for reignfall

[nearamir]

This is, when he reflects on it, the longest that Faramir has been away from Gondor - and it has been a long time coming, to see where his wife hails from, and bring their firstborn to a land that, after all, he has some claim to. For all his seafarer's blood, Faramir has not often sailed out of sight of land, and there is a wonder in the journey that will not leave him. Sitting on the deck of the ship, dandling Borahîl on his lap, he sings the songs that his mother taught him: of mariners and open waves and the island that sank beneath them, of the salt in one's veins and the longing for what lies beyond the horizon. There is a part of him, deeper than he knew, that finds itself at home with the endless silver horizon and the clear stars overhead by which they steer. It is almost a disappointment when the voyage ends, and they come to rest on a Westerosi shore.

And yet, it seems to him an opportunity, too; the first time in all his memory where his duty is only to his family, when no war waits on him, and his people must do without him until he returns; the first time that he can see the homeland of his beloved wife, and meet her family more fully than brief wedding conversation allowed, and know that his sword may rest in its sheath. He is a visitor in this land, and as a visitor, has some freedom to be only a man - not a captain, nor prince, nor Steward, but only Faramir.

This illusion of freedom does not last long beyond their welcome. Faramir can be at times naïve, and often idealistic; but he is no fool, and Tywin Lannister makes no secret of his scorn. His scorn, indeed, seems boundless: for his own son, for the apparently too-lowly title of prince, for the time taken to produce an heir, even for the child's Sindarin name, as though he has any right to demand his own traditions take primacy above the line of Húrin. All of this, Faramir bears with as much grace and patience as he can manage, summoning diplomacy and politeness at every turn; for in the end, he is a guest in Lord Tywin's home, and Tywin holds kin-right through their marriage, and he will not make mockery of that by being rude. No matter how Tywin might provoke with his own barely-veiled rudeness, Faramir will not shirk his duty - no matter how he had hoped to be free of it.

No matter, too, how deep an ache it gives him to see that scorn and rudeness turned on Tyrion. From what little Cersei has said of her brother, he had expected to find a vicious and soulless creature, had imagined something more goblin than Man - but that is not at all what he sees in the poor child, who shows from the first a wit and a love of knowledge, and in whose mistreatment Faramir sees all too much of his own image. It aches to hear in Tywin's tone so much of the Denethor of old, to see the same distasteful overlooking of a child eager to be seen. With each small slight and oversight, Faramir feels in himself a greater wish to hold Borahîl close, and to make it certain that his own son should never feel that hollow certainty of an impassable demand. With each word from Tywin's lips that denigrates his youngest son, Faramir must fight the urge to flinch.

You wish, then, that our places had been reversed? That I had died and Boromir had lived? So he had said to his father, in those final days, and his father had looked him squarely in the eye when he answered: I do wish that.

No child should bear such knowledge. No father should wish it. And so, although he cannot be unaware of how it angers his wife - even if he does not entirely understand it - Faramir does what he can, in what small ways he can, to ease that burden; to spend time with Tyrion, and be kind to him, and share with him - more pointedly each time the matter of the boy's size is raised within his hearing - stories of the peoples of his own land, of Halflings and Dwarves and the great deeds they have undertaken, deeds beyond their stature. It is not a great burden to do so, for in truth he enjoys Tyrion's company. Beyond a certain point, it is no longer conscious charity. But still, it hurts to hear Tywin talk to his son that way.

In the end, though, it is not Tyrion's honour that breaks the bonds of mannered meekness - nor Borahîl's, nor Cersei's, nor even his own. In the end, around a ten-night into their stay, it is a greater slight still that spurs him to action. Tywin has not been subtle in his desire for power, nor in his wish that his daughter and his son-in-law might grasp more keenly for it: this, too, Faramir has borne in silence, although the undertones of it at times make his fingers itch for his sword. But this night, for the first time, it is spoken aloud: that word, king. That treason, that a crown might be taken.

Faramir stands abruptly, then, and stands tall; and glaring down the older lord, his eyes are storm-tossed, hard and unyielding as mountain stone. His face is grim, and carved of the same stone as the statues of ancient kings; and he is Captain and Prince and Steward all at once, and cold fury crackles from him in a way that he has scarcely ever allowed it. His voice, too, is cold, the syllables falling into place with a steady finality.

"I do not desire to be King," he says, and his gaze does not flinch from Tywin's, his hand resting almost unconsciously against the haft of a sword he does not wear. "There is one King of Gondor, and I rejoiced in his return, and rejoiced to return the realm to him. I did not desire his crown when I set it upon his head, and I do not desire his throne who sit gladly at the right hand of it; for I have seen what lies down the path of grasping power." His fist has clenched, his knuckles resting against the surface of the table. There is a hardness in the set of his jaw, and a dangerous strength in the slim lines of his body; and such is the weight of his tone that the shadows seem deeper where he stands, the air crisper and more cold. "Death is all that rewards such a hunger, my lord Tywin; death, and hollow shame, and the cold grasp of the Shadow. But at the hands of that very King you speak of was the Shadow burned away; and you may travel that path of Shadow to its end, if you must, but not in my presence will you speak treason against him."

