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Chapter Text

The Stranger Breathes Upon You:

When she sees Sansa Stark for the first time, Cersei Lannister is reminded of another girl.

Her hair is perhaps a lighter shade, her snow-white skin clear and too pale- Her face is all wrong, too long, too strong with her high cheekbones and strong chin, all too striking in comparison to the more delicate and fragile beauty of the girl she had known so long ago- But part of Cersei thinks of Melara Hetherspoon nonetheless when the girl curtsies prettily in front of her oaf of a husband. For her smile is bright and full as Melara’s had been, and she bets if the Stark girl were to sing, she would have a sweet voice, just as Melara had.

She tries to remember the color of Melara’s eyes if they too had sparkled like the Stark girl’s but she cannot, and all she remembers is she had been a bright, pretty little thing, only marred by the freckles that crisscrossed her skin like the stars dotted the sky at night.

Then her husband speaks of a dead girl, and Cersei forgets her own dead girl who drowned in a Well, quite easily.

In her walk of shame, she sees a freckled girl with accusing eyes, bloody lips, and drenched amongst the crowd jeering at her.

Cersei is not ashamed of anything she has done in her life, and she does not let the filth of King’s Landing see a single tear, a single break in her expression.

She is a lioness.

It is only later when her tears are done after she had sobbed like a child in her Uncle Kevan’s arms, in the quiet of the bedroom, does she remember Melara again.

She remembers the color of her hair, dark red, nearly like wine she so loves. She remembers the curve of her smile, bright and wide, and how it would shift the pale freckles across her face. She remembers the moments when Cersei would run her hands through her hair, the silk heaviness of it, and how boneless Melara would get in her arms, and how much Cersei would curl her into her chest, greedy for the girl’s warmth and skin against her own. Especially when the girl would begin to sing to her, pretty as a dove, sweet and trilling. Unbidden, a song, long forgotten, comes to her mind. Melara would sing it all the time, sweet and powerful, and only ever for Cersei.

She was shy, Melara Hetherspoon, beneath her general jovial cheer and braveness, there was a delicate girl beneath it all, that she would only ever show to Cersei in the quiet of her rooms. She is no singer. Not like Melara was. But the song slips past her lips nonetheless. It is sweet and strong, and she is a storm as Melara had song of being. She cannot remember all the words. Only part of it. She remembers her bright friend, and though Cersei thought her a clawing fool wanting things above her station, she finds some regret in her heart for Melara after all.

Especially when she still cannot recall the color of her eyes.

Queen Cersei the Mad dies with her brother’s hands on her throat. Golden and flesh.

Furry and disgusted in his identical emerald eyes.

The Queen he serves is behind him, dark Tully blue eyes flashing as she raises from the bonds Cersei had used on her. More beautiful, more terrible, even in rags, with all that Cersei holds dears in her hands. The Seven Kingdoms, the son of Rhaegar at her side, and her own brother’s heart.

Cersei married the King. Has had her three children, with golden crowns and golden shrouds.

It as she dies that she suddenly remembers Melara Hetherspoon, who died in a Well, the worms taking her maidenhead-

And Cersei remembers her eyes had been sea-green . Soft and wide, that would shift in colors in the light. Sometimes such a vivid soft green, and sometimes a vivid blue.

Always lovely.

Always shining for Cersei.

The only thing that had been her’s until the end.

She dies thinking of those eyes, her's, and her's alone.

Cersei is dead.

Yet she wakes in the Tourney grounds of Lannisport, or just off them, near the Well. A girl with sea-green eyes looks at her with accusing eyes. She stands next to the Well, and her lips are blood splattered, and her red wine hair is drenched and dripping.

“Tienes miedo?” whispers the girl, and Cersei has no idea what the girl is saying at all.

Behind her, a great large beast- sable fur and glowing orange eyes.

The beast swallows her.

Bit by bit.

Piece by piece.

Melara laughs,  sweet as trilling as a dove.

Cersei is dead.

Yet she wakes in the Tourney grounds of Lannisport, or just off them, near the Well.   

Cersei screams.

“Tienes miedo?”

Cersei is dead.

Yet she wakes in the Tourney grounds of Lannisport, or just off them, near the Well.

“Tienes miedo?”

Cersei is dead.

Cersei is dead.

Yet she wakes in the Tourney grounds of Lannisport, or just off them, near the Well.

“Tienes miedo?”

Chapter Text

Jaime Lannister is utterly wretched.

He hears the whispers. The fury of his father. He had never seen such fury in his father in response to this- a noble girl dies underneath the roof of House Lannister, and she is killed mere feet from the strongest men in the West.

She bled out in Cersei’s arms.

Cersei has stopped speaking. Silent as a grave, pale and wane. Not even the arrival of the Dragon Prince, which had so excited her, had caused much of a reaction at all. Any time she sees crimson, she breaks into hysterical sobs. She has thrown every bit of pearls and opals from her jewels, and the very sight of them makes her tear at her throat as if she cannot breathe.

Jaime hadn’t even known the girl’s name.

