Chapter Text
When Tywin Lannister awakens to the sight of a man’s silhouette at the foot of his bed, his first bleary thought is to wonder how one of his enemies would have gotten past Casterly Rock’s thorough security system. Only when the silhouette half-whispers a “Dad? Dad, wake up,” does he realize that the form is Jaime’s.
Not an enemy. Not an ally. His own son.
Has it been so long? Tywin wonders, recalling the last time one of his children sought to wake him in the night. It would have been years ago, when the twins were much smaller. Before Joanna’s passing. And he realizes that it has been so long, for his son’s shadowed form is now more man than boy. “What is it?” he asks, eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness of his bedroom, checking the digital clock on the nightstand — 1:17 AM.
“Cersei’s sick.”
Cersei is sick. A complaint Tywin would have expected from someone more boy than man. He sighs, propping himself up on an elbow. “And has Cersei taken any medicine?”
Jaime exhales sharply, and only then does Tywin notice the creases of worry between his son’s brows. “Dad, she’s really sick. We were watching a movie because she was feeling too ill to get to sleep, and she got up to get a snack, and — God, Dad, I don’t know what happened. She blacked out, I think, or fell down, and then threw up onto the rug — and she’s…”
“She’s what?” Tywin asks, impatient.
“She’s having her period,” says Jaime in a hushed, slightly embarrassed tone, “but it’s really bad. It's always really bad, but this is..." He rakes a finger through his hair, weight shifting from one foot to the other. "When she got up, I saw that she’d bled through her shorts and all over the couch. I think she’s lost too much blood — she’s pale and shaky and I don’t know what to do.”
Jaime’s voice breaks on the last phrase, and Tywin is suddenly sitting straight up in bed, thoughts of Joanna running a mile a minute through his head. This is different, of course: Cersei is not giving birth, has not just endured a high-risk pregnancy — but he’ll be damned before he loses two of his girls to this blasted bleeding. She is only fourteen. She is too young for this. “Go help your sister into some clean pajamas,” he commands, fully awake now. “I’ll get dressed and bring my car around to the front door. Bring her outside when she’s ready. We’re going to the hospital.”
That a plan is now in place seems to have calmed Jaime somewhat, though he pauses uncertainly in the doorframe. Tywin’s mouth is halfway open to urge him forth when Jaime speaks: “What about Tyrion?”
Tyrion. Of course. “I’ll call his nanny,” says Tywin, and he will, but he doesn’t intend to wait up for her. Tyrion can survive twenty minutes alone; most likely, he won’t even know it, asleep in bed. If Cersei is as unwell as Jaime claims, that twenty minutes might be crucial.
Jaime still lingers in the doorway, looking to his father for reassurance, and this time, Tywin doesn’t hesitate. “Go.”