Fic: A Jape on All Your Houses
Title: A Jape on All Your Houses
Authors:
mrstater &
presocratic
Illustrator:
sephystabbity
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Tyrion Lannister/Sansa Stark, Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Rating & Warnings: PG for drunkenness
Format & Word Count: one-shot, 4842 words
Summary: A few drinks help Tyrion, Sansa, and Daenerys see the lighter sides of Houses Lannister, Stark, and Targaryen. Featuring bonus Mormonts!
Authors' Notes: Written as part of House Tyrell's Epic Collaboration of Epic at valyrian_forged.
A Jape on All Your Houses
King Jon’s nameday tourney had been a grand affair, though the king himself had hardly looked thrilled to be there; his face may well have been carved from ice for all the interest he showed, except in those moments when he graced Sansa with an open smile. Green knights from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms rode in the lists, their banners great ribbons of color rippling overhead, while girls swathed in cloth of gold and silk swooned at the sight of them. Why, one could almost forget the entire kingdom had been torn apart and laid to bloody ruin by a walking plague of the undead nary a decade before. Upon his first whiff of the field, Tyrion had sighed exaggeratedly and wrinkled his nose - what there was left of it. The smell of horseshit was an unfortunately familiar one, though the singers rarely mentioned it. Whatever the singers had left out of their descriptions, the only tourneys Tyrion had ever had any interest in attending were those in which his brother rode--and Jaime was no longer of an age to play at war, even if he had been so inclined.
Yes, they were all older than when the war had started, Tyrion reflected, digging his fingers into his hip where it had started to ache as he basked in the plush crimson decor of the Red Keep. (Strange that Jon had not ordered it changed, he thought. Gray had always suited the boy best. But perhaps not the man.) Rarely had he been so grateful for a seat; he'd had to stand to view the proceedings at the tourney, and with each year that passed, standing for any period of time pained him more. But Sansa had enjoyed the day, and for that reason alone Tyrion couldn't curse it too harshly. For all that his wife’s dreams of knightly valor had been brutally stolen from her--not least of all by the hands of his own family--she retained a love for tradition and fanfare, now that she could enjoy it unabashedly. It was only in watching her that Tyrion remembered what it was to be young.
There were few things Tyrion enjoyed more than seeing his lady wife truly happy--her cheeks flushed prettily, and her eyes, Tully blue like her mother’s, Tyrion remembered, lit with intelligence. (Despite Sansa’s protestations to the contrary, her intuition belied an acumen Tyrion had come to respect almost immediately.) She positively glowed, especially on those occasions when she laughed--occasions that were becoming less rare by the day. This afternoon, Tyrion had caught her laughing whole-heartedly once, when a knight was unhorsed rather violently, landing directly in a pile of shit, cursing the whole way down. There had been something sounding like a hiccup, and Tyrion had turned to Sansa to find her with her hands clasped over her mouth, looking horrified that she'd allowed such an unladylike sound to escape her lips. But Tyrion had simply pulled her hands away and pressed a quick kiss to her palm, assuring her that this was a sound he longed to hear more often.
Each time Sansa laughed, Tyrion considered it a personal victory.
Tyrion glanced over at the Princess Daenerys, who resembled one of her dragons sunning itself on a pile of brightly stitched pillows. She'd let her hair down, and it spilled out across her back, shining like spun silver in the candlelight. For her part, she seemed to have enjoyed the festivities just as much as his lady wife, though she did so more reservedly, her mouth curving up slightly at the corners whenever her great bear Jorah Mormont had placed his against the small of her back. Such small acts of intimacy. Now, in the privacy of this space Tyrion had secured for the four of them, Jorah stared at her openly. For such a prickly man--and Tyrion had learned of his prickliness the hard way, he thought, running his tongue along the space where one of his teeth had been knocked out by the man himself--Jorah certainly did little enough to disguise the love-sick adoration on his face.
There had been a time Tyrion when would have called it disgusting, made a crude joke about imagining the dragon princess naked perhaps. But now that Tyrion was himself something of a love-sick fool (he sometimes caught himself staring at Sansa so long and disbelievingly that she took notice and asked him to stop making her self-conscious), he could barely fault the man. After all, Daenerys hardly seemed to mind her own husband's public attentions, though it may have been that she was simply too drunk to care.
The same could not have been said for their female companions as they made their way back from the tourney field, Tyrion and Jorah weaving dangerously between them. As always, wine and ale had flowed freely at the tourney, and if there was one thing Tyrion could say for Jorah, it was that he was a man who never turned down an opportunity for a hearty drink. Tyrion respected that. He respected it so much that he'd matched the much larger man drink for drink until the both of them were laughing raucously and sloshing mead over the sides of their goblets onto the hastily erected balconies beneath their feet, as well as the hems of skirts unlucky enough to be in their paths.
The cerulean embroidered gown Tyrion had given Sansa for her last nameday would never be the same.
It had been Daenerys' idea to retire to somewhere more... private, when Tyrion had reached out to give Sansa's backside a little pinch, and she'd responded by smacking him across the face, albeit not nearly as soundly as Tyrion knew her to be capable of. Now that the four of them were squirreled away in a part of the Red Keep Tyrion only knew of thanks to his frequent rendezvous with Varys during his time as Hand (and wasn't it funny, Tyrion thought, that he didn't miss the title at all), Daenerys and Sansa had taken to drinking as well. Perhaps because, as it was said, if you couldn't beat them, it was better to join them--and Tyrion and his burly companion were not about to be beaten. At least not until they drank themselves into unconsciousness.
Now Jorah was waving his goblet around, using it to gesture, as he made a jape at Tyrion’s expense-- something like, “And what a Hand you must have made.” Truth be told, Tyrion wasn't entirely invested in the conversation, busy as he was nuzzling Sansa’s neck, but it was at that exact moment that his subconscious decided he should be offended. He needed to defend his name, dammit! He was a Lannister, after all--if a very drunk and small one.
