Fic: Love is the best endeavour waiting in the lion's mane
Love is the best endeavour waiting in the lion's mane
Five men Joanna didn't want - and one man she loved. Er. Yes. It's quite schmoopy and rated PG-13. Joanna/Tywin. 5800 words.
one
The first notion of marriage takes her by surprise.
It's a golden summer's day, her knees are stained with grass and mud - her finest dress entirely ruined judging by her mother's exasperated sigh - and her chest is full of strange stories, her hands are full of kittens and frogs that she has smuggled inside her lord uncle's castle. She presses her ear to every door, sneaks behind all the benches in the Stone Garden and sits there, quiet as a mouse as the members of the household walk by, chattering to each other. Rubbing dirt off her skin she hears words like whores and drunkard and she learns, frowning, that her kind lord uncle who lets her sit in his lap is a lecherous old fool (she doesn't know what it means but the hushed-up voices sound disapproving) and one of the late Lady Janei's maids thinks he is dishonouring his lady's memory. Joanna doesn't remember her lady aunt at all but her mother tells her she had been kind and sickly.
One forenoon when it seems they have been at Casterly Rock for all eternity and its secrets stretch out before her, infinite and reachable, Joanna sits huddled behind the largest stone in the garden, as her father and her uncle sit down by the weirwood tree. They have serious faces and low voices so she crawls closer, curious.
It takes her a moment to discern her name among the words, longer still to understand why she is being mentioned at all. All little ladies marry little lords, her mother says in her head. Then they have little boys and girls to take over their castles and fortresses and lead their armies. Still, it makes her frown, and besides, she would much rather live in a castle by herself with lots and lots of kittens.
“Joanna should be able to find a match among any of my lords,” she hears Lord Tytos say to her father. “Such a beautiful little girl, that one. Full of spirit. Any man would be lucky-”
“She will not marry a Frey,” her father retorts. There is a long pause; Joanna can hear her own breathing in the silence that encompasses them all. “And she is just a girl of six-”
“House Farman might be a better option then, dear brother. Lady of the Fair Isle, what do you say?”
“Are you indebted to them, too, my lord?” Her father's voice is strange, Joanna thinks. He sounds very angry but not like when he berates her for running in the great hall or speaking bad words, this anger seems to be stuck in his chest, like a dark and heavy sigh. “Just how far are you willing to stretch our family's honour?”
She has heard enough so she backs away, slowly and carefully. When she reaches the outskirts of the massive garden, her hair dishevelled and her dress stained, she runs into her cousins. A golden-haired little group, with Gerion waddling after them, clinging to Genna's arm to keep the same pace as Tygett.
Tywin is older like Stafford and already tall and lean, looking different from all of his brothers. He is a lion. Joanna gives him a searching look, tilting her head. She has not spoken to him at all since they arrived. It's difficult sometimes, thinking of things to say to him. He never seems to find them funny or interesting, not like Kevan and Genna who laugh all the time.
“I found a frog.” She holds it out in her palm for Tywin to see, but he doesn't look very impressed.
“You have dirt on your face,” he says curtly.
Quickly, Joanna wipes her forehead with the back of her free hand. Her brother rolls his eyes and Kevan bursts into laughter so she understands she still looks the fool; frowning, she turns around to see if she can catch her reflection in something. Her mother had told her to behave, right before they left for Casterly Rock, she had admonished and pleaded and it is important to act like a lady and this is not ladylike at all, she knows, wishing she stood somewhere else, without her stupid boy cousins as witnesses. Stafford will tell mother, of course. He always does.
“Under your nose,” Tywin clarifies. He gives his brother a glance and Kevan stops laughing immediately, looking a little bashful. Joanna glares at him. “Go inside, Kevan. Take Gerion with you. You know he is not allowed to play in here.”
Their mother died last year, Joanna recalls. She thinks about her own mother and wonders if they miss her, if Tywin was put to bed by her, if he remembers her songs and rhymes. Joanna's mother still sits by her bedside until she falls asleep, reading stories about pirates and queens, conquerors and knights.
When the others leave - her cousins because their older brother says so, her own brother because he's going to count to mother all the ways in which Joanna is misbehaving - Joanna remains standing there just outside the Stone Garden with Tywin, who looks at her as if he's expecting her to leave, too. She can tell he is used to his siblings doing what he tells them to.
“What does lecherous mean?” she asks instead, because he is not her brother.
He makes a sound like he is going to be angry with her; when he looks at her again there's an odd-looking grimace on his face as though he's in pain. “Why are you asking me that?”
“I heard someone say it. I don't know what it means. I thought....” she feels stupid, shrugging uncomfortably. “I thought I'd ask.”
Tywin rakes a hand through his thick hair and sits down on a chunk of rock behind them; he looks like a man grown, Joanna thinks, steeped in seriousness and troubled thoughts. Like her father. You worry too much, her mother often says to him, leaning over his books and papers to rub his shoulders. But father is never serious-looking when Joanna sits in his lap, telling him about her latest discovery in the forests behind their home, or twirling his beard between her fingers.
“Is it a bad word?” she asks when he doesn't say anything.
He nods the same curt nod again. “Yes.”
There's something sad about it; she feels it as a lump in her throat because uncle Tytos had swirled her around when they arrived, had taken her in his arms and called her a big strong girl and people almost never say that even if she's taller than the boys, nearly as tall as Tywin who is eight. She likes her uncle, she doesn't want him to be a bad man.
“Sometimes when people say bad things, it's not true,” she attempts, but Tywin merely shrugs it away without a word.
“I'm sorry,” she looks down, scraping her feet on the ground, making circles with her toes. “I didn't mean to make you upset.”
Tywin snorts. “I'm not upset.”
Liar, she thinks. “I would be sad if they said bad things about my father.”
“Yes, but you are just a little girl,” he says, sounding exactly like Stafford when she asks to come with him to his fencing lessons.
Joanna shrugs. “You are just a little boy.”
“I'm going to be Lord of Casterly Rock one day.” He sounds so prideful and teasing that her eyes narrow, but she can't blame him. Casterly Rock is the greatest fortress that has ever been built and it has never fallen. It's in her blood and her songs, its grey stone walls and blood-red banners painted inside her story books where the lions are victorious against both dragons and direwolves. Her jealousy tastes like fever, burning at the back of her throat.
“I'm going to be Lady of the Fair Isle,” Joanna counters, but she can't make it sound as tremendous as being a creature of the Rock.
For a while they sit together, not saying anything; she is turning his words over in her head, thinking about lies and truths and how ridiculous boys are. What Tywin thinks about, she does not know and has no desire to ask.
“Do you know we have a lion in the castle?” he says eventually, turning his head to look at her.
And Joanna forgets everything else.
