out of the purple woods, from a season in hell // october 4th // closed; cersei and tywin
Faith had always been a weird prospect, for Cersei. Not merely the great concept of Faith, that in a God above, but rather faith in the specifics. Faith that things to come would certainly be better than things at hand, faith that the future held brighter days in store. Faith in other people, too. Every time she had dared having faith, her expectations had been failed on every account. Once upon a time she had had faith that her firstborn would grow up to be a great man; that marrying Robert Baratheon would grant her everything she could hope for. She had had faith that after her husband’s death she would be master of her own fate, and that Rhaegar Targaryen might have been the answer to her immediate problems.
Most of all, she’d had faith in Jaime. She had hoped he might fix it, that her trust would not have been in vain. But dreadful as it was, the truth showed elsewise. Today was nothing but another disappointment. Jaime had failed to act when it came to Tyrion, and he had trusted the wrong people with the matter of Beric Dondarrion. Her brother’s botched attempt had backfired and the Home Secretary still lived, and with him his dangerous knowledge. Cersei couldn’t ignore the evidence: Jaime was only the latest in a long string of let downs, albeit the one that bothered her the most.
Her thoughts had turned to her father more than once, ever since that awful night. Beric Dondarrion had asked her to work against Tywin in exchange for secrecy, but Cersei knew better than that. If she had agreed, nothing could vouch for Beric’s bona fide; for all she knew, he would have ditched her as soon as he got the information he needed, and then made her pay the price all the same. As for her father… He was a hard man, but she could not imagine giving up that security that came from being his daughter and protegèe. She knew she had made the right choice, turning Dondarrion down, but now she had to deal with the whole set of problems that her decision implied.
The solution was as quick and painful as tearing off a band-aid. She had to tell her father. Not the truth, of course — that she could never tell anyone. A well-dressed lie, maybe, one that would show the potential danger without the factual liability of what Beric Dondarrion threatened to reveal. She could defend Robert’s paternity, tell her father Beric Dondarrion had friends in high places that could sustain his made-up theories. Tywin would believe her.
Would he?
With one last sip of her bourbon to gather courage, she pushed herself off the chaise longue, leaving her bedroom in a hurry. The place was silent in the midnight bliss of slumber. Only her muffled footsteps echoed across the corridors, and her shadow flickering across the paintings hanging from the walls as she passed by. She halted at the wide wooden door of the sitting room his father had taken to occupy late at night, engrossed in his thinking. He would not appreciate her barging in in his thoughts. Unfortunately she had no other option.
Cersei pushed the door and peaked in silently, to make sure her father was not asleep. (And what would she have done, had he been sleeping? Wake him up?) He wasn’t.
"May I come in?"
ROBB STARK APPOINTED PRIME MINISTER OF SCOTLAND, and Tywin thought: how can one kingdom be so endlessly disappointing? The political unrest gutted him more than he dared to admit. His face didn’t reveal half of the tension he felt; the slim desk lamp bathed him in a diffuse but warm light, transforming wrinkles into canyons. Rough was the newspaper’s structure between his fingers before he placed them at his bald temple. Tywin still struggled to use that fancy new tablet thing he received as a present from a partner. Even reading news on it was just too much. It lay over there, on the armchair he sat in before he had returned to work. You never know who of those greedy crawlers around you could have access to your data; Tywin didn’t dare to trust any new technology he hadn’t checked himself. Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. Most of all, Tywin was as old-fashioned as his methods which paid well so far. But he needed to rethink. It was the family’s safety that held him awake; the terrorism, the riots that had tested him harshly. For one second which felt like centuries Tywin closed his eyes, just to open them up again, realizing it was his daughter standing at the door. Tywin scanned her face with a silent glance. His voice sounded dry since he hadn’t spoken to anyone in hours. “Come.” She never had been the exhausting Daddy, there’s a monster under my bed type of daughter. If at all, there would be only one bedroom she would seek comfort in. She needed security – he could tell from her gesture because as subtle as it was he knew her. And it made his mouth corner twitch, feeling upraising disbelief that something was about to go wrong. Again. Tywin never had thought Cersei was only useful as passive marriage pawn. He needed her as player who manipulates the pieces. He needed her to control whoever sat in the government office just as he had controlled Aerys. He had needed Cersei doing his job for him as Baratheon’s wife. He had needed her to secure London and yet there she stood. Tywin sat back in his chair and moved the newspapers aside but dared to have one last look at Stark’s face; a headshot of a coward hiding behind Scottish borders. Quietly he cleared his throat, and that deep wrinkle between his eyebrows showed that he did not appreciate her interrupting his thoughts. “What do you want, Cersei?” Because let’s be honest – visiting your father past any healthy bedtime turns you back into an insecure child. Whatever concerned her concerned him. What less trouble they all could have if his kids only did once what they were told to. Ah yes, poor Tywin Lannister, training his children. Tywin Lannister, explaining his moves and why he made them and why what he tried didn’t work. Tywin Lannister, shitting gold and still failing because his children couldn’t keep it together. But the thing is: if you laugh at one Lannister, you are laughing at House Lannister. Maybe it’s just a daughter’s job to piss her father off.