"My dear Jorah," he began. It sounded like he was shouting, and Tyrion didn't understand why. He was talking at a perfectly normal volume. "I'll have you know that I'm hardly the first of the Lannister clan to serve as Hand to the King. Ours is a house known for its great ingenuity and resourcefulness!”
He took a large swallow of wine--something sour, an indication that summer was not yet upon them, though the sun broke through the sky’s blanket of grey more days than not as of late--swishing it around in his mouth before continuing.
“Why, Lann the Clever is said to have swindled the Rock away from the very family from whom it took its name with nothing more than his wits. It seems his moniker was well-earned. To say nothing of my own dear father, Hand to two kings.”
There had been a time when making such a quip would have been impossible for the bile that rose in his throat at the merest mention of Tywin Lannister--and there was still an edge of bitterness to his voice, but he tempered it with a sardonic touch to his breast, just above his heart.
There was a snort from Sansa, and Tyrion fixed her with an expectant look, knowing full well that she was about to say something irreverent.
“Yours is a house known for its dubious loyalty and an overstated sense of self-importance, you mean,” she told him, one side of her lips quirking upward. “The north was never half so much trouble before a certain incorrigible Westerlander found his way there.”
For a moment Tyrion could only let his mouth hang open, his wit somewhat slowed by drink; then he flicked Sansa lightly in a spot on her side that he knew to be ticklish and, watching her squirm, whispered against her ear, “Perhaps you should call me Tyrion the Incorrigible, then.”
It was a name he would wear with pride; if he couldn’t outwit her... well, he had other talents.
“Well, you are," Sansa chided. The wine had blood rushing hot and fast to her cheeks, while everything around her seemed just a bit slowed. It wasn’t the first time she’d been drunk--how could she have not learned to enjoy a good glass of wine or two with Tyrion as her husband?--but every time the feeling came on her as a surprise. One moment she was sipping daintily at her goblet and making little noises of approval, and the next she was tripping over her words and shooting glares at her husband for neglecting to tell her how many times he’d refilled their flagon.
Sansa gave Tyrion a playful little push, nearly toppling him backwards in his drunken state, but she let her warm hands linger against his chest after she did so, steadying him. Tyrion the Incorrigible wasn’t an entirely inaccurate name, she thought to herself, imagining the various ways she might undo him later this evening, when they were alone in the quarters her bastard-brother-turned-king (except he’d never been her bastard brother at all, really, a voice in the back of her mind reminded her) had allotted them. The thought made her cheeks burn even more hotly, and she ducked her head against Tyrion’s shoulder. Tyrion the Incorrigible. Yes, just as the North had never been so troublesome before it found Tyrion Lannister its liege lord, neither had Sansa’s ability to control herself. He was a bad influence all the way around, it seemed.
But the castle at Winterfell, torn to ruins as it had been, then raised again stone by stone under the watchful eyes of its lord and lady, had never felt warmer than it did with him sleeping at her side. The hot spring waters coursing through Winterfell’s stone walls held nothing on the way Tyrion’s back felt pressed against hers when she woke in the night, heart pounding sometimes, even still--though it happened less and less now. It made her smile to think that Tyrion’s comfortable presence might be rebuilding the scattered pieces of Sansa Stark, lost so long to her--once a fawn crouched in the grass amongst lions and then Petyr’s bastard daughter and then no one at all--the same way her own presence had set the North to rights, even in the face of a winter that had, at the time, felt never-ending.
For the first time in her memory, Sansa felt like herself.
Tyrion had been made for the North, Sansa thought in secret, though she knew better than to say so out loud. It still pained her husband that Casterly Rock had never been his, not truly--his father had made it known he’d never been wanted there, and some ghosts, Sansa knew all too well, were not easily left behind. (But it was easier when one didn’t walk the same halls they did.) So when Jon Snow--no, King Jon, Jon Targaryen, as much as a Targaryen as this silver-haired princess Sansa had come to call her closest confidant--had named Tyrion heir to all Lannister holdings, Sansa had begged him to bequeath them to his brother Jaime, pardoned by Tyrion’s own request. (Sansa had once told Jaime how lucky he was that the king loved her like a sister, and Tyrion had been unable to compose himself for at least ten minutes, though Sansa hadn’t known why at the time.)
They were happier at Winterfell, Sansa was sure of it. To return there had been the only wish she’d known since she was but a girl of eleven, and there was no one left of her family to rebuild it (save Bran, who had all but left behind their world for one of wolves and warging). There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Surely Tyrion was no Stark--nothing like her brother Robb had been, or even the boy she had known as Jon Snow--but her people had taken to him just the same, inspired by Sansa’s own acceptance. The cold did him no favors, Sansa had to admit, leaving his joints aching so fiercely there were mornings he could scarcely get out of bed. But she didn’t mind this as much as she thought she might. On those bitter mornings, the two of them sometimes lounged about in their quarters, going over accounts and ledgers and requests from the smallfolk amongst their mountain of blankets and furs, stopping intermittently to kiss and tease.
She teased him now. “While your ancestors busied themselves stealing the architectural achievements of others, mine were erecting the very Wall that helped stop us all from becoming nothing more than fodder for the Others.”
Sansa shivered unconsciously, even this near to the warmth of the brazier. It had been meant as a quip, but the Others were hardly a joking matter. (Briefly, she wondered if Daenerys ever felt a hand of ice close around her spine when she spoke of the Others. Somehow, Sansa thought not.)
“And I should scarcely need to remind you that Brandon is actually responsible for building his family’s own castle,” she added. “More than can be said for your family’s founder. If I can call you Tyrion the Incorrigible, perhaps I should take to calling him Lann the Lazy. Hopefully it will catch on.”
