late,” the High Septon says with the most serene smile he can manage this late into the night. “I’m sure the gods can indulge your prayers tomorrow—”
His voice dies as they approach – two hooded figures, one with a white cloak billowing in its wake, the other – in a striking scarlet gown woven through with gold, trailing behind its owner down half the staircase as she hurriedly climbs the steps. He had seen it just this morning, he’s sure of it, and by the time the woman and the knight accompanying her reveal their faces, he already knows who he’s going to see.
“Your Grace,” he greets, bowing his head in acknowledgment. “Ser Jaime. What brings you here?”
“We need you to marry us.” Before he can do anything to protest, Lannister had drawn his sword from its sheath, waving it in his general direction. “Now.”
The High Septon closes his eyes, doing his best to keep himself composed. This, he reckons, must be a test from the gods. Another one, perhaps, considering— but that doesn’t matter anymore. Anyone involved in that is long gone, and now he has to be tested again. It seems almost fair.
He opens them again. Jaime Lannister is still there, sword and all, looking a bit too frantic to be trusted – not that he is ever to be trusted – and so the High Septon directs his attention to the man’s twin sister, the newly crowned queen. She’s much calmer than her brother, her clear green eyes trained on him with the sort of authority that usually bears no questioning, and she doesn’t seem alarmed or even remotely unwilling to be here. Frankly, she had appeared far more unwilling this morning when her father had marched her to King Robert’s side and they had exchanged their vows, and she had frowned the entire time through her half of them, a false smile plastered on her mouth while she had glared up at her husband. He would know – over the years, he had seen many reluctant brides, most of them noblewomen, and he’s not looking at one now.
“You do need to marry us,” she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “And annul the marriage I already have, I suppose. I know there’s precedent for it.”
“How do you know?” She must have read it in a history book, he realises a moment later, but it’s too late – her face lights up with malicious interest. “No. This is ridiculous, Your Grace. A brother and sister—”
“Don’t waste our time.” Unlike the queen, her brother is nowhere near as patient with him, the edge of the blade pressing into his shoulder through his robes. The High Septon steps away and he follows, persistent as a plague. “You need to do this now and make sure you tell our father that the marriage has been consummated, so that he doesn’t bother looking for us. There won’t be any point by then. You’ve married brothers and sisters before.”
You are not Targaryens, he wants to protest, but the sword presses ever nearer and soon enough, he fears, it will draw blood. He doesn’t need any convincing to the fact that Lannister is a madman, as his actions speak for themselves, and he has no desire to dig deeper into whatever the drive behind this particular insanity is. Suddenly, the distinction between Targaryens and the rest of them doesn’t seem that important, either.
And still, “Though I understand you have no concept of right or wrong—”
“Spare me, holy man,” the Kingslayer snaps, as if he had been able to read the thought as it had crossed his mind. “I don’t have time to listen to you preach to me about the Mad King. Marry us, write it in your little diary, and make sure to inform Lord Tywin of what has happened before I fuck her right here on the stupid fucking crypt you’ve built for Aerys, will you?”
“Jaime,” his sister chimes in again, gentle but disapproving, as if she had suddenly decided to be pious. Unfortunately, her twin isn’t swayed this time.
“Do it, or I’ll cut your throat and then the last wedding you would have ever performed would have been hers and the King’s. Not a note you want to leave this world on.”
And really, what choice is there? He goes through the motions, wrapping one of Lannister’s hands to the Queen’s in silk even though his free one is still holding the blade against his throat – surely the gods can’t blame him for allowing this union. Surely it would be a greater sin to let someone murder one of the gods’s servants, even if the servant in question happens to be him.
When it’s over and they’re satisfied with the record he writes down, he turns his back on the door as they rush away, freezing in place when he hears the sword come out of its covering again, quickly followed by Lady Lannister’s – no longer a queen, he supposes – shoes clicking across the marble floor as she approaches.