* * *
She is almost of age before she finally meets Sebaston Farman of the Fair Isle and cannot see why her lord uncle wants her to marry him. He’s a haughty young lord, odd-looking and overly confident for a vassal. Joanna watches him with mild interest as he engages in conversation with her father, compliments her mother on the magnificent garden and moves about in their home as though he had a right to. His shoulders are narrow and slumped, his face kind and simple. When you are promised to someone, you may kiss them on the lips, Leda, the butcher's girl, says in Joanna's head, giggling. It brings a grimace to her face, picturing it.
Joanna thinks about the Stone Garden instead, how it must look now under the shifting skins of snow and frost-hard leaves with rays of remnant sun breaking through the white skies; she closes her eyes and pretends she is a lioness basking it its light.
“You must be Lady Joanna.” Lord Farman stands before her suddenly; she glances up at him, stifling a sigh.
“Must I?” she asks, and almost feels bad for the gentle confusion in his eyes. “I'm afraid no one told me.”
When he leaves, her mother speaks of insolence and her father forbids her to visit her cousins this summer and Joanna climbs up in the tree she always played in a as a child, wondering why they all want to confine her. Bind her to stupid lords on stupid isles. Cage her like the old lion in the cells deep under Casterly Rock, so far down it can’t be heard through the layers of stone and time. But Tywin had shown her. It's many years ago now but she still remembers how she had gasped, clasping her hands over her mouth at the sight; she still remembers how proud he had looked, how pleased.
(“Lions shouldn’t be in cages,” she says as she reaches out a hand through the iron prison, hoping to touch the mane.
“The legend says she will be released if Casterly Rock is ever attacked.” Tywin stands beside her, so close she can feel his arm against her own. She wonders if he is going to push her like Stafford would or drag her away, like her mother. But he just stands there by her side. “Then she will fight for the Lannisters.”
“And tear their hearts out!” Joanna feels something in her chest swell at the thought of battle, of all the colours of her story books being splashed out and spread across a battlefield, with knights and captains and heroes wrapped in crimson and gold, giving their lives. I'm a lioness.
When she turns her head to look at her cousin she sees that he’s smiling, so she smiles too.)
two
The dead weight of summer is still slumped over their shoulders as the autumn leaves burn red and yellow that year when Joanna has a long string of suitors writing to her father, asking for her hand.
Lesser lords, most of them, he tells her. No proper proposals, nothing that she has to consider.
“People care so little for form and correctness, these days,” he complains, pursing his lips.
In a fortnight, Stafford is going to be wed to Lady Lendra of House Lefford and their castle is burning with preparations for it. Already their halls smell of harvests and flowers, the fragrances of roasted apples and salted ham and boar and spicy, buttered mushrooms mingling together with the lingering heat in the air. Lannisters and Leffords will arrive, respects will be paid, dances will be danced and bonds forged and reinvented as the feast approaches and ends. She wonders if Stafford is pleased with his bride. She wonders, too, if it has ever occurred to him to protest against anything. He is such a meek boy, she has heard her father say to her mother more than once. If he only had a little of his sister’s fire - and she had a little less.
“Lady Lendra has a brother,” Joanna's mother lets slip, her voice deceptively calm.
“I'm certain she is thrilled beyond belief about it.” Joanna stares at her hands; the skin is darkened from the sun, she has a few scabs from the garden and from needlework. “Having a brother, I mean.”
Her mother sighs. “Leo Lefford is heir to Golden Tooth and still unwed.”
“A most appropriate match,” her father adds. There's an edge to his voice that she hasn't heard before and it saddens her, leaves a trace of worry behind. She wishes no shame on her house, no troubles burdening her mother and father, but it seems at times as though her incongruous behaviour is a secret fluttering under her skin, something that is beyond out of her control and as seamless a motion as breathing.
“I shall wear my finest dress,” Joanna promises, thinking of the lioness in chains as she leaves the room.
* * *
At the feast, she forgets every promise and good intention she has ever possessed.
At the feast, her eyes seek Tywin's over the table and after that nothing else will hold her attention.
“The Tooth is the key to the Westerlands,” Lord Lefford says stiffly; she wonders if he recites from a history book or if he is truly this dull. For most of the feast he has been by her side, a large and sour presence, throwing empty phrases of courtesy her way. “One cannot take the lands beyond the Tooth without the Tooth.”
“Unless one marches around it,” Joanna says, throwing Tywin a quick grin. He smirks into his goblet of wine but says nothing. “Or defeats it.”
Lord Lefford scoffs loudly. “It is not done, my lady.”
”It has been done, my lord.” She bites down on her lip when she sees the irritable frown on his face, thinking forgive me father, but he is impossible.
At the feast, Joanna suffers gracelessly until she finally kicks her cousin's legs under the table and is excused and liberated by way of being asked to dance.
The following morning her father announces that Joanna is to accompany her lord uncle to King's Landing shortly to wait on Princess Rhaella Targaryen.
Perhaps it's meant to be a punishment, but it sings in her blood as the sweetest of releases all the same.
( Tywin sees her from the bottom of the stairs before she notices him. He's a man grown now, nothing soft or childlike in his face, the shadows of the little boy forever gone from his eyes, his edges sharpened against the passing years; when she walks towards him, she can feel his gaze on her the entire time and knows she is no longer the girl he once knew.
“You visited when we were children,” she says, and they stand so close, speaking in voices low as whispers as they're looking at the scenario taking place before them. Her brother is tall and handsome in his cloak, his lady wife looks nervous but sweet in her silk dress; Joanna closes her mind to the image of herself in Lady Lendra's place and Lendra's brother's cloak - bearing the wrong colours, the wrong crest, the wrong oaths - wrapped around her own shoulders. I am a lioness.
“Yes, I accompanied my father on a hunting trip.” Tywin turns his head slightly, so they're looking at each other. “We fought with your brother's swords.”
She grins, nodding. “You gave me a scar, did you know?”
Later, when they have escaped the crowd and stands with their backs flat against the outer wall of the castle, Joanna shows the pale crook of a scar on her wrist. She has never learned how to use a sword, even a wooden one. He had not even needed to fight to disarm her.
“Here,” she says, her breath catching in her throat as Tywin's thumb suddenly comes down over the remnant of childhood on her wrist, scrutinizing it the way he scrutinizes everything. To measure its worth.
For the entirety of the long autumn that follows, she will think of the pressure of his fingers against her skin, their invisible marks. )
three
It's a year for weddings.
Under a cloud-heavy sky, cousin Genna is wed to Emmon Frey and Joanna smiles all through the feast, trying to make it seem less dire. Everyone knows it’s an affront to the Lannister’s good name, a mockery of a marriage meant to serve no one but Lord Frey; everyone sits there all the same, joining husband and wife in their feasting.