There was a snort of derision from Jorah, and even Daenerys chuckled a little. Pleased with herself, Sansa washed down her victory with another swallow of wine, then pecked Tyrion lightly on his scarred lips. She could at least allow him to lose gracefully.
The kiss appeared to have appeased him for only a moment before he pulled a face and set his drink aside.
“Come off it, Sansa,” her husband complained, his inflection plainly implying you’ve hurt my delicate pride, you know, though he was snuggling into her side even as he said it. “House Stark may know its way around bricks and mortar, but there’s something to be said for the ability to build a solid foundation on one’s personal charm and charisma and wit.”
Tyrion was slurring--the word charisma sounded more like charithma--but Sansa thought better than to say anything of it, instead letting her lips curve up silently and tucking the memory away for further use.
“Your house words might be Winter Is Coming," he went on, "but now that winter has come and gone, I’d consider a change. Boredom Is Coming would at least be truthful. Your ancestors were so bored they talked to trees, Sansa. Trees! I don’t know about you, but I’ve never gotten the most scintillating of conversation from a tree.” He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Maybe they only talk to northerners.”
Sansa pursed her lips in a feigned pout; there wasn‘t much she could say to argue the point. Her brother Bran talked to trees; according to him, they had much to say about nature and the gods and the way it was all connected, but for Sansa, her father’s heart trees had always remained ominously silent, no matter if she’d knelt praying in front of them until her knees ached.
With a gentle smile--the way any emotion twisted her husband’s ruined face had once masked all sign of tenderness, but Sansa could recognize it easily enough after all this time--Tyrion took Sansa’s hands between his own and massaged the back of her knuckles, taking the sting from his words. “Not that you’ve ever been the slightest bit boring, sweetling,” he soothed. “The two of us have brought some much needed life to the North, I think.”
Sansa could do nothing but agree with that; Winterfell had seen enough death. Now if she could only give it a son... but there was time for that. She was young, still, and Tyrion rarely turned down an opportunity to try.
Tyrion continued the slow dance of his fingers over her knuckles as he turned his attention to Daenerys and her husband, equally drunk and affectionate, seated on the room’s remaining chaise. Jorah might have frightened Sansa as a girl--he was so gruff--but she was a woman grown now, and he spoke so kindly to Daenerys that Sansa could see him as nothing but her adoring husband. (Tyrion sometimes complained of an incident in which Jorah had knocked one of his teeth loose, but Sansa always responded that Tyrion gave most everyone he met ample reason to strike him at least once.)
“I’d say we’ve all done our families some good in our own small ways,” Tyrion was saying, both eyes black and glittering warmly in the candlelight. His emphasis on the word small had Sansa rolling her eyes. “The lovely princess Daenerys not only by joining us on this side of the Narrow Sea and taking back her family’s rightful seat, but by marrying outside her own family line, thank the Seven. I’ve had enough of incest for twenty lifetimes; let it never be said that I’m a naysayer of tradition, but that’s one practice I’m happy to see die.”
"Careful there, Imp," said Jorah, pushing himself upright on the settee and dragging his gaze--if not his hand--from his young wife's lovely white breasts that swelled above the bodice of her gown of lavender silk and Myrish lace. "Best not besmirk my lady wife's noble house."
He felt the lines of his face tug downward in a frown; something of his words had not sounded quite right to him, and he guessed it wasn't just his current state of intoxication playing tricks on his ears, given how Lady Sansa's rather unladylike snort and the quiver of his own wife's chest beneath his palm indicated otherwise. Tyrion's confirmation was less subtle, accompanied by a guffaw that sent a shower of wine over Sansa's already ruined gown. (A sight which made Jorah's frown deepen; a Lannister could not only always pay his debts, but was endowed with wealth enough to keep his wife so attired as to never have to see her in the same gown twice, as well. He swung his gaze back to Daenerys, and watched his own slightly blurred fingers paw at her lace-trimmed neckline, and was heartened where once such a thought about his inability to provide lavishly for another lady would have put him in his cups for an entirely different reason than joy; he liked this gown, which she had worn before, and he especially liked taking it off her. It would be a shame never to get to do that again.)
"Forgive me, my Lord of Mormont," said Tyrion, his maimed face twisting into an expression of mockery which Jorah thought ugly until he remembered the shameful mark on his own cheek that made him even uglier. Though that had not cost either of them the love of the fairest two ladies in the realm. "I do so hate to jape at your expense--"
"When did you acquire that aversion?"
"I only want to be sure I heard you correctly so I can indulge in more of this fine Arbor gold. Did you just tell me not to besmirk your lady wife's noble house?"
The ladies were giggling outright now--at what Jorah was not at all certain, their laughter ringing so loudly in his head that it seemed impossible that it should come from only two of them (and the room was spinning so around him that he could not be sure of the quick count he made of its occupants). He sat up straighter--he hoped--and glowered at the Imp.
"I did, my little Lordling of Lannister," he said, remembering what he had meant to say before he had become distracted by Daenerys' gown and the thought of removing it. "Better that the Targaryens married each other to keep the bloodlines pure than do as my own kin did and breed with bears."
"Jorah," came Daenerys' voice, very soft, but still accompanied by laughter, and she tugged at his sleeve. Whatever else she said was swallowed up by Tyrion's roar.
"Oh, that's true, is it?" he said. "Small wonder your lord father took the Black and the vow of celibacy, if he'd already endured the cold bedfellow of a wife who preferred the company of bears. Though frankly, Jorah, I'm surprised the Ladies Mormont should be so picky when the men are all black and brown and covered with--"
"It cannot be truth," interjected Sansa with the grace she could have only acquired from her lady mother, before Tyrion could get very far in the bawdy song which had once caused the two men such mortification. "House Mormont has always been regarded as an old and honorable house by their Stark liege-lords. If they committed the abomination of…" Her face turned a little red, though it could have been the spirits and the uncertain light of the candles in the crimson-draped quarters. "…of what you speak, then surely when my ancestor King Rodrik won Bear Island in a wrestling match, he would not have given it over to the Mormonts as reward for centuries of loyal service."