Borahîl begins to whimper. Faramir does not soften at once, but his fist unclenches, and he bends to pick up his son, holding the dark-haired child close against his chest. For a moment, his eyes seek those of the other child at the table - Tyrion, whose mismatched eyes he finds wide in shock - and he nods, a silent consent for the boy to join him if he wills it, before turning without fanfare to stride out of the room, not looking back or waiting to hear whether Tywin will reply.

And if he holds the baby a little more tightly than he is accustomed to do, or if he is shaking a little when, at last, he finds a quiet place in the courtyard to sit, then it is not overly apparent; and if he feels a lump in his throat when he looks out from that seat across the shining water, then nobody need know it but him.

Comments

[reignfall]

The first year, she has been told, is the most treacherous, when the Stranger might yet pluck her boy from her arms, rob the breath from his lungs in the dead of night with neither warning nor mercy on his mind. The whole of it had to pass before she agreed to travel at all, but then there were no more reasons not to introduce him to his famed and only living grandparent. The journey had seen her in a fierce battle between joys and excitements, and a deep-seated sense of dread that would rather have her turn the ship around. For the first time in years, she would be home. She would see the Rock, roam her most familiar beaches. Her aunt and uncles would be there, and with them, a number of cousins she has not seen in a number of years, or has not had a chance to meet at all. And there would be her father, who must acknowledge that she has prevailed in this foreign land, and succeeded in bringing forth a worthy heir.

And there would be Tyrion, that loathsome creature. There would be her father's familiar demands, the grave, cold politics of Westeros, the intrigues and persistent threats. And Jaime. Not for the whole of their stay, of course, but he would leave his post as kingsguard for some weeks at least to see her, see her child, meet her husband. She longs for this – there is no denying. She longs also for the keep that has become her home, for the forests, for everything that was so decidedly unlike the land she hailed from.

Ease wins her over again and again, whenever Faramir is near enough to hold her, or so absorbed in his tender care for their son that he is blind and deaf even to her approach. Against all odds, her better judgement, and all she knows her father expected for her, happiness has found her in Gondor, a profound and unshakable sense of it, and worse still, of love. When she had thought she could not bear alone her love for Faramir, she had not been in the least prepared for what it meant to hold her son, to see in his face a dozen traces of his father, and to know the world of dangers he has been brought into.

Much is as she'd wished, once they arrived in the Westerlands: her aunt presents her with her newest cousin, a boy named Lancel, who offers a glorious threat in the way he, no older than four, already seems impossible to lift, and making her all the more aware of how preciously brief these years with Borahîl will be. Genna Lannister coos at the boy, and the boy coos back as any happy babe would, and it is easy to ignore, on that night, the discontent in Tywin's presence.

It is not so easy to ignore thereafter. She has, in short, failed: there is no crown upon her head, she is no queen. Her boy will remain a prince, but rise no more than that. He notes her cloak in Sindarin fashion, the affections she has come so comfortable to share with Faramir where all of Gondor might yet see, but that Tywin evidently does not wish to partake in. Most of all, he notes the one thing Cersei, too, despises: her husband's cheerful tolerance of Tyrion.

There it is, then, the same old common ground, and there it comes to a head over supper, though not in the way she had imagined. She had thought it would be Tywin to show his truest steel, and instead, she saw a side of her husband he had never – not even when she had come so close to shattering his heart – unleashed upon her, or anyone else in her presence. It frightens her, if it is fright that finds her wet between her thighs for him, but she cannot dwell on arousal when the wedge between her husband and her father has been so thoroughly driven into place. This is not a thing the old lion will soon forget nor forgive. This is not a thing, she knows, that her husband will budge on.

And the crown Tywin spoke of – that crown she might covet, in some way. To her shame, even in the here and now she must admit she does not covet it beyond the happiness she has found in Gondor. She touches the hand of her father to bid her leave, and hisses at Tyrion to stay where has been tolerated to sit. She must speak to her husband, but she will not do so with her blood's enemy lingering like a vengeful ghoul.

It takes her a moment to find him and their son both, but she knows every hiding place in Casterly Rock, inside and out. She has had much to hide in her day. There they are: her husband, angry and distraught, and their son, already nestling in as though sleep is a looming threat meaning to conquer him, pacified as ever in the arms of a parent. "My husband." Her voice is soft and tender as she joins him, as she sits herself close to him to see familiar waves dance in the distance. "Dare I say you are the first man in years to stun my lord father out of his speech."

[nearamir]

He had not been certain whether she would follow him, or stay to placate her father; just as he had not been sure whether Tyrion would follow him, or stay to see the matter through and avoid rage falling on him. There has been much, in all of this, that he is not certain of, and he could tell himself that it did not matter to him, but he is not so dishonest. He is relieved that she is here, and he is concerned that Tyrion is not; that much, he will allow himself.

The coldness and hard fury has fallen from him, in part if not in whole. He sits now with his lips pressed to his son's dark hair, his expression less sharp and more distant, and when he looks up at Cersei's approach, his eyes are heavy with sorrow more than rage.