Joanna looks at Genna, beautiful, clever Genna, then at her lord husband who is thin and pale with stringy brown hair and a voice that barely carries. A shadow, she thinks. He is nothing but a shadow. Beside him, Tywin is tall and broad of shoulder, his face sun-kissed, his golden hair seeming even more golden in the light of the candles; when he speaks, his voice cuts through the room, clear and sharp. Two men have never been less alike and for half a heartbeat, Joanna pities Emmon Frey.
* * *
The sun is scorching on the day of Prince Aeyrys and Princess Rhaella's union, held at the Red Keep and witnessed by a bustling, cheering city.
At the feast, Aerys gets too drunk too quickly and plants an open-mouthed kiss on Joanna’s cheek before she pulls away. He smells of wine and something oddly sharp, like metals or blood. Madness runs in the lot of them, she knows. Madness and passion and jealousy. The Red Keep has been her home for many months now, she knows its secrets. It’s in the walls here, a creeping, quiet sort of terror that never sleeps. It’s in the princess’s gaze sometimes, too, when Joanna sits with her in the gardens long past the sun has set and the chill prickles their skin. I do not wish to be alone with my brother tonight. It’s in her fragile laughter, in her words that never seem to grow strong enough to take actual form, but falls flat to the ground beneath the princess’s delicate feet.
It’s in Aerys as he stumbles over the boundaries and reaches for what he cannot have but - like the child he will always be, a bright, burning, brilliant child - aims for anyway.
“I meant no offence, my lady,” he says, his gaze lowered.
“Then be so kind and avoid kissing me in the future,” she replies, her words cold as ice.
Another feast, sitting too near, his breath sour against the curve of her neck as he assures her: “If it did not go against tradition and my father's wish, I would have married you.”
No, you wouldn’t have, Joanna thinks but knows better than to say it out loud.
( Once, they walk in the garden within the Keep, impudently unsupervised but never alone. They are never alone.
“It’s good to enjoy the company of a Lannister again,” she says, glancing up at her cousin who looks at something straight ahead, seeing nothing else. It stabs at her vanity; she has put on a new dress for this visit, spent entirely too long cooped up with maids tending to her hair. Without thinking, her hand travels up to her neck, fidgeting with a loose strand of her unmanageable golden curls. Your lion’s mane, the Princess says sometimes, eyes widening as Joanna lets her run her hands through it.
Tywin holds up a thick branch from a silver oak fern that hangs down in front of them, almost blocking their path.
“Have you tired of the legendary charms of the Targaryens?” he asks, as Joanna slips under his outstretched arm, smiling at him from the other side.
“I don’t mislike it here," she says, because she doesn't, not when she thinks of the Fair Isle and the Golden Tooth, sees herself wrapped in blue and yellow and it is not done, my lady. "But I have had enough of alchemy and wildfire and bloody court life.”
“Unsurprising,” Tywin says, a trace of sympathy running through his voice.
Take me with you.
One of the highest-ranking servants of Aerys's is said to be half-mad and a drunkard, too. Joanna has spent countless nights in his company, listening to his scattered thoughts on warfare, cartography and the unreliable historians and she’s refrained from engaging in a debate, has held her tongue and controlled her temper and sat with them, more ladylike than she has ever been before in her life. Instead of mocking the poor fool, she has observed small details in his clothes, pondered the quality of cloth and embellishments to keep her words reined in.
And she has had no one to share it with, this oddness of her new life, so she tells Tywin.
“I even sat there quiet and smiling, through a whole speech on how it would be possible to conquer the world with an army of alchemists and dragonriders.” She chuckles.
“What did this inspiring strategy consist of then?” Tywin looks amused.
Joanna leans forward and reveals the battle strategy in a mock-whisper, still giddy from the much longed-for conversation and when she is done, he laughs - a brief, unexpected laugh that cuts into the very air between them, warmer than the sun. It feels like a triumph to hear the sound, force it out of his bone-hard composure; it feels like a secret of sorts, binding them to each other.
“You should laugh more often, dear cousin,” Joanna says, softly.
Their hands rest side by side on the bench, palms stretched against its planes, fingers sprawling. If she moves her hand, if she shifts just a little in her seat, they will be skin to skin. The thought reels in her. The thought of being touched - or better yet kissed - by Tywin is like a red-hot flare in her blood lately, a dangerous thought she pushes aside because she is a Lannister and she knows her duties like he knows his own. One day her cousin will be powerful, one day he will yield power through letters and steel. But here, in this garden, on this bench at the Red Keep, they share the same ill-suited deficiency, their mutual powerlessness like deep hollows in the space between them.
“My father intends to increase his power over the North,” Tywin says suddenly, as though he can read her mind. His voice is low, harsh. “It’s sheer folly, of course. They will never agree. But he is set on offering me to a Stark or a Tully.”
“Oh,” Joanna replies because she has no other words for it. )
four
The following year, princess Rhaella is crowned Queen and Joanna is called back to her duties as a lady of house Lannister.
This is the year of rebellions.
Seemingly without effort, Tywin smashes the Tarbecks and the Reynes and with them the feeble hope that offering Joanna to the youngest Tarbeck would strengthen the relationship between lords and lieges. She feels lighter, somehow, hearing the news that her cousin has hanged every last member of the family. It saves her the trouble of wriggling out of the chains.
“This boy”, her father says about Tywin when he returns with minor wounds and new lines in his face, “he is a commander such as we have never seen before. All enemies of the Lannisters are without hope while he lives and leads our armies.”
“I want to marry him.” The words escape her before she has thought better of it. Tywin has refused a marriage of his own this year, she knows. Nobody important, rumour has it. “I’m a Lannister and I want to remain a Lannister.”
“I agree that you belong in our house.” Her father pauses, then he lets it out, the words taking the shape of a sigh: “My brother has his mind set on Kevan for you.”
Joanna winces, thinking of Kevan's slight stutter, how he is clumsy and thoughtful and still carries around his hollow boy's dreams. He dreams of being in the Kingsguard, serving for life. He dreams of being knighted. He dreams of dragons and tourneys and battles. He wants to be a hero but he cannot see that a hero's soul is hard as steel, hammered out in blood and violence and paid for ten times over with enemy lives.
Kevan is kind and fair; he doesn't have the heart for heroism.
“No.” She shakes her head. “Cousin Kevan is afraid to look me in the eyes. I can't marry him.”
Her father smiles, almost despite himself, it seems. “I cannot hold it against him, Joanna. You do not make it easy for your suitors, do you?”
“Cousin Tywin doesn't mind.”
“I'm most certain he doesn't.” Her father's smile vanishes somewhat. “That boy does not fear anything.”