Jorah sank down beside Daenerys on the divan, pillowing his head upon her bosom. "The Starks give," he muttered with a sigh, "and the Starks take away."
"And give back," Tyrion reminded him, not ungently.
It was true enough; when King Jon--revealed to be the bastard son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen--had sat the Iron Throne, he gave Jorah his pardon and restored his lands and title as a boon to his aunt Daenerys. Jorah kept Longclaw but had not hesitated to return the ruling of the island to Maege and her daughters the instant the raven landed in the rookery of his keep bearing the message written in the Princess' own hand, begging him to join her in Dragonstone for none of her lordly suitors pleased her as well as her bear. He'd grown accustomed to warmer climes during his exile, but most especially to the heat of dragonfire.
Jorah's fingers curled over Daenerys' breast, and her own hand settled over his--he thought, at first, to remove it from such an intimate public caress; but when she clasped it there, he sighed, again, happily.
"That Stark, at least, did not take my queen from me."
"Though he might have done," Tyrion said, "swooping down on King's Landing with his half-brother Aegon and their aunt-wife Daenerys like Aegon the conqueror and his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys."
"You see, Lord Jorah?" said Sansa, drinking from the goblet which she had not noticed her husband had refilled yet again, fixing--or trying to fix--Jorah with eyes that were even brighter blue than normal from the drink. It had to be the drink; no Stark had ever dreamed of looking cheeky. Then again, no Stark had ever been married to a Lannister. "Again you have a Stark to thank, for if my lord father had not raised Jon with Stark practicality, he might have harbored more romantic notions about keeping the ways of his Targaryen forebears."
Tyrion snorted into his cup. "Because nothing says romance like marrying your aunt and sharing her with your half-brother."
"It was not for romance that Aegon married his sisters," said Dany, reluctantly nudging Jorah to lift his head from her bosom so that she might sit in a more dignified manner, befitting a princess and the heir to the Iron Throne until King Jon produced a son. Which he seemed in no hurry to do, that direwolf of his more often at his side than any lady, or so went the rumors from court.
"I know, I know," Tyrion said with a wave of his hand. "Bloodlines and all that. I will admit that I see the logic in a man taking two wives to get with child, but what good could come of a woman taking two husbands? Like as not, Aegon and Jon would only have started another bloody war over who was the father of the little products of incest."
"Husband!" cried Sansa, though it was the hiccough accompanying the rebuke that deepened her flush of mortification.
Dany looked at her own husband, expecting him to leap once more to defend her, but the only sound her fierce bear made was a deep chuckle that rumbled out of his broad chest and quite pleasantly through her, so that even she had to giggle at Tyrion's well-observed japes at her family's expense.
"There was little enough chance of that, was there," she said, "when it was Aegon's untimely demise that gave Jon his crown?"
The laughter in the room died, suddenly--much as Aegon had, Dany thought, which started her giggling again, most inappropriately. But that had been years ago, and her grief for her nephew had not been great even then, for he had reminded her in some ways of Viserys, particularly in the manner in which he expected her to believe at once that he was Rhaegar's supposed dead son, and that he had not asked so much as demanded she be his queen. Drogon had not liked that, and Aegon, like Viserys, had proved not to be a true dragon.
"Surely it must pain you, Daenerys," said Tyrion, his green eye twinkling from beneath a cocked eyebrow, "to think that you gave up being the first woman whom her children could call mama or great-auntie."
At that, Dany's giggles lodged in her throat, though she would not let the smile leave her lips even as the ache in her chest made her eyes well. She lowered them to her wine goblet as she brought it to her lips to swallow the dregs at the bottom. Tyrion did not aim to wound her; he, like everyone in the kingdom, was ignorant of her true reason for declining King Jon's more gracious and humble offer of his hand: that she would never bring forth any children in blood, but would only be mother to the three she had borne in fire.
Jorah did, however; he'd been there with her when the maegi Mirri Maz Duur made her prophesy over Dany's womb, and he was here now, after years of fruitless relations, resting his large hand on her flat belly which would never swell with his own heir.
"Any man not blessed to have Daenerys for his wife would have to take two," he said, "to find her equal."
On the other bench, Dany heard Sansa sigh, even as Tyrion muttered something into his cup about a romantic old bear. Smiling, she brushed her fingers across Jorah's ruined cheek, drawing him in for a brief kiss.
"Yes," she said. "I am Visenya and Rhaenys. I rode into Westeros on the back of my Drogon with braided hair and the armor of a warrior. And when I demanded the swords of mine enemies, they submitted. Yet after my conquest I let down my hair and danced and laughed."
"At the Imp, mostly," said Jorah.
"Well, it would have to be me, wouldn't it?" Tyrion fired back. "You may be a romantic old bear, but you're not funny."
Jorah glowered a bit at that, so Dany kissed him again. "But your House is funny, husband. All our Houses are."
"I'll drink to that!" Tyrion said, reaching for the wine decanter on the table between their couches, but misjudging the distance and instead sending it crashing to the floor. "Or I would, if I weren't too drunk to pour the wine."
"Except House Stark," Sansa said, belatedly. And Dany thought she pronounced House Stark rather more like how shark. "There must never be a laughing Stark in Winterfell."
"Did you say a laughing stock in Winterfell?" Dany giggled.
"Just you wait, sweetling," said Tyrion, patting his wife's hand. "Another decade of marriage to me, and your words will be Laughter Is Coming."
He glanced at Jorah, who said, uncertainly, "Here We Laugh?"
"Not to be confused with Hear Me Laugh," Tyrion said, chuckling.
Dany clapped her hands. "Fire and Laughter?"
"It's better than Laughter and Blood." Tyrion raised his empty goblet. "To our old and most hilarious houses!"