“Cersei,” her brother whines, “we don’t have time for this.”
Yes, Cersei, the High Septon thinks desperately, you don’t have time for this. But alas, the swishing of her skirts comes to a halt right next to him and he turns around, only to be faced with the blade once again.
“You mentioned an annulment recently,” she says in spite of Lannister’s protests. “Who was it for? And why?”
He wonders for a moment why she would need such information at all, before it dawns on him – blackmail. Not for him, likely – for someone else, whoever she finds. “I can’t tell you that, Your Grace.”
“Oh, I think you can.” She nudges him with the edge and the smell of copper and iron and not quite forgotten blood makes his stomach turn dangerously. Her grip on the handle tightens. “It has been a while since I’ve held a sword, Your Holiness. You wouldn’t want my hand to slip.”
“No,” he shakes his head frantically, almost begging. “No, I wouldn’t. But I swore—” He should never tell a soul, ever. Especially not someone like them. “I swore in front of the gods—”
“Your gods have forsaken you,” the little queen proclaims and a trickle of blood leaves a trail down his neck as she shows off her weapon. “This is your god now. Speak.”
And so he speaks. Her eyes are hungry for knowledge, but even by the time he’s finished with his tale, her twin brother still looks rather bored.
“How thrilling.” He had broken an oath as sacred as any other he had ever made, and they don’t care one bit. In retrospect, of course they don’t. “The problem with this crucially important piece of gossip about dead people is that we’re now very nearly out of time.”
Cersei Lannister smiles her little self-assured smile. “So we are.”
The High Septon closes his eyes again and turns away, disappearing between the statues and away from the altar, but it’s too late. Now, he will get the honour of presenting solid proof of what had happened with Lord Tywin’s children to the Lord himself, and it’s not likely that he would be able to retell this well enough for everyone to know how little of a choice he had had; he’s going to be made to take some of their blame, he knows. At least, now he can be sure that he wouldn’t be lying. He doesn’t know their motives or reasons, but it doesn’t matter. They’re married in the eyes of everyone that counts, and Tywin Lannister must be, as his son had suggested, informed about this turn of events so that he wouldn’t waste his time looking for them – in the end, they end up consummating their marriage precisely where the Kingslayer had threatened he would.
~.~
If anyone had asked a year ago if she would ever consider such a life, Cersei thinks, she would have laughed in their face. It hadn’t taken a year for things to change, but a year ago is the last time she remembers life as it had been... before.
And yet, here she is.
It had been difficult at first – the prolonged exposure to life at sea had made her feel sick and she’d frequently spent days in her cabin, miserably staring at the ceiling and feeling the stubborn, ceaseless motion of the ship under her bed; back and forth, left and right until it had started lulling her to sleep like some enormous cradle instead of making everything that much worse.
Jaime hadn’t fared much better. Some nights, they’d laid together – neither truly sleeping nor fucking, for once too exhausted and lost and elated to do anything but drift in and out of uneasy slumber in each other’s arms.
It had been a moment’s decision. The wedding feast – her wedding feast – had been at its peak when the new king (and her newly acquired husband) had finally ended up too drunk to keep up any pretence of being put together at all.
Come on, he had said, groping at her back and urging her up when she had resisted, looking down determinedly to avoid her father’s pointed glare. Let’s get this over with.
She had been frozen in place all of a sudden, her entire act of the blushing bride coming to life. Something had come upon her, terrifying and resolute, and had kept her in place.
No.
Would she have dared to say it? She had felt brave, but not that brave. Surely, she wouldn’t be the first woman in history to be dragged into her marriage bed against her will – nearly every other woman who had ever come before her had gone through the exact same thing. But she had never been just any woman, had been the problem, and the sneaking suspicion that Robert Baratheon might treat her like one had made her as immovable as the statue of the Maiden that she had prayed to so solemnly the morning before her wedding.