He doesn't like to lose, Joanna thinks. Not even at chess, especially not to me because I tease him about it; he fights with a Valyrian sword and a small dagger; he thinks Genna is smarter than all of his brothers. Once, a long time ago when I dared him to, he kissed a servant girl and I hoped he would kiss me too, but he never did. He is afraid he won't be able to restore the former glory of Casterly Rock, that he will become just like his father and that his efforts will amount to nothing. He can't stand the sound of people laughing behind his back; he knows he can't stop at anything to silence the crowd; he doesn't want to marry a Tully or a Stark even for strategic purposes. He gets freckles in the sun and I could never forgive you if you keep me from him.
“No,” she says.
“Kevan is a good lad, Joanna. He might not be as impressive as his brother-“
“No.”
“Joanna.” Her father stands up, eyes flaring. “This is not a matter of debate.”
She swallows. “You can tell my lord uncle that it's Tywin I wish to marry. It has to be him. There is no one else.”
And then she leaves the room, the sound of her own steps thundering in her ears.
( It happens that she dreams of Casterly Rock with its winding corridors. That she dreams of the stifled sounds of secrets and lost hope, the echoes of whispers long gone and the muffled lives of those still living. All the sounds there that are woven together to a tapestry above their heads; Joanna dreams of pressing her cheek against the cool flats of the walls, her fingers trying to reach over everything she has always dreamed and feared.
And when she wakes up all that remains is a biting longing in her throat. )
five
The music endures in the cold air out on the balcony, seems to fly from star to star and scatter very slowly in the night.
There’s a feast at Casterly Rock for no apparent reason other than Lord Tytos wanting one. He has grown worse, Joanna thinks, the man she remembers faintly as big and strong has transformed into a fat, whine-smelling old man who paws every wench in sight and has had every whore in Lannisport stumbling out of the Lion's Mouth in the middle of the night.
She leaves the loud, boiling hall as Kevan attempts to prize his lord father and move him away to his bedchamber, with the assistance of his younger brothers. As she slips past them, Lord Tytos screams for his mistress. My father would be ashamed, Joanna thinks, glad he had not insisted on joining her for this visit.
Tywin stands on the highest balcony, looking stouter than the walls of their ancestry.
She walks up beside him, leans against the bannister so they're both looking down on the calm sea below. Standing here, she is reminded again of how large the fortress is. How you could spend a lifetime here without discovering all the rooms or unearthing all the mysteries. Obscure memories of generations that have forgotten themselves, proud names and magnificent deeds that should not be allowed to vanish. Casterly Rock has been carved out of eternity. The stones remember everything.
“You will have to forgive me for leaving you alone in there.” He is correct at the strangest of times, Joanna observes, holding back the impulse to chuckle and the desire to touch him, pull him close. “I had no desire to hear the singer's appalling rendition of The Dance of the Dragons yet again.”
Joanna looks at her hands in the moonlight. The golden bracelet she has worn since her twelfth name day burns darkly but it's cool under her fingertips as she traces its patterns.
“Gerion engaged me in a long conversation about his plans for the future,” she says, smiling to herself. Her youngest cousin wants to be an adventurer, sail the seas and find Brightroar.
Judging by Tywin's expression, the plans are known to him as well.
“Its a fool's quest. But he's young yet. He is still under the impression that he can run from his duties.”
Unlike you, you were born dutiful, she thinks, but doesn't say.
“One could have worse duties than Casterly Rock,” she says instead.
She counts the heartbeats during the silence that follows.
“Casterly Rock is on the verge of ruin.” He gives her a long, searching glance, and seems to be weighing his words carefully. This is an important moment. She knows this despite feeling the wine she's had tingle at the back of her head, despite the cold night air that is rough against her bare arms. It will matter in the years to come, what they say now. “When I assume my duties - formally, I mean-” a dark shadow crosses his face and Joanna thinks of Lord Tytos's hand cupping his mistress's breasts in front of everyone, hears the laughter rise higher and higher. “When I take over, I will restore it. I'll do everything it takes. Anything.”
Yes, she thinks. Yes. Fill all the fractured lies and holes, all the empty promises and past grievances. Silence the laughter and light the Hall of Heroes again.
There is a hunger behind his words, a steady strength of his heart that has no room for hollow dreams, no place for gentleness or follies. She knows what he is, because he has shown her. She knows where his lines are drawn, how far his ambition reaches. He is the one on which they’ve staked all of their stubbornness, all of their pride, all of their will. There’s a cruelty in that burden, a chain heavier than anything she can image; she wants to unburden him, share his fate, place them both on the right side of this vastness.
There is something untamed in her and he sees it, he recognises it and for this remarkable thing alone she would follow him anywhere. She is as fierce as he is, as bold as the dreams that have been twisted and stretched thin over generations, as reckless as a lioness struggling to regain her pride. Hers is not a gentle heart, she would not dare to give it to a lesser man.
We are lions, you and I.
“I know.”
"No one will laugh at our children.” He lowers his voice, darkens it. “I swear it.”
He catches himself, but it’s already said, the words have fallen and he recovers immediately, rearranging his composure. But it’s the crack in it, that unguarded breath outside time that shivers through her like a ghost-wind.
“You have not yet accepted my proposal.” He says it confidently, expecting a yes with such unfaltering resolution that something shifts in her, rendering her breathless.
I wanted to ride to you in the middle of the night but reason and pride got the better of me, dearest cousin.
“No.” She gives a sudden laugh. “I could not write a letter. I tried, but... It didn’t seem proper to accept such a thing in a letter.”
She has thought other boys - other men - handsome in the past, has seen their features before her in the dark of her bedchamber, willed her hands to belong to them. Now she cannot seem to recall why, as though this moment has swallowed all of her history and replaced it with the memory of Tywin before her now, looking into her eyes, his gaze anchored in hers in a way that could unseat her balance if she let it.
The expression on his face softens, and his voice with it. “I am glad of it, Joanna.”
Joanna nods. “We have much to do, you and I. Your duty is my duty now.”
Those are correct words - expected words - but they are shaped out of honesty, not obligation and she has never meant something quite as passionately before. She reaches for his hand, for him, reaches up to place a kiss on his cheek and as she is about to pull away, Tywin suddenly kisses her properly on the mouth, one of his hands moving to the small of her back to gather her harder against him. Joanna closes her eyes.
”You belong here,” he says as she slides her arm under his own outside the boisterous feast hall once they have reassembled themselves enough to return to it, and she glances at him, thinking of all the feasts she will attend by his side, all the times she will turn her head slightly to find him right there.
“Yes, I’ve always thought so.” She offers him a smile - wide and relieved - and he hesitates for a brief moment before he returns it.
Then his arm comes around her waist and she feels the rhythm of his heartbeats against her own; and then, as they make their way out on the floor, holding on to each other with hands no longer empty, Joanna allows herself to finally fall in love.