"I would that it were not so," he says quietly, and glances down at Borahîl to be sure that the child is not too troubled by his tone. There is a part of him that envies his own son, he finds, for being young enough and innocent enough to be blind to what has just happened. If only all things could be cut loose as easily as a child puts aside fear. He reaches up to stroke Borahîl's hair, and his lips press together, his jaw taut. "For a man who has made all his name in rule, your father pushes too hard, and too often; and I did not come here to sow the seeds of resentment, but nor will I tolerate all things in silence." There is a smile that touches his lips for a moment, but it is a bitter and hollow one, wry in its remembrance. "Your father and mine are too alike; and both mistake gentleness for hesitation. But even my father, for all his faults, would not have been so brazen in his betrayals."

His gaze drifts back up to the water's edge, and he closes his eyes for a moment, exhales slowly. "I will not apologise," he says, and the hard note has left his voice again, leaving a softer regret. "Not for saying what must be said, nor that he mistook me for a man who would not. Yet I am sorry that it came to such a pass."

[reignfall]

"It does not matter. Tywin Lannister does not deal in apologies." Though she must admit that even she had been surprised by the severity of his pushing. She has ever known her father as a man of slow, patient, and, yes, treacherous dealings, but a man also who held his kin in esteem, so long as it does not openly fail him. It is weakness he abhors, and he must have been under the delusion that Faramir in his open gentleness with her and their child, is malleable. A failed man. Easy to think, she reckons, for a man who has not seen him do battle, nor return more dead than alive. It is also a foolish assumption he has been most decidedly cured of.

She touches her son's small hand, who is all to happy to hold onto her own as he rests calm and contend in his father's embrace. Had Tywin held them like this, Jaime and her? He had been delighted by their birth, he had called her a future queen and Jaime his proud heir before either one of them had been given a true name yet. She knows for certain that part of Tywin's disapproval now stems from the way Borahîl is held most often in the arms of his own parents, with the least of the duties being picked up by a nursemaid or servant. The king had jested once that someone could rob the crib from his nursery and it might take days for them to notice, so rare it is to see the boy put down for anything other than play.

"He will not forget this. For the better, for he has seen in you the warrior now. And for the worst, too." Her eyes wander to the sea again, and she breathes deep, tastes the familiar salt. Most delighted she has been by the low, constant rumble that can be heard in her childhood bedroom, the room which they now share. Down below, at the foot of the rock, where the port is hidden inside, the waves come crashing constantly, and the thunder is what most accompanied her sleep as a girl. Up here, it cannot be heard. "Think of Borahîl in all you say to him."

i'm sorry it's monologue o'clock again already

[nearamir]

"I do." His voice is soft, but there is a steel in it, too. Their son's weight in his arms is a comfort, but also a reminder that will not be gainsaid: of all that rests in his hands, and all that cannot be set aside. It is not only Borahîl's life that falls on their shoulders, but what manner of man he will become, and what world he will inherit, when it comes. Faramir did not know, until he held the baby in his arms that first time, what weight the future still had for him; he does not know, now, how it may best be guarded from men like Tywin Lannister. "I think of his namesake, too. I do not doubt your father would have liked him better."

There is no rancour in his tone, only well-worn grief made duller over time. His eyes flick back towards the citadel from which they came, as though following the path they have taken. Boromir, he reflects, would have listened to such words as Tywin had: Boromir, who had chafed all his life to serve an empty throne, who had demanded how long a king might be gone ere he was no longer king; Boromir, who in nobility and boldness had heeded the whispers of the Enemy, when they spoke to his desires. Yet at the last, Boromir had given his fealty where it was owed, and to the last, he had shown honour. And Boromir, who for all his flaws and foibles was a man of upright character, would not have suffered scorn and dishonour from a foreign lord; Boromir, who had always stood forth even against his own father for the weaker and gentler spirits of the world, would not have tolerated another father's cruelty against his son. At times, and most of all in anger, Faramir feels that old sense returning that the world might be a better place had he been more like Boromir.

"I do not doubt your father would have liked Boromir better," he repeats, "and I do not doubt that Boromir would have struck him down where he stood, if he offered such insult." He sighs, and looks back down at Borahîl, who yawns and tugs at his mother's hand. "I do not doubt that he will remember it, and that he will look back and believe that he has seen in me the warrior. But rather would I have him see in me the blood of Númenor, which fell by the failings of pride and power; and know that I did not speak to dishonour him, but to warn him." He shakes his head, his lips once again thinning in distaste. "Your father will hear nothing that comes to him in any shade but red and gold, nor any tongue but his own. He will languish in his lion's den, and lick his wounds, and swear to the last that it was another's claws that cut them; and when he fans his anger to destruction, then he will make of it a song, and sing it as a fable to frighten his foes into obedience, for that is the language that he chooses. But I have seen where such songs end for the men who sing them, and for those they should protect; and just as I will not suffer Borahîl's name to be lost to your father's tongue, nor will I suffer Borahîl to be lost to your father's fables.

"I think of Borahîl in all that I say to your father, Cersei. I think of him, too, in all that I do not say; and I fear that I have erred, for there has been overmuch of the latter. It should never have come to such a place as this."

she loves him anyway

[reignfall]

"He knows now you are not a pawn, and neither are you Westerosi in your cravings." Yet there is a tension in her now, and it has little to do with what has passed between her father and her husband, and more with all he has just said to her. How sweet that foolish Boromir would have murdered her father on the spot, and how sweet that he would have been so blinded by his honourable urge to see him pay for an insult in blood to ignore what the murder would mean for the immediate and bloody future. More than once had she thanked the gods for the fortune of marrying Faramir over him, but she would rather not suffer the risk of his brother emulating him.