She’s no maiden, of course. Had that made the goddess angry? No, it couldn’t have been that. Had it been what she’d done that same morning? She had doubted that, too – Jaime had been her one gift from the gods, not a punishment. Certainly not a trap.
King’s Robert’s entirely unsubtle attempt at making her cooperate had become even less so by the time her father had made to rise from his seat, but as per usual for them, he had been too late – Jaime had been by her side all day, the ever-dutiful protection of the Realm’s new ruler, and he’d leant closer still; close enough for her to hear without alerting her husband.
“Just say the word,” he’d hissed, one hand on hers as if he’d been ready to make a run for it right there and then. “Just say the word and I’ll get us out of here.”
Where would they go? What would they do? The questions had plagued her then, but there had been only one answer she could give him. “Yes.”
He hadn’t been able to believe it at first, it had appeared. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
It hadn’t taken him long at all to create a commotion and urge her away at the pretence of keeping the new queen safe. He’d gone in search of a ship and she had ran back to her own rooms in search of what little she could take for their doubtlessly difficult first days away, only stopping when she’d heard the door creak open.
“Cersei? What’s going on?”
She hadn’t needed to turn around to recognise the voice. “What do you want?”
“Jaime said I should help you.” Her little brother is only thirteen, but it had appeared that he had already become immune to her anger in a way he isn’t to their father’s. “What are we looking for?”
She had debated whether she could trust him or not for all of a moment, but she hadn’t really had a choice – Jaime had told him already, and the fact that he hadn’t ran to Lord Tywin with the information had been good enough for her. “Clothes. And gold. As much as we can carry.”
He’d helped where he could and they’d moved to Jaime’s rooms after that to find something for him as well, and it had been only on their way out that Tyrion had faltered. “You’re going to be gone for a long time, aren’t you?”
Cersei had done her best to mask her impatience. He had helped, after all, and she had known what this conversation had really been an attempt at. “I suppose so. I don’t expect Father to allow us anywhere near the Rock in the foreseeable future.”
Her brother had smiled, unexpectedly genuine. “One day you might be able to come back home. Until then—” He had opened and closed his mouth a few times and Cersei had gripped her scavenged Lannister gold tighter in preparation to leave, finally spurring him into action. “Say goodbye to Jaime for me. Please?”
He and Jaime had already said their goodbyes when her twin had sent him up here, doubtlessly. Cersei had sighed, feeling burdened with an expectation she had, all of a sudden, found difficult to ignore. It had been an odd thing he’d been asking from her, given that there’s no love lost between them, but there hadn’t been much else she could have offered in gratitude. He’d kept their secret, after all – better yet, he’d understood, somehow. Goodbye, Tyrion. “I will.”
“Thank you.”
That had been weeks ago now – or so she thinks, at least. She hadn’t really been counting, and they’d had much bigger troubles on their minds.
“It’s only for some time,” she assures Jaime now. They’re getting closer and closer to White Harbour and from then on, reaching Winterfell is only a matter of time. She had retold him the story that the High Septon had told her and had described the perfectly convenient way it could fit into their temporary situation. He still has his doubts, but they don’t have many other choices. “And if Stark chooses to send us away, we’ll make good on our threat. Let him plunge the realm into chaos over this if he so wishes – Robert is going to want to kill that baby as soon as he hears about him and a civil war might do us a wonderful favour if he refuses to.”
Her twin appears to be somewhere between fascinated and a tad disturbed. It’s a look she rather enjoys seeing. “And if he does take us in? How long until we go home?”
“We’ve only got to wait until Father realises that we are, in fact, a lost cause, and makes Tyrion Warden of the West. Or dies of old age while avoiding that, I suppose.”