Five men Joanna didn't want - and one man she loved. Er. Yes. It's quite schmoopy and rated PG-13. Joanna/Tywin. 5800 words.
one
The first notion of marriage takes her by surprise.
It's a golden summer's day, her knees are stained with grass and mud - her finest dress entirely ruined judging by her mother's exasperated sigh - and her chest is full of strange stories, her hands are full of kittens and frogs that she has smuggled inside her lord uncle's castle. She presses her ear to every door, sneaks behind all the benches in the Stone Garden and sits there, quiet as a mouse as the members of the household walk by, chattering to each other. Rubbing dirt off her skin she hears words like whores and drunkard and she learns, frowning, that her kind lord uncle who lets her sit in his lap is a lecherous old fool (she doesn't know what it means but the hushed-up voices sound disapproving) and one of the late Lady Janei's maids thinks he is dishonouring his lady's memory. Joanna doesn't remember her lady aunt at all but her mother tells her she had been kind and sickly.
One forenoon when it seems they have been at Casterly Rock for all eternity and its secrets stretch out before her, infinite and reachable, Joanna sits huddled behind the largest stone in the garden, as her father and her uncle sit down by the weirwood tree. They have serious faces and low voices so she crawls closer, curious.
It takes her a moment to discern her name among the words, longer still to understand why she is being mentioned at all. All little ladies marry little lords, her mother says in her head. Then they have little boys and girls to take over their castles and fortresses and lead their armies. Still, it makes her frown, and besides, she would much rather live in a castle by herself with lots and lots of kittens.
“Joanna should be able to find a match among any of my lords,” she hears Lord Tytos say to her father. “Such a beautiful little girl, that one. Full of spirit. Any man would be lucky-”
“She will not marry a Frey,” her father retorts. There is a long pause; Joanna can hear her own breathing in the silence that encompasses them all. “And she is just a girl of six-”
“House Farman might be a better option then, dear brother. Lady of the Fair Isle, what do you say?”
“Are you indebted to them, too, my lord?” Her father's voice is strange, Joanna thinks. He sounds very angry but not like when he berates her for running in the great hall or speaking bad words, this anger seems to be stuck in his chest, like a dark and heavy sigh. “Just how far are you willing to stretch our family's honour?”
She has heard enough so she backs away, slowly and carefully. When she reaches the outskirts of the massive garden, her hair dishevelled and her dress stained, she runs into her cousins. A golden-haired little group, with Gerion waddling after them, clinging to Genna's arm to keep the same pace as Tygett.
Tywin is older like Stafford and already tall and lean, looking different from all of his brothers. He is a lion. Joanna gives him a searching look, tilting her head. She has not spoken to him at all since they arrived. It's difficult sometimes, thinking of things to say to him. He never seems to find them funny or interesting, not like Kevan and Genna who laugh all the time.
“I found a frog.” She holds it out in her palm for Tywin to see, but he doesn't look very impressed.
“You have dirt on your face,” he says curtly.
Quickly, Joanna wipes her forehead with the back of her free hand. Her brother rolls his eyes and Kevan bursts into laughter so she understands she still looks the fool; frowning, she turns around to see if she can catch her reflection in something. Her mother had told her to behave, right before they left for Casterly Rock, she had admonished and pleaded and it is important to act like a lady and this is not ladylike at all, she knows, wishing she stood somewhere else, without her stupid boy cousins as witnesses. Stafford will tell mother, of course. He always does.
“Under your nose,” Tywin clarifies. He gives his brother a glance and Kevan stops laughing immediately, looking a little bashful. Joanna glares at him. “Go inside, Kevan. Take Gerion with you. You know he is not allowed to play in here.”
Their mother died last year, Joanna recalls. She thinks about her own mother and wonders if they miss her, if Tywin was put to bed by her, if he remembers her songs and rhymes. Joanna's mother still sits by her bedside until she falls asleep, reading stories about pirates and queens, conquerors and knights.
When the others leave - her cousins because their older brother says so, her own brother because he's going to count to mother all the ways in which Joanna is misbehaving - Joanna remains standing there just outside the Stone Garden with Tywin, who looks at her as if he's expecting her to leave, too. She can tell he is used to his siblings doing what he tells them to.
“What does lecherous mean?” she asks instead, because he is not her brother.
He makes a sound like he is going to be angry with her; when he looks at her again there's an odd-looking grimace on his face as though he's in pain. “Why are you asking me that?”
“I heard someone say it. I don't know what it means. I thought....” she feels stupid, shrugging uncomfortably. “I thought I'd ask.”
Tywin rakes a hand through his thick hair and sits down on a chunk of rock behind them; he looks like a man grown, Joanna thinks, steeped in seriousness and troubled thoughts. Like her father. You worry too much, her mother often says to him, leaning over his books and papers to rub his shoulders. But father is never serious-looking when Joanna sits in his lap, telling him about her latest discovery in the forests behind their home, or twirling his beard between her fingers.
“Is it a bad word?” she asks when he doesn't say anything.
He nods the same curt nod again. “Yes.”
There's something sad about it; she feels it as a lump in her throat because uncle Tytos had swirled her around when they arrived, had taken her in his arms and called her a big strong girl and people almost never say that even if she's taller than the boys, nearly as tall as Tywin who is eight. She likes her uncle, she doesn't want him to be a bad man.
“Sometimes when people say bad things, it's not true,” she attempts, but Tywin merely shrugs it away without a word.
“I'm sorry,” she looks down, scraping her feet on the ground, making circles with her toes. “I didn't mean to make you upset.”
Tywin snorts. “I'm not upset.”
Liar, she thinks. “I would be sad if they said bad things about my father.”
“Yes, but you are just a little girl,” he says, sounding exactly like Stafford when she asks to come with him to his fencing lessons.
Joanna shrugs. “You are just a little boy.”
“I'm going to be Lord of Casterly Rock one day.” He sounds so prideful and teasing that her eyes narrow, but she can't blame him. Casterly Rock is the greatest fortress that has ever been built and it has never fallen. It's in her blood and her songs, its grey stone walls and blood-red banners painted inside her story books where the lions are victorious against both dragons and direwolves. Her jealousy tastes like fever, burning at the back of her throat.
“I'm going to be Lady of the Fair Isle,” Joanna counters, but she can't make it sound as tremendous as being a creature of the Rock.
For a while they sit together, not saying anything; she is turning his words over in her head, thinking about lies and truths and how ridiculous boys are. What Tywin thinks about, she does not know and has no desire to ask.
“Do you know we have a lion in the castle?” he says eventually, turning his head to look at her.
And Joanna forgets everything else.
