Cyril Beesbury (I jump around on if I want to actually make him a member of a noble house or not, but bee coffin in AKOTSK did make me feel more strongly about this sooo) was a promising young knight, devilishly charming, and the favorite of his parents. His twin sister, Cyrena, on the other hand, was quiet, timid, and obsessed with books and long dead languages. Cyrena struggled to compare to her much more conventionally appealing twin. So, when Cyrena died in an accidental drowning, her family mourned her, but there was this unspoken sense of relief that it hadn't been Cyril.
However, after Cyrena's death, Cyril completely changed. He wore all black for long beyond the typical time frame for mourning and retreated into himself. Out of nowhere, one day, he begged his father to allow him entry into the Citadel. He wanted to become a maester, the very role Cyrena had always wanted but had been barred from for her sex. In her memory, he would accomplish her dreams. His father reluctantly agreed after months of Cyril's pleading, but it felt like a great loss for the family.
The thing is...Cyril had been the one to die by the river. And Cyrena, ever the opportunist, stole his identity, finally able to occupy a comfortable body that allowed her the life she had always wanted. Does he feel guilty at times? Absolutely. Is it worth it? ...to be determined.
Even amongst the guilt, Cyril has to admit it feels really nice to excel, which he does at the Citadel. For the first time in his entire life, he has friends, supportive mentors, and exists in a space that feels made for him, not his overachiever brother. In his latter years of training, Cyril has picked up a specialty in the Old Tongue, spending hours and hours trying to decipher the runes of the First Men. He's set to go on an excursion soon to the Wall for further study.
The threat of getting found out eats at him, though, and makes him temperamental and irritable. Paranoid, too. He just has to hold it together. The real Cyril would want him to succeed, he reassures himself...even if that's far from the truth.
Gerrad Bywater has always handled the cards he's been dealt. Born to a prostitute and a sailor, Gerrad was left in the very harbor he was born in, his mother unwilling to care for him. He was picked up by a retired sailor – not a particularly old man, but one too injured to continue with his path – and brought home to a pair of loving, albeit stern and cold, parents. Ten years later, a baby was born into the house, and Gerrad had a younger brother. He swore to always care for him from the moment he laid eyes on him.
When Gerrad was around fifteen, his parents died of sickness. Left alone with his very young brother, he needed an occupation and fast. He appealed to the local blacksmith, a quiet, unfriendly man named Duncan for an apprenticeship. The man agreed on the condition that Gerrad marry his daughter, a woman almost twenty-five, as soon as the apprenticeship was over. Gerrad agreed, though he found her difficult to get along with, and she wasn't keen on him either.
After their wedding, Gerrad was a bad husband. He worked all the time, never gave his wife any affection, and had no interest in getting to know her. So, when she wandered into another's bed, he didn't notice, and even if he had, he wouldn't have cared much. Her affair partner, however, *really* cared about him. Seeking to get Gerrad thrown in jail, the man staged a robbery of Duncan's shop. Unfortunately, things went wrong, and Duncan was killed. Gerrad was blamed, and he was forced to take the black.
From Gerrad's perspective of the smith's death, he had gotten drunk (an unfortunate habit the man had fallen into) and woke to find Duncan dead beside him. He didn't know his ale had been drugged, and he didn't know the blacksmith's wounds had not been delivered by his hand. Having no other option but to believe the story he'd been told, he accepted his punishment without complaint. He believed he'd failed his little brother and was now abandoning him, an ultimate betrayal of his most important promise. Unlike most of the members of the Night's Watch, Gerrad took a vow of silence alongside his other oaths, believing his punishment to be insufficient for this crime.
Gerrad's blacksmithing skills made him a natural choice for steward of the smith. Now, he works hard day and night to atone for his sins. Yet, when he's instructed to assist in the hosting of a young smart-ass maester, he finds himself thrust into a conspiracy he never would've expected. And they kiss. Angstfully!
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