Fin
-----
Authors:
mrstater &
presocratic
Illustrator:
sephystabbity
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire
Characters & Pairings: Tyrion Lannister/Sansa Stark, Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Rating & Warnings: PG for drunkenness
Format & Word Count: one-shot, 4842 words
Summary: A few drinks help Tyrion, Sansa, and Daenerys see the lighter sides of Houses Lannister, Stark, and Targaryen. Featuring bonus Mormonts!
Authors' Notes: Written as part of House Tyrell's Epic Collaboration of Epic at valyrian_forged.
A Jape on All Your Houses
King Jon’s nameday tourney had been a grand affair, though the king himself had hardly looked thrilled to be there; his face may well have been carved from ice for all the interest he showed, except in those moments when he graced Sansa with an open smile. Green knights from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms rode in the lists, their banners great ribbons of color rippling overhead, while girls swathed in cloth of gold and silk swooned at the sight of them. Why, one could almost forget the entire kingdom had been torn apart and laid to bloody ruin by a walking plague of the undead nary a decade before. Upon his first whiff of the field, Tyrion had sighed exaggeratedly and wrinkled his nose - what there was left of it. The smell of horseshit was an unfortunately familiar one, though the singers rarely mentioned it. Whatever the singers had left out of their descriptions, the only tourneys Tyrion had ever had any interest in attending were those in which his brother rode--and Jaime was no longer of an age to play at war, even if he had been so inclined.
Yes, they were all older than when the war had started, Tyrion reflected, digging his fingers into his hip where it had started to ache as he basked in the plush crimson decor of the Red Keep. (Strange that Jon had not ordered it changed, he thought. Gray had always suited the boy best. But perhaps not the man.) Rarely had he been so grateful for a seat; he'd had to stand to view the proceedings at the tourney, and with each year that passed, standing for any period of time pained him more. But Sansa had enjoyed the day, and for that reason alone Tyrion couldn't curse it too harshly. For all that his wife’s dreams of knightly valor had been brutally stolen from her--not least of all by the hands of his own family--she retained a love for tradition and fanfare, now that she could enjoy it unabashedly. It was only in watching her that Tyrion remembered what it was to be young.
There were few things Tyrion enjoyed more than seeing his lady wife truly happy--her cheeks flushed prettily, and her eyes, Tully blue like her mother’s, Tyrion remembered, lit with intelligence. (Despite Sansa’s protestations to the contrary, her intuition belied an acumen Tyrion had come to respect almost immediately.) She positively glowed, especially on those occasions when she laughed--occasions that were becoming less rare by the day. This afternoon, Tyrion had caught her laughing whole-heartedly once, when a knight was unhorsed rather violently, landing directly in a pile of shit, cursing the whole way down. There had been something sounding like a hiccup, and Tyrion had turned to Sansa to find her with her hands clasped over her mouth, looking horrified that she'd allowed such an unladylike sound to escape her lips. But Tyrion had simply pulled her hands away and pressed a quick kiss to her palm, assuring her that this was a sound he longed to hear more often.
Each time Sansa laughed, Tyrion considered it a personal victory.
Tyrion glanced over at the Princess Daenerys, who resembled one of her dragons sunning itself on a pile of brightly stitched pillows. She'd let her hair down, and it spilled out across her back, shining like spun silver in the candlelight. For her part, she seemed to have enjoyed the festivities just as much as his lady wife, though she did so more reservedly, her mouth curving up slightly at the corners whenever her great bear Jorah Mormont had placed his against the small of her back. Such small acts of intimacy. Now, in the privacy of this space Tyrion had secured for the four of them, Jorah stared at her openly. For such a prickly man--and Tyrion had learned of his prickliness the hard way, he thought, running his tongue along the space where one of his teeth had been knocked out by the man himself--Jorah certainly did little enough to disguise the love-sick adoration on his face.
There had been a time Tyrion when would have called it disgusting, made a crude joke about imagining the dragon princess naked perhaps. But now that Tyrion was himself something of a love-sick fool (he sometimes caught himself staring at Sansa so long and disbelievingly that she took notice and asked him to stop making her self-conscious), he could barely fault the man. After all, Daenerys hardly seemed to mind her own husband's public attentions, though it may have been that she was simply too drunk to care.
The same could not have been said for their female companions as they made their way back from the tourney field, Tyrion and Jorah weaving dangerously between them. As always, wine and ale had flowed freely at the tourney, and if there was one thing Tyrion could say for Jorah, it was that he was a man who never turned down an opportunity for a hearty drink. Tyrion respected that. He respected it so much that he'd matched the much larger man drink for drink until the both of them were laughing raucously and sloshing mead over the sides of their goblets onto the hastily erected balconies beneath their feet, as well as the hems of skirts unlucky enough to be in their paths.
The cerulean embroidered gown Tyrion had given Sansa for her last nameday would never be the same.
It had been Daenerys' idea to retire to somewhere more... private, when Tyrion had reached out to give Sansa's backside a little pinch, and she'd responded by smacking him across the face, albeit not nearly as soundly as Tyrion knew her to be capable of. Now that the four of them were squirreled away in a part of the Red Keep Tyrion only knew of thanks to his frequent rendezvous with Varys during his time as Hand (and wasn't it funny, Tyrion thought, that he didn't miss the title at all), Daenerys and Sansa had taken to drinking as well. Perhaps because, as it was said, if you couldn't beat them, it was better to join them--and Tyrion and his burly companion were not about to be beaten. At least not until they drank themselves into unconsciousness.
Now Jorah was waving his goblet around, using it to gesture, as he made a jape at Tyrion’s expense-- something like, “And what a Hand you must have made.” Truth be told, Tyrion wasn't entirely invested in the conversation, busy as he was nuzzling Sansa’s neck, but it was at that exact moment that his subconscious decided he should be offended. He needed to defend his name, dammit! He was a Lannister, after all--if a very drunk and small one.