* * *
She is almost of age before she finally meets Sebaston Farman of the Fair Isle and cannot see why her lord uncle wants her to marry him. He’s a haughty young lord, odd-looking and overly confident for a vassal. Joanna watches him with mild interest as he engages in conversation with her father, compliments her mother on the magnificent garden and moves about in their home as though he had a right to. His shoulders are narrow and slumped, his face kind and simple. When you are promised to someone, you may kiss them on the lips, Leda, the butcher's girl, says in Joanna's head, giggling. It brings a grimace to her face, picturing it.
Joanna thinks about the Stone Garden instead, how it must look now under the shifting skins of snow and frost-hard leaves with rays of remnant sun breaking through the white skies; she closes her eyes and pretends she is a lioness basking it its light.
“You must be Lady Joanna.” Lord Farman stands before her suddenly; she glances up at him, stifling a sigh.
“Must I?” she asks, and almost feels bad for the gentle confusion in his eyes. “I'm afraid no one told me.”
When he leaves, her mother speaks of insolence and her father forbids her to visit her cousins this summer and Joanna climbs up in the tree she always played in a as a child, wondering why they all want to confine her. Bind her to stupid lords on stupid isles. Cage her like the old lion in the cells deep under Casterly Rock, so far down it can’t be heard through the layers of stone and time. But Tywin had shown her. It's many years ago now but she still remembers how she had gasped, clasping her hands over her mouth at the sight; she still remembers how proud he had looked, how pleased.
(“Lions shouldn’t be in cages,” she says as she reaches out a hand through the iron prison, hoping to touch the mane.
“The legend says she will be released if Casterly Rock is ever attacked.” Tywin stands beside her, so close she can feel his arm against her own. She wonders if he is going to push her like Stafford would or drag her away, like her mother. But he just stands there by her side. “Then she will fight for the Lannisters.”
“And tear their hearts out!” Joanna feels something in her chest swell at the thought of battle, of all the colours of her story books being splashed out and spread across a battlefield, with knights and captains and heroes wrapped in crimson and gold, giving their lives. I'm a lioness.
When she turns her head to look at her cousin she sees that he’s smiling, so she smiles too.)
two
The dead weight of summer is still slumped over their shoulders as the autumn leaves burn red and yellow that year when Joanna has a long string of suitors writing to her father, asking for her hand.
Lesser lords, most of them, he tells her. No proper proposals, nothing that she has to consider.
“People care so little for form and correctness, these days,” he complains, pursing his lips.
In a fortnight, Stafford is going to be wed to Lady Lendra of House Lefford and their castle is burning with preparations for it. Already their halls smell of harvests and flowers, the fragrances of roasted apples and salted ham and boar and spicy, buttered mushrooms mingling together with the lingering heat in the air. Lannisters and Leffords will arrive, respects will be paid, dances will be danced and bonds forged and reinvented as the feast approaches and ends. She wonders if Stafford is pleased with his bride. She wonders, too, if it has ever occurred to him to protest against anything. He is such a meek boy, she has heard her father say to her mother more than once. If he only had a little of his sister’s fire - and she had a little less.
“Lady Lendra has a brother,” Joanna's mother lets slip, her voice deceptively calm.
“I'm certain she is thrilled beyond belief about it.” Joanna stares at her hands; the skin is darkened from the sun, she has a few scabs from the garden and from needlework. “Having a brother, I mean.”
Her mother sighs. “Leo Lefford is heir to Golden Tooth and still unwed.”
“A most appropriate match,” her father adds. There's an edge to his voice that she hasn't heard before and it saddens her, leaves a trace of worry behind. She wishes no shame on her house, no troubles burdening her mother and father, but it seems at times as though her incongruous behaviour is a secret fluttering under her skin, something that is beyond out of her control and as seamless a motion as breathing.
“I shall wear my finest dress,” Joanna promises, thinking of the lioness in chains as she leaves the room.
* * *
At the feast, she forgets every promise and good intention she has ever possessed.
At the feast, her eyes seek Tywin's over the table and after that nothing else will hold her attention.
“The Tooth is the key to the Westerlands,” Lord Lefford says stiffly; she wonders if he recites from a history book or if he is truly this dull. For most of the feast he has been by her side, a large and sour presence, throwing empty phrases of courtesy her way. “One cannot take the lands beyond the Tooth without the Tooth.”
“Unless one marches around it,” Joanna says, throwing Tywin a quick grin. He smirks into his goblet of wine but says nothing. “Or defeats it.”
Lord Lefford scoffs loudly. “It is not done, my lady.”
”It has been done, my lord.” She bites down on her lip when she sees the irritable frown on his face, thinking forgive me father, but he is impossible.
At the feast, Joanna suffers gracelessly until she finally kicks her cousin's legs under the table and is excused and liberated by way of being asked to dance.
The following morning her father announces that Joanna is to accompany her lord uncle to King's Landing shortly to wait on Princess Rhaella Targaryen.
Perhaps it's meant to be a punishment, but it sings in her blood as the sweetest of releases all the same.
( Tywin sees her from the bottom of the stairs before she notices him. He's a man grown now, nothing soft or childlike in his face, the shadows of the little boy forever gone from his eyes, his edges sharpened against the passing years; when she walks towards him, she can feel his gaze on her the entire time and knows she is no longer the girl he once knew.
“You visited when we were children,” she says, and they stand so close, speaking in voices low as whispers as they're looking at the scenario taking place before them. Her brother is tall and handsome in his cloak, his lady wife looks nervous but sweet in her silk dress; Joanna closes her mind to the image of herself in Lady Lendra's place and Lendra's brother's cloak - bearing the wrong colours, the wrong crest, the wrong oaths - wrapped around her own shoulders. I am a lioness.
“Yes, I accompanied my father on a hunting trip.” Tywin turns his head slightly, so they're looking at each other. “We fought with your brother's swords.”
She grins, nodding. “You gave me a scar, did you know?”
Later, when they have escaped the crowd and stands with their backs flat against the outer wall of the castle, Joanna shows the pale crook of a scar on her wrist. She has never learned how to use a sword, even a wooden one. He had not even needed to fight to disarm her.
“Here,” she says, her breath catching in her throat as Tywin's thumb suddenly comes down over the remnant of childhood on her wrist, scrutinizing it the way he scrutinizes everything. To measure its worth.
For the entirety of the long autumn that follows, she will think of the pressure of his fingers against her skin, their invisible marks. )
three
It's a year for weddings.
Under a cloud-heavy sky, cousin Genna is wed to Emmon Frey and Joanna smiles all through the feast, trying to make it seem less dire. Everyone knows it’s an affront to the Lannister’s good name, a mockery of a marriage meant to serve no one but Lord Frey; everyone sits there all the same, joining husband and wife in their feasting.
