Chapter Text
{I}
Jamie Lannister, the first daughter and second child born to Lord Tywin Lannister and his lady wife Joanna, had been the most beautiful maid in all of the Seven Kingdoms; and no one believed that more than her twin brother Caesar.
They had been born together, Jamie’s little hand curled around her brother’s foot, and they had never been apart a moment since. Jamie had been watching him the first time Caesar had hold a wooden sword in the practice yard; and she had given him his first, sloppy kiss, like they’d seen Mother and Father do. They even used to dress up as each other at times, Caesar trailing his hands down the smooth satin of his sister’s dress, as soft as her hair. Mother had not liked that, he remembered, tried to stop them; but then she’d died in the birthing bed and Father had gone back to King’s Landing, and it had only been the two of them, alone against the world.
Once upon a time Caesar used to think they would have died together, too; but that had been a long time ago.
Jamie Lannister was four-and-ten when she died, hit by a stray arrow when her escort was ambushed by the Kingswood Brotherhood.
It had been, to Caesar a horrible trick of destiny. His bright, beautiful sister had been an excellent archer and an even better rider, more a Mormont of Bear Island than a Lannister of the Rock in that regard. Had she been born a man, Jamie would have made an even better warrior than the Dragonknight – so unlike Caesar, who had decided early on that he preferred politics to the battlefield. Yet she had been born a woman instead, forced by customs and conventions to remain inside her carriage while the assault dragged on, with no means to defend herself.
She was born to be a queen, Lord Tywin had told Caesar once, at the funeral, drunk on pain and sorrow, and as close to tears as his son had even seen him. He had just left King’s Landing and his position as the King’s Hand, ostensibly because of grief; in truth because of one too many of the King’s crude remarks. She should have been queen, his father had been right about that; but in truth Caesar was glad Aerys had refused the offer when he had, because he did not think he could have suffered the thought of another man having her.
And when the Rebellion had ended with Rhaegar’s blood staining the waters of the Trident, Caesar couldn’t help but feel victorious, even though it had not been his war. He’d remained under locked doors for more than a year, in his luxurious rooms in the Red Keep like the hostage he was; but he’d still rejoiced when he found out that the Mad King had lost a beloved child same as his father had, could not stop the smile that’d grown on his face.
Aerys had sent for him the following day, spitting and stuttering, his eyes bright with the gleam of madness, promising him to kill him to get to Lord Tywin. Rossart had been there as well, yet another useless fool in Father’s place; and Caesar had heard that last order, burn it all.
A fitting end to the Targaryen dynasty, Caesar had thought at first; and then, I want to live. He had thought of his sister, beautiful as she had been, and how he’d always thought they would be together in death, of his mother’s spirit waiting for him; but seventeen was too young to die.
Guests and hostages alike were not trusted with swords and no blades were allowed in presence of the king, so Caesar killed Rossart with the gold chain at his throat, twisting and twisting until he felt the body go heavy in his arms. Aerys had screamed then, a loud shriek that made Caesar’s blood run cold in his veins; but there’d been no one to hear him, guards and servants all sent away long before. A king he might have been, Caesar had thought then, but in the end he was only a weak, old man; and it hadn’t been long before he stopped whimpering.
Aerys Targaryen fell lifeless on the stone floor of the Great Hall, in front of the Throne he’d loved so much. It was an old, ugly thing, Caesar realized, twisted and deadly; but it shined so prettily in the candlelight.
One day, he decided, it would be his.
{II}
Killing the Mad King made Caesar Lannister a hero.
It was a novel feeling and, altogether, not an unwelcome one.
He had never killed anyone with his own hands before, always preferring a smile and an assassin’s blade to open violence; but, somehow, it was fitting for his first kill to be a king. There had been Rossart, obviously, but he did not seem to count. The piromancer had been forgotten as soon as the Lannister host had taken the city, and no one had even inquired as to his whereabouts – no one, that was it, until Caesar had made sure to share with Ned Stark the story of how Aerys had been planning to burn the city to the ground.