"Faramir, in this land, you can be right a thousand times over. You can put the wicked in their place and denounce every sin you see laid out before you. I can tell you from memory the name of every living lord who would gladly side with you against Tywin Lannister, and it will help you not at all when those same helpful lords stab you in the back a half-hour later." She keeps her voice level, though it is a struggle – in fact, it can only be done for the sweet hold Borahîl has on the fingers of her hand. His eyes are half-shut: soon, he must be brought to his cradle, or else he will begin to cry, overtired.

"Being right and being honourable are commendable things, and I mean to raise our son to those standards. But this is not our home. Father is agitated more than anything by that knowledge." That put mildly what her own lord father had said to her, of his theory of waning loyalty and the thinning of her blood. "You mean to teach him a lesson, perhaps, but the gods themselves have made to teach him one, the product of which dined with us on this very evening, and as you see, it did not take."

[nearamir]

He is not unsympathetic to what she says; he is not unaware of it, either. It has all passed through his mind a thousand times in their sojourn here, and he wishes only to lay the matter to rest, to see that tension lifted from her shoulders and from his own. There is so much that he would like her to understand, to see through his eyes: how her father's cruelties chafe against old scars, and how long he held his tongue before she ever entered his life; how silence does nobody any service, and will win nothing for them or for their son; how he does not intend violence, is not ignorant of the cost of conflict, but how it is not in him to be silent always. Even to his own father, he spoke out of turn to call out foolishness and cruelty; and he almost tells her so, almost tells her that it is not a matter of on what ground they stand, but on what principle. Not a matter of whether a lesson is learned, but whether it is offered.

He says none of this. It would not be helpful, and - he knows too well - she would not understand. It would not change her mind. She has changed since their wedding, changed since the fight that almost pulled them asunder, but she has not changed that much. He would not ask her to. She is who she is, and he loves her - but he does wish, even so, that she could understand.

He sighs, looking down at Borahîl. And then there is that last from her, that comment that he understands now too well, and he sighs more deeply for it, closing his eyes.

"Your gods are cruel, then, if they would make an innocent the cost of a proud man's stubbornness." He looks up at her then, and cannot wholly hide the reproach in his gaze. "He is not a lesson, Cersei. He is a child."

[reignfall]

"He failed to be innocent even when he came into this world, and he is most certainly not a child anymore." She misses his reproach, but only because his words are so utterly outlandish to her that reproach seems misplaced. "When Jaime was his age, he was about to be knighted. He had defeated men thrice his age, not just in tourneys, but in combat! He was already a hundred times the man Tyrion could not dare dream to become."

A wave of pacing restlessness overcomes her, but she sits still instead. Too much upset, more of a rise in her voice, and she might disturb Borahîl so close to his rest. It pains her every time the boy weeps or cries, like a dagger driven straight through her heart, and much of her day is spent avoiding all that could cause him any disturbance of mind or body or soul. Absurd, she knows: he is a babe still, doing his very best at crawling and sitting, at babbling close, so close to a very first word, which practiced nursemaids have told her must come very soon. He is young, then, and prone yet to cry, with it being his main means of letting them know what he wishes – that and a hearty bit of pointing.

"Do not misplace your trust. People see him and take pity, and he knows to weave noose from it. I am your wife," she says, as though he needs a reminder, and it is with her free hand that she reaches to touch his own. In there is a genuine touch of fear, now, an earnest plea for his understanding that appears in stark contrast to the quick anger from before. "Heed me on this."

[nearamir]

Faramir is quiet for a long moment, but it is not a silence that welcomes her words; his jaw shifts and clenches anew, and he does not take her hand or hold her gaze, but looks out over the sea, at the distant indigo horizon. Again, it strikes him that there is so much she does not know; again, it strikes him with a certain horror how young she herself is. It is something he does not much dwell on, for obvious reasons, but she is still only a few years beyond childhood herself. He wonders whether, when she has another decade to watch their own son grow, she will still think Tyrion was grown today. He wonders, with an unpleasant twist in his stomach, whether she will expect Borahîl to be grown at thirteen. It is not, after all, so very far away.

"You are my wife," he says, at last, and moves to stand. Borahîl must rest, and cannot do so in his arms, least of all when he can feel the anger and the frustration stirring in Faramir's breast. Best, then, to take him back to their chambers; best to settle him in his crib, and let him sleep, sweetly oblivious to all that passes around him. "But it is not from my wife's tongue that I am accustomed to hearing these things." He swallows, rocking Borahîl lightly as the child stirs and whimpers, and turns away, back towards the citadel where their rooms await. "He needs to sleep. And I, I think, need to clear my head."

[reignfall]

"This is it, then?" Rejection always sits with her like a thorn in her side, and her voice is no less sharp now than on any other occasion when she had perceived herself slighted for his trust, his love, his attention. Or is it deeper, now, more profound for that hint of fear that had lingered in her voice just moments ago? This is not her usual tiresome and needling jealousy. It is cold in her heart, frightening for the severity of the dread she feels, and it is the worst sort of confirmation for what she has, deep down, ever known. Much like Jaime, he will not listen. Tyrion has his way with her staunchest defenders, rendering them useless.