Jaime frowns, displeased. In contrast, the whole thing makes her absurdly giddy in a way she’d rather not admit to – there’s nothing else for their father to do, now, and she knows how much he would hate to. For so long, he had hoped – fruitlessly – to manage to coax Jaime back into the position that he had been born and raised for. Facing the inevitable reality for once might be good for him, she thinks, and secretly, she hopes that one of those nights, her brother’s seed will take root inside her and finally give Lord Tywin the only proof he could need that she’s too tainted for anyone else to touch her. Jaime’s touch has never dirtied her, but it’s a heady feeling; using the world’s suffocating grip on her life and turn it on its head to bury it face down into the dirt. Another child of suspicious origin would certainly be a strain on their supposed new host’s hospitality, but he’ll have to make do if he doesn’t want her to land him in even deeper trouble than she’s already landed herself in. “That’s quite a long time.”
Cersei shrugs. “We could always opt for a life of piracy and torment the shores of Westeros instead. Think you’re cut out for it?”
“If the Starks bore me enough, I might be.”
She laughs at that, imagining the two of them terrorising the world into giving them all of its untold treasures. It’s a tempting idea, if not quite as much as having the home they should have, by all rights, been allowed to return to, and, “I suppose we’ll wait and see.”
~.~
When the visitors – more than visitors if they have their way about it, as it had later turned out – had first knocked on his door, Ned had meant to send them away at once. News tend to arrive at Winterfell somewhat delayed, but then again, the Lannister twins hadn’t been particularly quick about their arrival either, so the scandal of their departure from the capital had long since reached him already. The details had got more and more outrageous with each new retelling, but he had read it from Robert’s own hand, too – his bride, impeccable in her role up until that point, had fled their wedding feast and had, apparently, wed her twin brother in the Great Sept that same evening, threatening the High Septon into compliance until he had performed the ceremony. They had been on the run since – at sea, as he had learnt this morning, against his best wishes. Everything Ned Stark learns about the Lannisters is against his best wishes, but they had brought it all to his home one way or another, just as married and evidently unapologetic about it as Robert’s baffled message had said.
No one had seen it coming. Now that he’s looking at them, Ned thinks that perhaps they should have.
“We wouldn’t have come to you if we thought we had any options,” Cersei Lannister explains, still huddled into her cloak. She and her brother had arrived wrapped up in so much clothing that he’d thought that they’d overestimated how cold it would be, but it had dawned on him, eventually – they’d meant to hide their faces more than anything else. He had been too preoccupied with the whirlwind of the changes in his own life to attend Robert’s wedding and the King had been happy enough to excuse him from it, but he had seen her before that, on the coronation and the announcement of their betrothal. She had been so carefully put together back then that it’s difficult to imagine her desperate and the pleading look in her eyes now must be as close as it ever gets. “It was here or Essos, and there is no one we can trust—”
“And you thought you could trust me?” He wouldn’t be quite so blunt in any other case – not with members of a fellow Great House – but this is anything but usual, and he notices it starting to skirt around the brink of what he’s willing to handle. He doesn’t know either of them too well – or at all, really – and the sheer insanity that doing any of this must have required is not something he had expected from their father’s heirs. “I will not enter a war with the Warden of the West on a whim. Do you expect him to learn that you’ve chosen to hide from him here and do nothing?”
“He wouldn’t have to know at first,” Jaime Lannister shrugs and for a moment, Ned feels a wave of frustration almost overwhelm him. They’re barely more than children, no matter how much they’ve made themselves look as the perfectly composed, if disgraced, nobles, and he wonders how they had fooled their way into being Queen and member of the Kingsguard, respectively. The ruse clearly hadn’t lasted long and it had only brought everyone more pain in the end, but he supposes that these things tend to happen on occasion – he has a nephew and a pile of dead bodies to show for it, along with a secret he will have to take to the grave. It’s only Lannister’s voice that pulls him out of his own mind. “And by the times he finds out—”
The twins share a smile, secretive and mischievous, as if they’ve committed some further transgression, and he doesn’t like it one bit, especially when the Kingslayer’s hand strays over her hand where it lays in her lap and, from what he can see, closer to her stomach. Oh.