Let him be king of ashes, he repeated to Robert as well, and saw the new king’s face redden under the weight of self-righteous anger. Stark even thanked him, as stiffly as he always seemed to be; but he’d been in a furious rage over the death of Elia and the young princes mere hours before, and Caesar realized that Lord Eddard’s thanks were not given lightly. Robert, for his part, slapped him on the back as if they were the best of friends, laughing loudly.
“You’ll have a place of honor at my wedding to the Lady Lyanna,” he promised, and Caesar held back a sardonic smile at Robert’s enthusiasm.
If only it were that simple.
Lyanna Stark was found by her brother somewhere in Dorne, guarded by what was left of Aerys’s Kingsguard; and all the nobles at court were graceful enough not to point out how unusual that was.
She died in Dorne as well, from a fever that had gone untreated or so Lord Stark said; and Robert wept and drowned his grief in wine and whores. Caesar got a brief look at her body when they showed it to Robert, a glimpse of a pale, scrawny thing with a halo of beautiful, long raven hair. She wasn’t beautiful, but then again, no corpse ever was. He was reminded of Jamie, so still and cold in her funeral casket, and Father whispering how she should have been queen.
She really would have, Caesar realized, with Lyanna Stark dead and no other suitable match; but he knew Robert Baratheon quite well by now, and he was not the sort of man he would have wanted for his sister. Far from it, he thought. I’d have killed him first.
It was all pointless now, the what-if and the wishful thinking; and Caesar resigned himself to observe from outside, taking notice of all the scheming and the backstabbing that went on between the noble families. He was not alone in that – Varys, the newly reinstated Maester of Whisper, also contented himself with watching as things unfolded, knowing that he wasn’t in a position to be offering suggestions, not yet.
Stark had gone back to his North, back to ignoring the affairs of the kingdom as his family had done for decades; and Lord Tywin had done the same once it had been clear that there were no prominent families from the Westerlands with daughter of the right age. Jon Arryn, bless his fool’s heart, suggested a Dornish family to make an amend of sort to the Martells, even going so far as to send messengers to Starfall; but there was no Dornishwoman who would have wanted to take Elia’s place.
In the end it was decided that His Grace King Robert Baratheon, First of his name, would marry Lord Hightower’s second daughter Alysanne, making him Mace Tyrell’s good-brother and making Lord Stannis almost choke on his wine when he found out.
They were married not quite a fortnight later, in the Grand Sept of Baelor, crowds cheering their new, handsome king, the young queen radiant with the newfound happiness of a young maiden living her dream. Caesar had a place of honor at the king’s own table and a spot on his Small Council, and it was all close enough to the Throne that he thought it would do nicely, for the time being.
{III}
Life went on, year after year. Caesar remained in King’s Landing, the Master of Laws, and came to know and fear Varys and know and despise Littlefinger; both of whom played the Game of Thrones better than himself, though not quite as well as his father did.
Lord Tywin remained in the West and the two of them corresponded often enough, an arrangement that satisfied them both. Caesar admired his father more than any other man, living or dead; but their relationship lacked the warmth and affection that it’d had before Jamie’s death. Things with Tyrion were strained as well – Caesar did not share his father’s blinding grief and resentment and had figured out early enough just how cunning and dangerous his younger brother could be, and yet they would never really like each other, as brothers were supposed to.
He never married, for the same reason it had taken Arryn so long to find Robert a bride. It was better to wait than to rush, after all; and he was never gladder for his choice to wait until the day he escorted the king to Winterfell, and laid eyes on Jeyne Snow for the first time.