When he steps away, she must let go of her son's hand, and balls her own to a fist at her side. "Have you no bloody care for me at all? You have come to your moral conclusion, so I cannot possibly know a thing you do not, and then why bother hearing me out? You need to clear your head, and I need you out of my sight." She turns away, back to the ocean, for yes, Borahîl must be taken to bed, and she knows there is little point in arguing with him over the privilege now.

[nearamir]

He turns on his heel, and there is in his expression a shadow of that same kingly fury that had flashed to the fore when he glared down her father. "I have heard all these arguments before, Cersei, and heard them out to an end that will never come. They are paths too well-trodden, and they lead to shadowed places and bitter gall; and it is passing strange to me that you will see that when it suits you, and not when it does not." Borahîl has begun to grizzle, stirred from his dozing by the hard edge in his father's tone; Faramir almost relents to his son's discomfiture and his wife's anger. Almost. "All that you say may be true; and it may be true, too, that he is a creature of trickery and treason, that he is drawn astray by the words of dead men and dreams of worlds that will not be, and that your mother would have lived, if he had not. Yet remember, in all of this, who it is that you warn; for all that you would have me heed of him, my father would have had you heed of me."

There. It is said; that which has burned in his chest since first they came. He takes a long, slow breath and cradles the whimpering child against his chest.

"I did not mean to wake him." His tone is still curter than he intends. "I will go and settle him. And if you would have me listen, then you know where to find me."

[reignfall]

She turns to face him, and it is not a connection she had made, not a conclusion she has drawn, and that is obvious in her expression, her lips parted, her eyes wide. Faramir's father had always been so clearly in the wrong, blind to his son's gifts and glory, and Denethor's wife had not been torn apart by Faramir's birth. Even if – Faramir was a son well worth dying for, just as Borahîl himself is. To compare him to Tyrion, to compare his father's unjust mistreatment of him to Tywin's unwilling tolerance of Tyrion, seems almost absurd. The mask of rage falls over her again quick enough, of course. Not so quick though that he could have missed her surprise. "Your father had no reason to doubt, and mine but has his broken heart, if he has a heart at all. But you presume that him and I share all, and you are mistaken."

"You have made it very clear that my words mean little to you in this matter." And a prophecy spoken aloud is one that might yet come true. Is this not why they found Melara down inside that well, bloated and crawling with all that feasts on the dead?

She leaves, and she leaves for her favourite retreat, when her rooms cannot be trusted. The next hours she spends at the beach, first praying that Jaime could arrive a day or so ahead of schedule, for she could see herself embracing him. The fantasy fades within the first hour or so: it is difficult now to picture herself a pair of their matched set, sharing a soul or not. It is difficult to picture his reaction to Borahîl, it is difficult to imagine having to tell him that, for all her just anger with her husband in this moment, she cannot at once cease to love him. It is difficult, too, to disregard all they have built in favour of the frankly childish fancies she once shared with another.

Well into the night, she slips into their bedroom. She peers into the nursery first, lets the door fall quietly shut behind her. There is a special sort of peace found in seeing her sweet boy sleep, untouched by the troubles of the day. She tucks his blanket more closely around him, and seats his favoured stuffed toy closer to his side, and drags on the minutes before she must face her husband.

[nearamir]

Faramir is in their room, but he is not asleep; he sits on the hearth, staring into the dying embers of the fire, which casts flickering light over features so still and sharp that they might be carved of stone. He feels in himself a restlessness that will not be quelled, and although he has done his best to clear his head, setting out alone and walking some miles before nightfall and gnawing worry drew him back, still it has not quenched that unease. He thinks with longing of home, of the still peace of the woods and the safety of familiarity, where there may be moments of fragility between them, but rarely of true anger. He thinks, too, of that surprise on her face, that moment before anger returned, and finds that it upsets him more than her fury. He wonders, already knowing the answer, whether she will consider her brother at fault for this, too.

He does not move when she enters, or shift his eyes from their intent fixation on the orange glow of the embers. There is too much that he has no words for, too much that aches to consider. Your father loves you, Mithrandir had told him, before that last fateful sally, and he will remember it, ere the end. And so it had been, and that love had been as near to deadly as his hate; and yet, it had been love, even so. Love has not been absent from his life. Yet this citadel, for all the warmth of the land in which it lies, is cold; and he finds that he must question everything, struggle anew to find footing on shifting sands.

"I am sorry," he says at last, without looking up. "All that I said, I meant; yet it was poorly spoken, and erred in anger. If there is some reason I have missed for caution, then tell me; I will listen."

[reignfall]

He sits when she passes him, and he sits, too, when she returns from the nursery, the door not quite closed so that they can be alerted to any stirring of their son. There is an intensity about him that she has often witnessed, but rarely seen erupt, and thinks bitterly of the way she would gladly have taken that thrilling discovery of such unbridled anger to bed – were it not, then, swiftly directed against her.