“I’m no use to my father anymore, Lord Stark,” his sister explains, seemingly all too happy to be in a position that would make her unfit for a bride to any lord in Westeros. “Everyone in the Seven Kingdoms knows that. We are not asking to stay in your home; all we want is to build our own here, in the North, and live in it undisturbed. Silence is expensive, as we all know, but we’re more than capable of paying for yours. Lannisters always pay their debts.”
Of course. An attempt at bribing him would have always been the next step. On the run or not, they are perfect representations of their House.
“And if I refuse?”
Cersei Lannister’s jaw tightens and for a fleeting instant, Ned thinks that in a different world, she would have been better off as a queen in her own right – being by someone else’s side would have never been enough.
This isn’t the world they live in, however, and in this one, she must clearly make do.
“You had a son recently, didn’t you, Lord Stark?”
He frowns at the non-sequitur before nodding. He thinks of an impossibly small bundle in his arms, the first child he had ever held, and feels his eyes burn with unshed tears. “Yes. My firstborn.”
“No.” Her eyes are fixed on his and he’s seen that look before, in a predator before it pounces on its unsuspecting prey. “The other one. The baseborn boy.”
“You would do well to remember that you are guests here,” he snaps at last, scowling at the hint of something he can’t quite define in her tone. “Do you take me for a fool, Lady Lannister? You seem awfully sure that your father would not manage to find you a husband, scandal or not, and you would be nowhere near as certain if you hadn’t had a bastard of your own on the way.”
“Bastard?” She sounds both delighted and amused, as if he had given her the perfect opening, and it’s enough to send a chill up his spine. “Not at all. His father is my husband in the eyes of god and men, and he’ll be a true Lannister.” He can’t even manage to muster up his disgust at this point; not when she’s closing in for the kill. “My child won’t be a bastard, and neither is yours. As it so happens, he’s not your child at all.”
What he wouldn’t give to look at his own face just now. It must be an interesting sight, because the Lannister twins stare back at him with identically insufferable grins. “I’m not sure I understand, My Lady.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do.” She’s back to playing with the fur of her gloves, carefully disinterested, but when she looks up, he can see a glimpse of the same determined madness that he’d spotted in her brother’s eyes when he’d seen him seated on the Iron Throne. She’s no less of a monster when compared to him; he’d do well to understand that, apparently. “You see, the High Septon had to free me of my previous vows before he could have me swear them anew to someone else. It’s a rare thing, but it does happen. Strangely enough, he’s done it very recently.” She strokes the sheath of her brother’s sword lovingly. “It didn’t take much to persuade him to tell me all about it. I would tell you, but I suspect you might know the story better than I do.”
So this is it, then – this is what she means to use if paying in gold doesn’t work. It’s his silence or Jon’s life, only this is bigger than Jon, as they all know – it’s bigger than any of them, with what the truth would bring upon Westeros. He can already see the war unfolding before it had even begun, just as pointless as the last one and thrice as bloody. It would tear the Realm to shreds, and the woman on the other side of his table is holding it all in her small palm, ready to crush thousands of lives under her heel in order to get what she wants. Love – love, above all.
He’s seen this already, and all too recently, too.
“I do know it,” he allows at last, an admission of both the truth she’s dangling over his head and the defeat he must accept. “You needn’t remind me, My Lady.”
Cersei Lannister’s smile is all teeth, and as he urges them out of his castle and out among his unsuspecting subjects, Ned has to admit that perhaps he understands – there are many secrets for them all to carry, but it might just be worth it, to protect the ones who truly matter.
“I’m glad we could find common ground, Lord Stark.”
Gods help me, Ned thinks, but, “So am I, Your Grace.”
It’s far from the correct title given her current position in the world, but with the power she holds – more than she might realise, really – Ned figures that he might as well give her that much.