Joanna looks at Genna, beautiful, clever Genna, then at her lord husband who is thin and pale with stringy brown hair and a voice that barely carries. A shadow, she thinks. He is nothing but a shadow. Beside him, Tywin is tall and broad of shoulder, his face sun-kissed, his golden hair seeming even more golden in the light of the candles; when he speaks, his voice cuts through the room, clear and sharp. Two men have never been less alike and for half a heartbeat, Joanna pities Emmon Frey.
* * *
The sun is scorching on the day of Prince Aeyrys and Princess Rhaella's union, held at the Red Keep and witnessed by a bustling, cheering city.
At the feast, Aerys gets too drunk too quickly and plants an open-mouthed kiss on Joanna’s cheek before she pulls away. He smells of wine and something oddly sharp, like metals or blood. Madness runs in the lot of them, she knows. Madness and passion and jealousy. The Red Keep has been her home for many months now, she knows its secrets. It’s in the walls here, a creeping, quiet sort of terror that never sleeps. It’s in the princess’s gaze sometimes, too, when Joanna sits with her in the gardens long past the sun has set and the chill prickles their skin. I do not wish to be alone with my brother tonight. It’s in her fragile laughter, in her words that never seem to grow strong enough to take actual form, but falls flat to the ground beneath the princess’s delicate feet.
It’s in Aerys as he stumbles over the boundaries and reaches for what he cannot have but - like the child he will always be, a bright, burning, brilliant child - aims for anyway.
“I meant no offence, my lady,” he says, his gaze lowered.
“Then be so kind and avoid kissing me in the future,” she replies, her words cold as ice.
Another feast, sitting too near, his breath sour against the curve of her neck as he assures her: “If it did not go against tradition and my father's wish, I would have married you.”
No, you wouldn’t have, Joanna thinks but knows better than to say it out loud.
( Once, they walk in the garden within the Keep, impudently unsupervised but never alone. They are never alone.
“It’s good to enjoy the company of a Lannister again,” she says, glancing up at her cousin who looks at something straight ahead, seeing nothing else. It stabs at her vanity; she has put on a new dress for this visit, spent entirely too long cooped up with maids tending to her hair. Without thinking, her hand travels up to her neck, fidgeting with a loose strand of her unmanageable golden curls. Your lion’s mane, the Princess says sometimes, eyes widening as Joanna lets her run her hands through it.
Tywin holds up a thick branch from a silver oak fern that hangs down in front of them, almost blocking their path.
“Have you tired of the legendary charms of the Targaryens?” he asks, as Joanna slips under his outstretched arm, smiling at him from the other side.
“I don’t mislike it here," she says, because she doesn't, not when she thinks of the Fair Isle and the Golden Tooth, sees herself wrapped in blue and yellow and it is not done, my lady. "But I have had enough of alchemy and wildfire and bloody court life.”
“Unsurprising,” Tywin says, a trace of sympathy running through his voice.
Take me with you.
One of the highest-ranking servants of Aerys's is said to be half-mad and a drunkard, too. Joanna has spent countless nights in his company, listening to his scattered thoughts on warfare, cartography and the unreliable historians and she’s refrained from engaging in a debate, has held her tongue and controlled her temper and sat with them, more ladylike than she has ever been before in her life. Instead of mocking the poor fool, she has observed small details in his clothes, pondered the quality of cloth and embellishments to keep her words reined in.
And she has had no one to share it with, this oddness of her new life, so she tells Tywin.
“I even sat there quiet and smiling, through a whole speech on how it would be possible to conquer the world with an army of alchemists and dragonriders.” She chuckles.
“What did this inspiring strategy consist of then?” Tywin looks amused.
Joanna leans forward and reveals the battle strategy in a mock-whisper, still giddy from the much longed-for conversation and when she is done, he laughs - a brief, unexpected laugh that cuts into the very air between them, warmer than the sun. It feels like a triumph to hear the sound, force it out of his bone-hard composure; it feels like a secret of sorts, binding them to each other.
“You should laugh more often, dear cousin,” Joanna says, softly.
Their hands rest side by side on the bench, palms stretched against its planes, fingers sprawling. If she moves her hand, if she shifts just a little in her seat, they will be skin to skin. The thought reels in her. The thought of being touched - or better yet kissed - by Tywin is like a red-hot flare in her blood lately, a dangerous thought she pushes aside because she is a Lannister and she knows her duties like he knows his own. One day her cousin will be powerful, one day he will yield power through letters and steel. But here, in this garden, on this bench at the Red Keep, they share the same ill-suited deficiency, their mutual powerlessness like deep hollows in the space between them.
“My father intends to increase his power over the North,” Tywin says suddenly, as though he can read her mind. His voice is low, harsh. “It’s sheer folly, of course. They will never agree. But he is set on offering me to a Stark or a Tully.”
“Oh,” Joanna replies because she has no other words for it. )
four
The following year, princess Rhaella is crowned Queen and Joanna is called back to her duties as a lady of house Lannister.
This is the year of rebellions.
Seemingly without effort, Tywin smashes the Tarbecks and the Reynes and with them the feeble hope that offering Joanna to the youngest Tarbeck would strengthen the relationship between lords and lieges. She feels lighter, somehow, hearing the news that her cousin has hanged every last member of the family. It saves her the trouble of wriggling out of the chains.
“This boy”, her father says about Tywin when he returns with minor wounds and new lines in his face, “he is a commander such as we have never seen before. All enemies of the Lannisters are without hope while he lives and leads our armies.”
“I want to marry him.” The words escape her before she has thought better of it. Tywin has refused a marriage of his own this year, she knows. Nobody important, rumour has it. “I’m a Lannister and I want to remain a Lannister.”
“I agree that you belong in our house.” Her father pauses, then he lets it out, the words taking the shape of a sigh: “My brother has his mind set on Kevan for you.”
Joanna winces, thinking of Kevan's slight stutter, how he is clumsy and thoughtful and still carries around his hollow boy's dreams. He dreams of being in the Kingsguard, serving for life. He dreams of being knighted. He dreams of dragons and tourneys and battles. He wants to be a hero but he cannot see that a hero's soul is hard as steel, hammered out in blood and violence and paid for ten times over with enemy lives.
Kevan is kind and fair; he doesn't have the heart for heroism.
“No.” She shakes her head. “Cousin Kevan is afraid to look me in the eyes. I can't marry him.”
Her father smiles, almost despite himself, it seems. “I cannot hold it against him, Joanna. You do not make it easy for your suitors, do you?”
“Cousin Tywin doesn't mind.”
“I'm most certain he doesn't.” Her father's smile vanishes somewhat. “That boy does not fear anything.”