For the first time, his apology does not strike her as much of one, and it might be for the better that he does not look at her, for a shadow falls heavy over a features. This has ever been a point of contention between them: he has right and his wrong, and once he has declared a thing one or the other, it is impossible to sway him. The irony of this observation swims right past her. When she makes her cold-hearted judgments, she never errs.

Yet he extends to her this olive branch, and much as she seems to thrive on conflict and dissonance, she has come to hate when it breeds between them. She wants them to be at peace, she had imagined her evening in his arms, not standing a good few strides away from him, glowering and struggling to contain herself. "I never meant to speak of it. It is worse if I speak of it. And I forgive you for your anger, and ask forgiveness for my own in turn." Hours at the beach it took, that apology which does not even truly go into the depths of her faults. "But it pains me that my word means so little to you."

[nearamir]

"Your word means the world to me." His voice is low and even; makes of it a simple statement of fact, albeit one edged with a certain ruefulness. He moves at last, then; stands, turns to look at her. His face is grave and stern, but there is no anger in it now. "I do not seek to deafen myself to it, nor wish to cause you pain. But I do not understand."

He sighs, and runs a hand over his mouth, closing his eyes for a moment. "I do not understand," he repeats, and shakes his head. "And for that, too, I am sorry; but that, too, was the truth, that I cannot see clearly what it is that makes Tyrion so much other than I once was. Only that he has been dealt a poorer hand than ever I was, that he is uglier than I am, and that you have known me only with renown behind my name and a title to my house. Your word means the world to me, Cersei; but I am missing something, or else your words condemn me too."

[reignfall]

When at first the implication that Tyrion and Faramir were treated the same for the self-same reasons had struck her as painful, as a thing she had never meant to imply, she is now moving rapidly to frustration with it. On this night, she has been subjected to his morals speaking against her father, in the most offending fashion he could muster (though she struggles to call him wrong for it, largely unwise), and his repeated insistence of the similarities between her wretched brother and him was beginning to irk her. This is not, in her eyes, about him, but about her own family, an intricate and dangerous thing he does not understand.

And why would he need to? She is away from them now.

"It has naught to do with you. My father is not your father, my brother is not your brother, and you are not a wretched creature sent from the pits of the final hell to wreak havoc upon my family. You were supposed to be my salvation from this." Just as quickly as her fury had risen, it dissipates now that she has spoken a truth she had never consciously considered until it fell from her lips just now. Normally, she might pace, lashed by emotion as she is, but this time, she stands stiff, her hands balled to cruel fists.

She must say more, she knows. He said he would hear her out, yet little in this day – and his treatment of Tyrion overall – suggests to her that the listening will do anything at all in her favour. Only she will make the words true, breathe life into the prophecy another time. "There was a prophecy made when I was a girl."

No further than that does she go. He might well already declare her mad for this.

[nearamir]

For a long moment, he looks at her in grave and solemn quiet; and then, slowly exhaling, he goes to sit on the edge of the bed, sinking down heavily with his hands clasped before him. He leaves space beside him for her to sit, if she will; but he does not invite her to do so, wary of the rigid anger in how she holds herself.

There is so much here to unpick and understand: the thought that a marriage arranged the way theirs was would seem to her a salvation; the bitterness in her tone when she speaks of Tyrion; the very idea that his wife's family, which is surely his own family by marriage, is nothing to do with him even when he stays among them - and yet, none of that is what presents itself most fiercely to the fore, or which makes cold dread clutch at his belly.

"What prophecy?" He looks up at her, and there is a gentleness in his tone, but there is a command, too. "And do not say that it, too, has naught to do with me; for you are my wife, and if it concerns you, then it concerns us both."

[reignfall]

She looks as though she would rather bite off her own tongue than speak another word, and her eyes dart toward the inclined nursery door, as though half hoping to hear a sound complaint from Borahîl that would require her dutiful attention. More than anything, she should like to start the day over – mayhaps she could find a guard willing to push Tyrion from one of the castle's windows, plunge him into the pitch-black sea below. Even that image does not cheer her.

He does not stop at the question, and there, he does give her pause. Not because the idea that all that concerns her must be his concern, too – though she frequently expects him to attend to her troubles, and equally as often refuses to leave him to his own. It is that there is a plain truth in it: the prophecy, if drawn back to action, will snuff out the lives of their children, both the one present and the two future ones. Trust has been hard-build (and rebuilt) between them, but there is one thing she would never doubt for a moment, and that is that he, like her, loves Borahîl with a force beyond the gods' own reckoning.

"When I was ten, there was a grand tourney held here. Amidst the celebration, two of my dearest friends and I went to see an old witch in Lannisport. One was bright enough to turn back, but Melara and I pressed on, eager to hear what our futures would bring." So far, so simple, and she has ceased her standing still now. By now, he has seen where the lions used to be kept (it was likely among the first places she had shown him, a childhood favourite), and she paces just as the great beasts once had. "She took my blood, and I asked my questions. Among the things she told me was how I am to die: at the hands of my younger brother."