"My dear Jorah," he began. It sounded like he was shouting, and Tyrion didn't understand why. He was talking at a perfectly normal volume. "I'll have you know that I'm hardly the first of the Lannister clan to serve as Hand to the King. Ours is a house known for its great ingenuity and resourcefulness!”
He took a large swallow of wine--something sour, an indication that summer was not yet upon them, though the sun broke through the sky’s blanket of grey more days than not as of late--swishing it around in his mouth before continuing.
“Why, Lann the Clever is said to have swindled the Rock away from the very family from whom it took its name with nothing more than his wits. It seems his moniker was well-earned. To say nothing of my own dear father, Hand to two kings.”
There had been a time when making such a quip would have been impossible for the bile that rose in his throat at the merest mention of Tywin Lannister--and there was still an edge of bitterness to his voice, but he tempered it with a sardonic touch to his breast, just above his heart.
There was a snort from Sansa, and Tyrion fixed her with an expectant look, knowing full well that she was about to say something irreverent.
“Yours is a house known for its dubious loyalty and an overstated sense of self-importance, you mean,” she told him, one side of her lips quirking upward. “The north was never half so much trouble before a certain incorrigible Westerlander found his way there.”
For a moment Tyrion could only let his mouth hang open, his wit somewhat slowed by drink; then he flicked Sansa lightly in a spot on her side that he knew to be ticklish and, watching her squirm, whispered against her ear, “Perhaps you should call me Tyrion the Incorrigible, then.”
It was a name he would wear with pride; if he couldn’t outwit her... well, he had other talents.
“Well, you are," Sansa chided. The wine had blood rushing hot and fast to her cheeks, while everything around her seemed just a bit slowed. It wasn’t the first time she’d been drunk--how could she have not learned to enjoy a good glass of wine or two with Tyrion as her husband?--but every time the feeling came on her as a surprise. One moment she was sipping daintily at her goblet and making little noises of approval, and the next she was tripping over her words and shooting glares at her husband for neglecting to tell her how many times he’d refilled their flagon.
Sansa gave Tyrion a playful little push, nearly toppling him backwards in his drunken state, but she let her warm hands linger against his chest after she did so, steadying him. Tyrion the Incorrigible wasn’t an entirely inaccurate name, she thought to herself, imagining the various ways she might undo him later this evening, when they were alone in the quarters her bastard-brother-turned-king (except he’d never been her bastard brother at all, really, a voice in the back of her mind reminded her) had allotted them. The thought made her cheeks burn even more hotly, and she ducked her head against Tyrion’s shoulder. Tyrion the Incorrigible. Yes, just as the North had never been so troublesome before it found Tyrion Lannister its liege lord, neither had Sansa’s ability to control herself. He was a bad influence all the way around, it seemed.
But the castle at Winterfell, torn to ruins as it had been, then raised again stone by stone under the watchful eyes of its lord and lady, had never felt warmer than it did with him sleeping at her side. The hot spring waters coursing through Winterfell’s stone walls held nothing on the way Tyrion’s back felt pressed against hers when she woke in the night, heart pounding sometimes, even still--though it happened less and less now. It made her smile to think that Tyrion’s comfortable presence might be rebuilding the scattered pieces of Sansa Stark, lost so long to her--once a fawn crouched in the grass amongst lions and then Petyr’s bastard daughter and then no one at all--the same way her own presence had set the North to rights, even in the face of a winter that had, at the time, felt never-ending.
For the first time in her memory, Sansa felt like herself.
Tyrion had been made for the North, Sansa thought in secret, though she knew better than to say so out loud. It still pained her husband that Casterly Rock had never been his, not truly--his father had made it known he’d never been wanted there, and some ghosts, Sansa knew all too well, were not easily left behind. (But it was easier when one didn’t walk the same halls they did.) So when Jon Snow--no, King Jon, Jon Targaryen, as much as a Targaryen as this silver-haired princess Sansa had come to call her closest confidant--had named Tyrion heir to all Lannister holdings, Sansa had begged him to bequeath them to his brother Jaime, pardoned by Tyrion’s own request. (Sansa had once told Jaime how lucky he was that the king loved her like a sister, and Tyrion had been unable to compose himself for at least ten minutes, though Sansa hadn’t known why at the time.)
They were happier at Winterfell, Sansa was sure of it. To return there had been the only wish she’d known since she was but a girl of eleven, and there was no one left of her family to rebuild it (save Bran, who had all but left behind their world for one of wolves and warging). There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Surely Tyrion was no Stark--nothing like her brother Robb had been, or even the boy she had known as Jon Snow--but her people had taken to him just the same, inspired by Sansa’s own acceptance. The cold did him no favors, Sansa had to admit, leaving his joints aching so fiercely there were mornings he could scarcely get out of bed. But she didn’t mind this as much as she thought she might. On those bitter mornings, the two of them sometimes lounged about in their quarters, going over accounts and ledgers and requests from the smallfolk amongst their mountain of blankets and furs, stopping intermittently to kiss and tease.
She teased him now. “While your ancestors busied themselves stealing the architectural achievements of others, mine were erecting the very Wall that helped stop us all from becoming nothing more than fodder for the Others.”
Sansa shivered unconsciously, even this near to the warmth of the brazier. It had been meant as a quip, but the Others were hardly a joking matter. (Briefly, she wondered if Daenerys ever felt a hand of ice close around her spine when she spoke of the Others. Somehow, Sansa thought not.)
“And I should scarcely need to remind you that Brandon is actually responsible for building his family’s own castle,” she added. “More than can be said for your family’s founder. If I can call you Tyrion the Incorrigible, perhaps I should take to calling him Lann the Lazy. Hopefully it will catch on.”