He doesn't like to lose, Joanna thinks. Not even at chess, especially not to me because I tease him about it; he fights with a Valyrian sword and a small dagger; he thinks Genna is smarter than all of his brothers. Once, a long time ago when I dared him to, he kissed a servant girl and I hoped he would kiss me too, but he never did. He is afraid he won't be able to restore the former glory of Casterly Rock, that he will become just like his father and that his efforts will amount to nothing. He can't stand the sound of people laughing behind his back; he knows he can't stop at anything to silence the crowd; he doesn't want to marry a Tully or a Stark even for strategic purposes. He gets freckles in the sun and I could never forgive you if you keep me from him.
“No,” she says.
“Kevan is a good lad, Joanna. He might not be as impressive as his brother-“
“No.”
“Joanna.” Her father stands up, eyes flaring. “This is not a matter of debate.”
She swallows. “You can tell my lord uncle that it's Tywin I wish to marry. It has to be him. There is no one else.”
And then she leaves the room, the sound of her own steps thundering in her ears.
( It happens that she dreams of Casterly Rock with its winding corridors. That she dreams of the stifled sounds of secrets and lost hope, the echoes of whispers long gone and the muffled lives of those still living. All the sounds there that are woven together to a tapestry above their heads; Joanna dreams of pressing her cheek against the cool flats of the walls, her fingers trying to reach over everything she has always dreamed and feared.
And when she wakes up all that remains is a biting longing in her throat. )
five
The music endures in the cold air out on the balcony, seems to fly from star to star and scatter very slowly in the night.
There’s a feast at Casterly Rock for no apparent reason other than Lord Tytos wanting one. He has grown worse, Joanna thinks, the man she remembers faintly as big and strong has transformed into a fat, whine-smelling old man who paws every wench in sight and has had every whore in Lannisport stumbling out of the Lion's Mouth in the middle of the night.
She leaves the loud, boiling hall as Kevan attempts to prize his lord father and move him away to his bedchamber, with the assistance of his younger brothers. As she slips past them, Lord Tytos screams for his mistress. My father would be ashamed, Joanna thinks, glad he had not insisted on joining her for this visit.
Tywin stands on the highest balcony, looking stouter than the walls of their ancestry.
She walks up beside him, leans against the bannister so they're both looking down on the calm sea below. Standing here, she is reminded again of how large the fortress is. How you could spend a lifetime here without discovering all the rooms or unearthing all the mysteries. Obscure memories of generations that have forgotten themselves, proud names and magnificent deeds that should not be allowed to vanish. Casterly Rock has been carved out of eternity. The stones remember everything.
“You will have to forgive me for leaving you alone in there.” He is correct at the strangest of times, Joanna observes, holding back the impulse to chuckle and the desire to touch him, pull him close. “I had no desire to hear the singer's appalling rendition of The Dance of the Dragons yet again.”
Joanna looks at her hands in the moonlight. The golden bracelet she has worn since her twelfth name day burns darkly but it's cool under her fingertips as she traces its patterns.
“Gerion engaged me in a long conversation about his plans for the future,” she says, smiling to herself. Her youngest cousin wants to be an adventurer, sail the seas and find Brightroar.
Judging by Tywin's expression, the plans are known to him as well.
“Its a fool's quest. But he's young yet. He is still under the impression that he can run from his duties.”
Unlike you, you were born dutiful, she thinks, but doesn't say.
“One could have worse duties than Casterly Rock,” she says instead.
She counts the heartbeats during the silence that follows.
“Casterly Rock is on the verge of ruin.” He gives her a long, searching glance, and seems to be weighing his words carefully. This is an important moment. She knows this despite feeling the wine she's had tingle at the back of her head, despite the cold night air that is rough against her bare arms. It will matter in the years to come, what they say now. “When I assume my duties - formally, I mean-” a dark shadow crosses his face and Joanna thinks of Lord Tytos's hand cupping his mistress's breasts in front of everyone, hears the laughter rise higher and higher. “When I take over, I will restore it. I'll do everything it takes. Anything.”
Yes, she thinks. Yes. Fill all the fractured lies and holes, all the empty promises and past grievances. Silence the laughter and light the Hall of Heroes again.
There is a hunger behind his words, a steady strength of his heart that has no room for hollow dreams, no place for gentleness or follies. She knows what he is, because he has shown her. She knows where his lines are drawn, how far his ambition reaches. He is the one on which they’ve staked all of their stubbornness, all of their pride, all of their will. There’s a cruelty in that burden, a chain heavier than anything she can image; she wants to unburden him, share his fate, place them both on the right side of this vastness.
There is something untamed in her and he sees it, he recognises it and for this remarkable thing alone she would follow him anywhere. She is as fierce as he is, as bold as the dreams that have been twisted and stretched thin over generations, as reckless as a lioness struggling to regain her pride. Hers is not a gentle heart, she would not dare to give it to a lesser man.
We are lions, you and I.
“I know.”
"No one will laugh at our children.” He lowers his voice, darkens it. “I swear it.”
He catches himself, but it’s already said, the words have fallen and he recovers immediately, rearranging his composure. But it’s the crack in it, that unguarded breath outside time that shivers through her like a ghost-wind.
“You have not yet accepted my proposal.” He says it confidently, expecting a yes with such unfaltering resolution that something shifts in her, rendering her breathless.
I wanted to ride to you in the middle of the night but reason and pride got the better of me, dearest cousin.
“No.” She gives a sudden laugh. “I could not write a letter. I tried, but... It didn’t seem proper to accept such a thing in a letter.”
She has thought other boys - other men - handsome in the past, has seen their features before her in the dark of her bedchamber, willed her hands to belong to them. Now she cannot seem to recall why, as though this moment has swallowed all of her history and replaced it with the memory of Tywin before her now, looking into her eyes, his gaze anchored in hers in a way that could unseat her balance if she let it.
The expression on his face softens, and his voice with it. “I am glad of it, Joanna.”
Joanna nods. “We have much to do, you and I. Your duty is my duty now.”
Those are correct words - expected words - but they are shaped out of honesty, not obligation and she has never meant something quite as passionately before. She reaches for his hand, for him, reaches up to place a kiss on his cheek and as she is about to pull away, Tywin suddenly kisses her properly on the mouth, one of his hands moving to the small of her back to gather her harder against him. Joanna closes her eyes.
”You belong here,” he says as she slides her arm under his own outside the boisterous feast hall once they have reassembled themselves enough to return to it, and she glances at him, thinking of all the feasts she will attend by his side, all the times she will turn her head slightly to find him right there.
“Yes, I’ve always thought so.” She offers him a smile - wide and relieved - and he hesitates for a brief moment before he returns it.
Then his arm comes around her waist and she feels the rhythm of his heartbeats against her own; and then, as they make their way out on the floor, holding on to each other with hands no longer empty, Joanna allows herself to finally fall in love.