[nearamir]

He watches her without moving, his solemn grey eyes following her restless strides. His face, as it so often is, is unreadable; it has fallen back into the still contours of deep thought, shadowed with some distant air of grimness. Only his eyes show the depth of his distress, and they bore into her with the intensity of his regard, as though he could reach into her and draw out the facts of the case; as though by thought alone he might untangle this knot that fate has woven. He thinks, as he has not thought in some time, of that dream which so long haunted him: of the great wave sweeping all before it, and the voice that made all the world shake. He thinks, with a tightening of horror in his chest, of Cersei standing small and alone before that thundering flood; swept like flotsam into the tide of fate. He knows too much of prophecies to think, for a moment, of aught else.

And yet: there is more. He can see it clearly in how she paces, in the lines of her face; he can hear it in her tone. Among the things she told me. And who was she, this witch of Lannisport? By what power came she by prophecy? By blood, and by a child's questioning? He cannot fathom it. He cannot trust it. And yet, if it is true...

"I would that you had told me sooner," he says at last, and sighs a heavy sigh; his eyes leave her at last, his gaze drifting downwards to fix with almost as intense an air upon his own clasped hands. "There is much, I think, that I would more readily have understood. Yet I know why you did not." He looks at her again, less searching now, more gentle. "Will you close the door, brennil nîn? For Borahîl will rest quiet a while longer, and I think what we must speak of, we must speak of confidentially."

[reignfall]

She is gentle when she closes the door, even though their son is surely so fast asleep that nothing short of the roaring of an enraged lizard-lion could wake him. That peace she envies him, more so when Faramir makes it twice as apparent that he will not drop the subject now that it has been broached. She leans her forehead against the wooden door to the nursery, gathering her strength, which means, really, to bristle with another badly suppressed wave of fury.

She lets it go, and turns to him, but fails to take more than a few steps in the direction of their bed.

"She said I would be robbed of all my happiness, before he comes for me at last. We will be blessed with three children, you and I, and all of them are to die first." When she had spoken of her own death with frustration, here, there is a degree of desperation to it. Gold will be their crowns, and had she not wed a prince after all, born from the blood of kings? How could their golden shrouds be less true, then?

[nearamir]

He stands to meet her, even if she will not move to join him; crosses the space between them, and cupping her face between his hands, holds her gaze. There is a gentleness in that touch and in that look, that speaks of a genuine sympathy and an understanding of that desperation. After all, does he not feel that same desperation at the thought of his children's loss? Does he not recall too well what damage such grief can wreak? Her fury is armour; he knows this of her, by now. He would that he had such armour, at times. All he has is the deep and plummeting darkness of understanding.

"Tell me," he says at last, his voice low and solemn, "what were her words? What, exactly? For you must know that if there is a way that this fate may be avoided, then I will move the heavens to find it; and in such matters, words may conceal as much as they unveil."

That she will remember the exact wording, he does not doubt. Some things, in his experience, are not easily forgotten.

[reignfall]

"She tasted a drop of my blood, and then she answered my questions." Childish questions they were, in hindsight, and all the same, the answers weighed on her more heavily than she mayhaps cared to admit. Evident it becomes when she steps into his arms and against him, the argument forgotten now that she must at last seek comfort. For all the ways she must now bring forth Maggy the Frog, he feels a dozen times more real when she can bury her face against his throat, feel him warm and living against her.

To speak, though, she must draw back again. "I asked when I would wed Prince Rhaegar, for my father had me convinced of the arrangement. Never, she told me, and that I would wed a king instead, until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast me down and all that I hold dear." And if he had before questioned her on her awful fits of jealousy, at long last now he knows where they stem from. "I asked whether we would have children, and she said, and I hear her to this day in my dreams: Six-and-ten for him, and three for you. Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds, she said, and when your tears have drowned you, your little brother shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you."

[nearamir]

For a moment, then, before she answers, he is able to hold her; to draw her close and wrap his arms around her, and press his lips against the top of her head, and feel in that momentary closeness a hope that the gulf he feels between them this evening might yet be mended.

For a moment. Only for a moment. He does not resist when she pulls back; listens gravely and attentively to all that she says, careful to mark each word with meticulous care. He is careful, too, not to show on his face the relief that begins to blossom, unasked, in him as she speaks. She will wed a king; he will have children that she does not; their children will be crowned ere they die. All dire prophecies, and all, he cannot doubt, ones that cannot on the face of it be true - for as he so forcibly reminded Tywin not so very many hours ago, he is no king, and not unless madness took him would he take another lover but her. Sooner, he thinks, would he die himself.

Privately, then, he thinks that she has been misled; cruelly tricked by a charlatan, who saw in her what would most spur fear. And there is comfort in that, but there is a hot, hard kernel of anger, too, at whatever monster would lead a child so bitterly to despair. Her fear is real; her belief is real; even if the prophecy is a lie, the damage it has wrought is real and true.

And it is for that reason that he keeps these thoughts and this relief private, for he is not cruel enough to call her a liar on top of all else. Besides, for all his doubt, it strikes him that he too has been doubted in the workings of prophecy; that he himself did not at first understand what was given to him, and even at the last, saw its meaning only as it unfolded in truth. It is a small chance, but it is a chance: and in matters of prophecy, carelessness is doom itself.

He is silent then for a moment more, then gently raises a hand to brush stray hair back from her brow, to caress her cheek with the brush of his thumb. "I am no king," he says, and his tone, too, is gentle; he is careful not to sound as though he means to argue, does his best to make of it a questioning reminder; "and such crown as my sons would have is of silver, not gold. Nor would I ever freely be so base as she would suggest; not for all the world would I dishonour us both that way. What, then, can it mean?"