It was the fourteenth year of Robert’s reign, and the king had suddenly found himself in need of a new Hand. Lord Arryn was an old man, that was the talk around court, and wanted to live the last years of his life among the quiet of the Eyrie with his wife and son. The truth of things was that he’d had yet another disagreement with Robert, this time concerning the fate of the last remaining Targaryen heirs; but truths did not mean much in King’s Landing.
It hadn’t been a surprise to Caesar that Robert had decided to choose his old friend Ned Stark, though he did suspect Stark wouldn’t last long – wholesome men did not fare well in court. The queen herself asked him to be part of the escort, with no doubt fearing the vast emptiness of the North, the cold, and the loneliness; and Caesar had thought the whole trip to be a massive waste of time up to the day they reached Winterfell.
The Great Hall was almost as big as the one in the Keep, warm and homely in a way Caesar would not have expected from a northern fortress. His seat was at the high table and still removed enough to offer some relative quiet, and for once he did not mind. Caesar observed the Starks as they walked in, Lady Catelyn, prettier than Lysa ever was, at the arm of Robert, who looked more like a buffoon than a king; Lord Eddard with a beard he hadn’t worn the last time they’d seen each other, escorting Alysanne, whose eyes had lost some of their brightness over the years.
Stark’s firstborn was now a young man, Caesar realized with a startle, his age made more evident by the contrast with eight-years-old Princess Lemore on his arm. The oldest girl was escorted by Steffon, blushing all the way to the table; and the second one, who walked by side with Tommen, looked enough like Lyanna that he was sure Robert must have noticed as well. There were two more boys, one who looked eight or so, and the other one a babe barely older than Orys, who had paused in front of one of the lower seats and had to be escorted by his wet nurse to his seat.
Caesar gave out a chuckle at that, amused. It was strangely endearing to him, unused as he was to see a child at a formal feast – it was not done in King’s Landing, and his father hadn’t done it either, not after Mother’s death. He let his gaze linger on the spot where the youngest Stark had stopped, idly, and found a pair of dark purple eyes staring right back at him.
It was like looking at a ghost.
Two ghosts, in fact, Caesar decided after a while. He remembered hearing of Ned Stark’s bastard daughter once or twice, in some joke Robert must have made. Something about even the most honorable of men having a weakness, or some such line, just another way for Robert to justify his own weaknesses; and usually followed from something rude about Ashara Dayne, who’d refused Arryn’s offer of a marriage to Robert but fucked all the Starks, as the king was fond of repeating.
Caesar had heard of Stark’s bastard, for sure; but knowing of her and seeing the child – the woman, the young woman – were two different things altogether. He’d never forgotten Lyanna Stark, never could; not when Robert used to talk about her half the times he was drunk, not when she had looked so much like Jamie in death, small and white, like something not of this world.
And her eyes he’d never forgotten either, even though Lyanna’s had been closed when he’d seen her; because he would recognize them everywhere. He remembered holding that gaze, looking into those eyes as life left them, squeezing tighter and tighter, and tighter.
Ned Stark’s bastard daughter had Targaryen eyes.
{IV}
Her name was Jeyne, Caesar learned soon enough from one of the northmen. Jeyne Snow, of course, but the last part was not as regrettable as it could have been. Robert hadn’t seen her yet, busy as he was with one of the kitchen maids, and Caesar was glad for that – there was no saying how he would have reacted.
Rhaegar’s daughter, he couldn’t stop thinking; because that was what she must be, without a doubt. It could not be otherwise, not with that face and those eyes; and he found himself wondering just what stupid game Stark had been playing when he’d took her in.
No game at all, probably; Eddard Stark wasn’t the kind of man who concerned himself with the subtleness of the game of thrones. He must have taken her in out of pity for his dead sister, like some sort of amend; never considering what exactly he had. Caesar would not do the same mistake.
He found himself glancing at the girl more and more during the mean, at the endless number of possibilities, unable to look away. Caesar observed Jeyne as she smiled, feeding small bites from her plate to the dogs under her table, as she drank from her cup, one sip after the other, as she talked a man of the Night’s Watch that must have been Stark’s brother, eyes alit with excitement. He saw her standing up from her seat at one point, making from the door, and made sure he was the only one who’d noticed. Then, he followed.