There was a snort of derision from Jorah, and even Daenerys chuckled a little. Pleased with herself, Sansa washed down her victory with another swallow of wine, then pecked Tyrion lightly on his scarred lips. She could at least allow him to lose gracefully.
The kiss appeared to have appeased him for only a moment before he pulled a face and set his drink aside.
“Come off it, Sansa,” her husband complained, his inflection plainly implying you’ve hurt my delicate pride, you know, though he was snuggling into her side even as he said it. “House Stark may know its way around bricks and mortar, but there’s something to be said for the ability to build a solid foundation on one’s personal charm and charisma and wit.”
Tyrion was slurring--the word charisma sounded more like charithma--but Sansa thought better than to say anything of it, instead letting her lips curve up silently and tucking the memory away for further use.
“Your house words might be Winter Is Coming," he went on, "but now that winter has come and gone, I’d consider a change. Boredom Is Coming would at least be truthful. Your ancestors were so bored they talked to trees, Sansa. Trees! I don’t know about you, but I’ve never gotten the most scintillating of conversation from a tree.” He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Maybe they only talk to northerners.”
Sansa pursed her lips in a feigned pout; there wasn‘t much she could say to argue the point. Her brother Bran talked to trees; according to him, they had much to say about nature and the gods and the way it was all connected, but for Sansa, her father’s heart trees had always remained ominously silent, no matter if she’d knelt praying in front of them until her knees ached.
With a gentle smile--the way any emotion twisted her husband’s ruined face had once masked all sign of tenderness, but Sansa could recognize it easily enough after all this time--Tyrion took Sansa’s hands between his own and massaged the back of her knuckles, taking the sting from his words. “Not that you’ve ever been the slightest bit boring, sweetling,” he soothed. “The two of us have brought some much needed life to the North, I think.”
Sansa could do nothing but agree with that; Winterfell had seen enough death. Now if she could only give it a son... but there was time for that. She was young, still, and Tyrion rarely turned down an opportunity to try.
Tyrion continued the slow dance of his fingers over her knuckles as he turned his attention to Daenerys and her husband, equally drunk and affectionate, seated on the room’s remaining chaise. Jorah might have frightened Sansa as a girl--he was so gruff--but she was a woman grown now, and he spoke so kindly to Daenerys that Sansa could see him as nothing but her adoring husband. (Tyrion sometimes complained of an incident in which Jorah had knocked one of his teeth loose, but Sansa always responded that Tyrion gave most everyone he met ample reason to strike him at least once.)
“I’d say we’ve all done our families some good in our own small ways,” Tyrion was saying, both eyes black and glittering warmly in the candlelight. His emphasis on the word small had Sansa rolling her eyes. “The lovely princess Daenerys not only by joining us on this side of the Narrow Sea and taking back her family’s rightful seat, but by marrying outside her own family line, thank the Seven. I’ve had enough of incest for twenty lifetimes; let it never be said that I’m a naysayer of tradition, but that’s one practice I’m happy to see die.”
"Careful there, Imp," said Jorah, pushing himself upright on the settee and dragging his gaze--if not his hand--from his young wife's lovely white breasts that swelled above the bodice of her gown of lavender silk and Myrish lace. "Best not besmirk my lady wife's noble house."
He felt the lines of his face tug downward in a frown; something of his words had not sounded quite right to him, and he guessed it wasn't just his current state of intoxication playing tricks on his ears, given how Lady Sansa's rather unladylike snort and the quiver of his own wife's chest beneath his palm indicated otherwise. Tyrion's confirmation was less subtle, accompanied by a guffaw that sent a shower of wine over Sansa's already ruined gown. (A sight which made Jorah's frown deepen; a Lannister could not only always pay his debts, but was endowed with wealth enough to keep his wife so attired as to never have to see her in the same gown twice, as well. He swung his gaze back to Daenerys, and watched his own slightly blurred fingers paw at her lace-trimmed neckline, and was heartened where once such a thought about his inability to provide lavishly for another lady would have put him in his cups for an entirely different reason than joy; he liked this gown, which she had worn before, and he especially liked taking it off her. It would be a shame never to get to do that again.)
"Forgive me, my Lord of Mormont," said Tyrion, his maimed face twisting into an expression of mockery which Jorah thought ugly until he remembered the shameful mark on his own cheek that made him even uglier. Though that had not cost either of them the love of the fairest two ladies in the realm. "I do so hate to jape at your expense--"
"When did you acquire that aversion?"
"I only want to be sure I heard you correctly so I can indulge in more of this fine Arbor gold. Did you just tell me not to besmirk your lady wife's noble house?"
The ladies were giggling outright now--at what Jorah was not at all certain, their laughter ringing so loudly in his head that it seemed impossible that it should come from only two of them (and the room was spinning so around him that he could not be sure of the quick count he made of its occupants). He sat up straighter--he hoped--and glowered at the Imp.
"I did, my little Lordling of Lannister," he said, remembering what he had meant to say before he had become distracted by Daenerys' gown and the thought of removing it. "Better that the Targaryens married each other to keep the bloodlines pure than do as my own kin did and breed with bears."
"Jorah," came Daenerys' voice, very soft, but still accompanied by laughter, and she tugged at his sleeve. Whatever else she said was swallowed up by Tyrion's roar.
"Oh, that's true, is it?" he said. "Small wonder your lord father took the Black and the vow of celibacy, if he'd already endured the cold bedfellow of a wife who preferred the company of bears. Though frankly, Jorah, I'm surprised the Ladies Mormont should be so picky when the men are all black and brown and covered with--"
"It cannot be truth," interjected Sansa with the grace she could have only acquired from her lady mother, before Tyrion could get very far in the bawdy song which had once caused the two men such mortification. "House Mormont has always been regarded as an old and honorable house by their Stark liege-lords. If they committed the abomination of…" Her face turned a little red, though it could have been the spirits and the uncertain light of the candles in the crimson-draped quarters. "…of what you speak, then surely when my ancestor King Rodrik won Bear Island in a wrestling match, he would not have given it over to the Mormonts as reward for centuries of loyal service."