He is given her House sword, yet he had known her name.

She had lived at Casterly Rock, been Cersei’s friend, and he had not known her name. She had smiled at him, so often, so prettily, and Jaime had not even known her name.

She died in Cersei’s arms.

She dies covered in horsewhip wounds, welts, and cuts, burns, and according to the Maester, half-starved and showing signs of poisoning-

And I did not know her fucking name.

Melara.

Melara Hetherspoon.

In the shock of it all, Mother has lost her babe. Nearly died herself in the wake of it all.

The King's arrival is full of jeers and insults, and Jaime hates the fucking King with something so fierce that he vows to be the most belligerent Lord of the West in years to come yet. 

A girl is dead.

And the King uses her death to insult his father.

Jaime Lannister learns the meaning of hate.

Cersei is sent to Dorne after the Tourney. Sun, peace, and leaving the Rock for some good time yet. That is what his fragile Mother declares.

She is betrothed to the Dornish Prince, nearly ten years her senior when his wife suddenly passes. Jaime misses her.

Writes her ravens upon ravens-

But Cersei barely returns the favor. As time passes, Jaime writes less, and thinks less of his sister. His duties as heir to the Rock, as caretaker to his so fragile mother, consume him.

So it goes.

Jaime thinks of Melara Hetherspoon, vividly, when he meets his first love. Years after she is gone, he can admit, he was startled when he walks in the Halls of Riverrun.

He thinks of her when he sees Lysa Tully, with her coppery red hair and the rose of her complexion. The shades are all wrong. Her face is pretty, but not as striking as Melara’s had been, with more strength in the hold of her high cheekbones. Her mouth is too wide, her eyes too blue . But he thinks of Melara. He tries hard not to think of that dead girl he hadn’t even known, as her hold had haunted his sister. But he had seen her in the way that Lysa had looked at her father, the tension in her face as Catlyn is so uplifted by Hoster and how little mind they paid to her.

He remembered Melara and wondered if he had paid mind to her if she would have lived. If she would have found peace and escaped from her abusive kin. If she would not have bled out in his sister’s arms.

His heart is furious, his mind a whirl, and he reaches out to Lysa.

She doesn’t care for him. Her mind is fixed on the Baelish boy- But he is Jaime Lannister. He is handsome, and he turns her head soon enough. Perhaps she had thought a second borne daughter deserved less than a boy of her peerage, and he willingly changes her mind. She turns her head with poetry and flowers left upon her lap like an altar to the Maiden. He tells her tales of the West, offers to walk the gardens of Riverrun, begs to ride on the riverboats that she handles like a horse… She sings songs he used to sing.

She is innocent and young and fragile. As Melara had been with her smiles.

Baelish makes a remark of her, a crudeness to her beauty being partly to her elder sister- People laugh it off- Lysa’s face crumples in both hurt and jealousy-

But Jaime does not let it stand.

Trust blooms after that duel.  He makes a mess of the Baelish boy, rips humiliate him for the strike against Lysa… And when she smiles, there is sweetness in her eyes, awe in the part of her mouth. Jaime asks for her favor, a token of her to take home to the Rock. 

She grants it with a kiss, a clumsy ribbon abound with fishes and brambling lions, with that touch to the corner of his mouth.

Jaime learns of their betrothal but days later, and when his mother asks, he can only plea for her to be taken from Riverrun.

“There is poison and spite in those halls,” is all he can say.

He takes her maidenhead in heat and love, moons before they would actually wed, and he thinks he will love this girl with these blue eyes for as long as he lives.

The Tourney at Harrenhal he sees his sister for the first time in years.

Cersei… Cersei is different. She shines bright in robes so scandalously Dornish that his father gnashes his teeth. Cersei never wears the red of their House, never since Melara, only gold and she dances in orange and golden sun… She goes still to Lysa. Looks at his betrothed and he wonders if she sees it too.

The girl that died in her arms.

She is nothing like Melara- Melara that he can barely remember, but, there is something like her in the girl he loves, he can admit. It was what made him look-

But it is not what made him stay.

“I hate her,” Cersei says, waspishly, drunk and trembling, at the opening feast.

Jaime looks at her.

“I love her.”

She snarls at him.

“You can’t marry her.”

“That’s not for you to decide, Cersei.”

Her emerald eyes are like fire.

He rides. Even against the Prince-

He wins the winter roses crown.

And he crowns Lysa.

The smiles of Harrenhal are ever bright.

Save but one, but Jaime has long learned to ignore Cersei, as she had him.

Lysa dies choking on her own blood, in his arms. Still crowned as his queen of love and beauty.

The King screams and jeers, half a man. Poison, death, poison-

Jaime cannot help but fall deathly silent. His Lysa, his bride-

His love-

Another girl dead before her time. Smelling of blood and winter roses.

Jaime is listless.

Until he hears.

The Stark girl, stolen by the crown Prince, already wed. Two Stark men were murdered in a jeer. The bastard of a King calls for the head of the boy he made a Lord by murdering his brother and father, and the betrothed of the girl his son had stolen away.