He found her in the courtyard, sat on the stone steps by the archery court; looking even more ethereal under the dim light of the moon than she had inside.
“Is everything well?” he called, fully knowing the effect he would have. As he’d expected, the girl winced.
“Yes…” he voice was low and broken, and she stopped for a moment when she raised her head and saw his face. She looked as though she’d been crying. “My Lord. Thank you.”
“Are you sure?” he found himself asking, not quite knowing what else to say. He could not remember ever asking such a question to anyone. “You seem... distressed,” he finished, taking another step toward her.
She flinched again, moving backwards slightly, and it dawned on Caesar that she must be scared. Of course, he realized, not surprised in the least than any girl raised by prim-and-proper Ned Stark would be concerned for her virtue in his presence. And a bastard girl, at that. He found himself laughing.
“I am sorry,” he told her, as earnest as he could manage to sound, and part of him almost was. “I did not mean to startle you.”
Caesar moved even closer after that, walking all the way to the steps and sitting down right beside the girl. She did not seem nervous this time, merely curious, looking straight at him as she’d had during the Feast; and only then he remembered– she’d been looking at him before, staring just as he was.
Well, that makes things simpler, he thought, smiling at her. He was many things, and aware of his own charms was one of them. “Caesar Lannister,” he introduced himself, with a slight bow of his head.
“I know who you are.”
The girl’s reply caught them both by surprise, and he suppressed a second smile. Bold. That was what they all said of Lyanna, he knew; and Brandon Stark as well. The North was no King’s Landing and its people were as fiery and harsh as their winter storms.
“That was quite blunt of you,” Caesar said, because two could play the honesty game; and had the pleasure to see Jeyne flush.
Still, she did not apologize. “My name is Jeyne,” she paused slightly. “Snow.”
“I know who you are,” he echoed, suddenly remembered of Tyrion. It was the sort of thing he’d do, repeating someone else’s words, doing his best to be as confusing as possible.
“Did you enjoy it?” he asked then, the sort of mindless chattering he might have asked at court. He found himself wishing Tyrion were there, as odd as it was for him – his little brother surely would have known what to say, how to coax the girl to talk. The king’s party would leave Winterfell in a fortnight, Ned Stark or not; but Jeyne Snow would definitely come South with them. With him.
“The feast,” he continued, after one look at her confused face. “I have to say it was every bit as good as the ones we have in King’s Landing.”
It wasn’t; but the simple mention of life in King’s Landing had been enough to bring a gleam of excitement in those eyes. Dark, purple eyes, Caesar couldn’t stop noticing, beautiful. Nothing like Ashara’s, although those who hadn’t known her might have been fooled; but not much like Rhaegar’s either. More like Queen Rhaella’s, he decided, before realizing with a bolt of… something that he, and Varys, and perhaps Ser Barristan, were the only people left in Westeros to remember how Rhaella Targaryen’s eyes had looked like.
“It was good,” she said, so low it was almost a whisper, some sort of wistfulness in her voice. She surely was not asked such questions often, not Jeyne Snow, the bastard; the ice maid with the purple eyes, clad in her simple woolen dress.
No, she wasn’t a girl used to be taken into consideration, and their brief conversation would be enough of a difference, as meaningless as it had been. Time to go, he told himself.
“I am glad you enjoyed it,” he said, giving her another smile as he stood up – and not, he hadn’t imagined that small flicker of disappointment that passed through her face. “Goodnight, Jeyne Snow.”
“I will see you,” he told her, a fact more than a promise; and Caesar didn’t turn his head to watch her as he left. He didn’t need to – he knew he’d made an impression; he knew the girl would rethink on his parting words before falling asleep that night.
For now, it was enough.