[reignfall]

"Why would it be so plain?" It is a truth, of course: as a girl, she had presumed the most base meaning of each word, but she fancies herself knowledgeable in the ways of the word now, having lived so far from her home and seeing so much of the twists of history in her brief lifetime. "By blood alone, there is no law in Westeros that would not name you a rightful king of Gondor, and you have long since learned that my lord father was gambling on this truth. Why should the witch have Seen anything different, when all she had was blood? And who says the king and queen will reign eternal, produce healthy issue?" She realises how this must sound, in the face of his most fierce argument with her lord father, and though, astonishingly enough, no greed had marred her features, she presses on regardless. "I found something fonder than a crown in your arms. But fate is a twisted thing. Gods, Faramir, the Red Death or the bloody flux wiped out whole cities in their day." Who is to say it will not fall to him to guard the throne, if only until some son or other is old enough to sit it in his stead.

"Who is to say no one will send our children crowns of gold – you have seen my father's proudest hall." The one, of course, with walls and walls pleated in the purest gold, decadent and shining. "Who is to say he will not wring the life from me while I am still young, who is to say the king will not ask you to wed anew to quell some unrest back home? Walder Frey counts eighty years, and he is on this seventh wife when last I heard. Nothing is a thing of impossibility, and the horrible blind witch has been right before."

She is gripping his hand so fiercely her nails dig into his skin as they had done the night Borahîl was born. "Do not discount a word she said. Even if none of the rest comes true, do not let it be my life that you wager on so shallow a hope."

[nearamir]

There is no law in Westeros that would not name you so, she says, and he feels that anger bubbling up inside him again, that frustration that led him to snap at his erstwhile host. No, there is no such law in Westeros; but I am not Westerosi, and a Steward has never been a King. Even knowing - or, perhaps, merely hoping he knows - what she means by it, that irritation will not be entirely quelled. His jaw tightens, his lips pressing taut. He wants to be sympathetic to her plight, to a fear that he does not doubt is genuine in the face of a threat that has haunted her all this time - and yet, she questions all that he has fought for, all that he has held dear, the dawn that followed a darkness she did not see, and she does not even seem to know she does it.

Then again, how could she know? He has not talked overmuch - except perhaps in feverish dream - of the war; he has prayed, always, that she may be forever innocent of the darkness and despair of those days. He could not have expressed to her, even if he wished to, how hope for Gondor's survival had become enmeshed with the return of the King; how it was only in that moment where he returned the rod of office and all claim to rule that he felt, for the first time in his life, that fate had restored its proper course. He cannot say - to her, to her father, perhaps not even to himself - how dearly he needs to trust in that truth, or how questioning it twists a knife that he has often forgotten is still seated in his breast. And for all this talk of witches and prophecy, of dire fate that twists them in its web, there are some things he cannot set aside.

He swallows hard, and tries his best; and there is an answering ferocity in his grip when he clasps her hand in both of his, meeting her gaze with eyes that burn with a cold fire.

"Why would it be so plain?" he echoes her, and there is force in his tone, too, quiet as it is. "You will question crown and king and word; you will question all but that which hurts you deepest. Yet you have not asked, in all of this, why your brother will come to wish you harm, nor what doom will see our children shrouded; you have not asked, either, what this witch meant in answering a child's questions with such bleak prophecy, or what such a prophecy would serve. For it is said that even true prophecy can be twisted by the giver, that sly words can wrap truth into lies; and men have gone mad in such contemplation, and women too." He sighs then, heavily, and closes his eyes; and there is a great weariness that crosses his face. "Ai! that Mithrandir still came to the White City so often as he did in my youth; for he might give wiser counsel."

[reignfall]

"I am afraid the motive that inspires him will not matter overly much to me once he has murdered me." The knowledge of the prophecy had, at so tender an age, served only to solidify the belief she has come to cling to so fiercely: Tyrion was twisted and evil, a pest upon her family, come to torment them for torment's sake. Like devils and demons, he needs no reason; he is beyond such a thing.

Meanwhile her husband, yet holding her close, grasps at her words like straws, as if the circumstance matters overmuch. She has received her warning, grave as it is, and it will not serve her to read a kinder meaning into it, not if she means to keep feverish track of the worst it could do. The contempt for the notion is plain on her face, and a fierce frustration, too: it hurts her, in truth, to hear him speak as though she cannot possibly have thought her way to a singular correct conclusion in the thing that defined her life the most.

"Fuck Mithrandir." The name means, in truth, next to nothing to her. "Her words are plain because she beheld a plain truth. Do you know what Melara asked? She asked if she will wed Jaime." There is no true amusement in her voice, though it has grown considerably colder. "Well, it would have taken no Seer to tell her this would never come to pass, but Maggy tasted her future regardless. Worms will have your maidenhead, she told her, subtle as she was." Speaking of it now, a shiver runs through her, from head to toe, as though the details of it haunt her now – and it would be a lie to say that they did not. "She told her that death would take her that very night, and so it came to be."

She swallows hard, and looks away.