Jorah sank down beside Daenerys on the divan, pillowing his head upon her bosom. "The Starks give," he muttered with a sigh, "and the Starks take away."
"And give back," Tyrion reminded him, not ungently.
It was true enough; when King Jon--revealed to be the bastard son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen--had sat the Iron Throne, he gave Jorah his pardon and restored his lands and title as a boon to his aunt Daenerys. Jorah kept Longclaw but had not hesitated to return the ruling of the island to Maege and her daughters the instant the raven landed in the rookery of his keep bearing the message written in the Princess' own hand, begging him to join her in Dragonstone for none of her lordly suitors pleased her as well as her bear. He'd grown accustomed to warmer climes during his exile, but most especially to the heat of dragonfire.
Jorah's fingers curled over Daenerys' breast, and her own hand settled over his--he thought, at first, to remove it from such an intimate public caress; but when she clasped it there, he sighed, again, happily.
"That Stark, at least, did not take my queen from me."
"Though he might have done," Tyrion said, "swooping down on King's Landing with his half-brother Aegon and their aunt-wife Daenerys like Aegon the conqueror and his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys."
"You see, Lord Jorah?" said Sansa, drinking from the goblet which she had not noticed her husband had refilled yet again, fixing--or trying to fix--Jorah with eyes that were even brighter blue than normal from the drink. It had to be the drink; no Stark had ever dreamed of looking cheeky. Then again, no Stark had ever been married to a Lannister. "Again you have a Stark to thank, for if my lord father had not raised Jon with Stark practicality, he might have harbored more romantic notions about keeping the ways of his Targaryen forebears."
Tyrion snorted into his cup. "Because nothing says romance like marrying your aunt and sharing her with your half-brother."
"It was not for romance that Aegon married his sisters," said Dany, reluctantly nudging Jorah to lift his head from her bosom so that she might sit in a more dignified manner, befitting a princess and the heir to the Iron Throne until King Jon produced a son. Which he seemed in no hurry to do, that direwolf of his more often at his side than any lady, or so went the rumors from court.
"I know, I know," Tyrion said with a wave of his hand. "Bloodlines and all that. I will admit that I see the logic in a man taking two wives to get with child, but what good could come of a woman taking two husbands? Like as not, Aegon and Jon would only have started another bloody war over who was the father of the little products of incest."
"Husband!" cried Sansa, though it was the hiccough accompanying the rebuke that deepened her flush of mortification.
Dany looked at her own husband, expecting him to leap once more to defend her, but the only sound her fierce bear made was a deep chuckle that rumbled out of his broad chest and quite pleasantly through her, so that even she had to giggle at Tyrion's well-observed japes at her family's expense.
"There was little enough chance of that, was there," she said, "when it was Aegon's untimely demise that gave Jon his crown?"
The laughter in the room died, suddenly--much as Aegon had, Dany thought, which started her giggling again, most inappropriately. But that had been years ago, and her grief for her nephew had not been great even then, for he had reminded her in some ways of Viserys, particularly in the manner in which he expected her to believe at once that he was Rhaegar's supposed dead son, and that he had not asked so much as demanded she be his queen. Drogon had not liked that, and Aegon, like Viserys, had proved not to be a true dragon.
"Surely it must pain you, Daenerys," said Tyrion, his green eye twinkling from beneath a cocked eyebrow, "to think that you gave up being the first woman whom her children could call mama or great-auntie."
At that, Dany's giggles lodged in her throat, though she would not let the smile leave her lips even as the ache in her chest made her eyes well. She lowered them to her wine goblet as she brought it to her lips to swallow the dregs at the bottom. Tyrion did not aim to wound her; he, like everyone in the kingdom, was ignorant of her true reason for declining King Jon's more gracious and humble offer of his hand: that she would never bring forth any children in blood, but would only be mother to the three she had borne in fire.
Jorah did, however; he'd been there with her when the maegi Mirri Maz Duur made her prophesy over Dany's womb, and he was here now, after years of fruitless relations, resting his large hand on her flat belly which would never swell with his own heir.
"Any man not blessed to have Daenerys for his wife would have to take two," he said, "to find her equal."
On the other bench, Dany heard Sansa sigh, even as Tyrion muttered something into his cup about a romantic old bear. Smiling, she brushed her fingers across Jorah's ruined cheek, drawing him in for a brief kiss.
"Yes," she said. "I am Visenya and Rhaenys. I rode into Westeros on the back of my Drogon with braided hair and the armor of a warrior. And when I demanded the swords of mine enemies, they submitted. Yet after my conquest I let down my hair and danced and laughed."
"At the Imp, mostly," said Jorah.
"Well, it would have to be me, wouldn't it?" Tyrion fired back. "You may be a romantic old bear, but you're not funny."
Jorah glowered a bit at that, so Dany kissed him again. "But your House is funny, husband. All our Houses are."
"I'll drink to that!" Tyrion said, reaching for the wine decanter on the table between their couches, but misjudging the distance and instead sending it crashing to the floor. "Or I would, if I weren't too drunk to pour the wine."
"Except House Stark," Sansa said, belatedly. And Dany thought she pronounced House Stark rather more like how shark. "There must never be a laughing Stark in Winterfell."
"Did you say a laughing stock in Winterfell?" Dany giggled.
"Just you wait, sweetling," said Tyrion, patting his wife's hand. "Another decade of marriage to me, and your words will be Laughter Is Coming."
He glanced at Jorah, who said, uncertainly, "Here We Laugh?"
"Not to be confused with Hear Me Laugh," Tyrion said, chuckling.
Dany clapped her hands. "Fire and Laughter?"
"It's better than Laughter and Blood." Tyrion raised his empty goblet. "To our old and most hilarious houses!"
Fin
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