Riverrun rings of marriage. The North, Riverlands, the Stormlands, and the Eyrie bay for blood.

He thinks of Lysa.

The West does not wait .

The ruins of King’s Landing will haunt the Seven Kingdoms forever more.

It is only by some miracle that both Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark had hesitated to enter the city when the gates had been so jarringly open to them.

The Red Keep Falls in green flames.

Consumed.

There are no survivors, save one.

Little Rheanys Targaryen is alive, frightened, naked, and screaming for her dead father, clinging to the dragons in her lap.

Robert Baratheon raises his damn hammer.

Jaime raises the sword that had killed Melara Hetherspoon, Oakspoon, and refuses to allow him to murder a child.

Eddard Stark raises his own sword, Ice, and refuses to back down.

Jaime scoops up the girl at the end of the newly crowned King being pulled away and watches as the Dragons fly away with a haunting cry.

The West claims the Princess, as she is kin of kin.

They ride for Dorne with the North with them, searching for a wolf-girl.

They find death and yet another babe.

Another girl dead before her time. Smelling of blood and winter roses.

Eddard Stark makes him swear to keep the little boy safe.

Jaime takes this vow as seriously as all others.

The Princess is not allowed to stay in Dorne by order of their new King.

The West steals half of the Dornish Court to keep the girl with her kin, and Jaime knows his hate for their new King is as strong as the last. He cares not for his sister’s gleaming eyes as she looks at Rheanys, or when she looks at her blond son.

The West, the North, and Dorne tie together.

Jaime does not wed.

He will not.

Another rebellion.

It turns to two.

The West, the North, and Dorne have tied together. And Riverland follows as it will.

Rheanys rides her dragon to war, barely above a child, with fury in her heart. Her brother at her side.

Fire and Blood.

The Seven Kingdoms is no longer.

They are now Westlands, and the Eastlands, respectively.

Four and five Kingdoms.

The crown of the Westlands is given to Eddard Stark as Regent, with little Rheaneys at his heel. His father steps into the position of Hand of the King. Their new Capital is selected to be built on the ruins of Harnhell, central, and a marvel beyond hope. Temporarily, Queen Rhenys makes her court mobile, flying between Keeps with her retainers at her heels.

Jaime does not wed.

He will not.

Cersei dies on the block.

Her children are not Doran's.

She is caught in bed with a young man with fair hair and emerald eyes.

All of her children favor the look of their family, and there is too much doubt to allow direct inheritance. 

Doran never smiles again.

He meets his lady wife in a way he does not expect, in a girl he would not have thought.

Ned Stark dies in his sleep, much too young, much too quick to be taken from the world.

At his funeral, his eldest daughter looks to him.

Sansa Stark is too young, even at twenty, too perfect for the likes of him. The niece to Lysa-

He can't marry her.

She's too young, too perfect.

But her heart is set, and she calls him her knight. 

She leaves favors and poems in his lap as if he is the Warrior himself, as if it is an alter.

She sings songs he used to sing.

Jaime is awestruck.

They wed in Casterly Rock's Sept.

She arrives astride a dragon, with her cousin and their queen escorting her down the aisle.

Jaime is happy beyond what words can express.

A Night comes.

It is long.

Full of terrors.

The Westlands is ready. They live.

A promise is fulfilled. 

Spring blooms.

Life follows.

Children turn to grandchildren.

Spring makes way to Summer, to Autumn to Winter, and spring again.

Jaime dies in his sleep.

He sees a familiar yard. The place where a young girl died in his sister’s arms.

In it, he sees that girl. He had forgotten the color of her eyes. Her face had faded from his mind. She smiles just as prettily as she had before. And his heart wrenches at the sight he had forgotten.

"Tienes miedo?" she whispers, and it is a language he does not know.

Jaime steps forward, and kneels at the girl’s feet. He sees how young she had been, so fucking  young . His youngest grandchild is older than Melara Hetherpsoon had been at her death.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, to her, and he is not ashamed in his old age that he cries as he says it, “If I had looked at you if I had known, I would have done my utmost to help you. You are a regret in my heart I could never erase.”

Her eyes, bright sea green like the sunset sea, shimmer. She smiles again, softer, gentler.

“It’s okay,” she says, and her voice is a curious chorus. Two voices. A girl’s voice… A woman’s voice.

“No. I did my utmost to never overlook anyone ever again.”

She laughs, and it is a song.

“People are waiting for you.”

She looks away. Points to the door leading into the Rock. It shines a light so pure. Without his mean, Jaime stands and takes steps toward it. He knows without much thought that in that light, he will be at peace, happy.

Why is Melara alone? 

He stops. She is watching him. Her expression is sorrowful, wistful.

“Come with me,” he tells her. He extends his wrinkled hand to the little girl.

She sighs.

“I can’t.”

His heart lurches.

“Then I will not,” he replies.

She cries. Tears spill from her sea-green eyes.

“You’re family is waiting. Lysa and Joanna-”

“But you are alone. Did you not hear me? I do not overlook anyone.”

Melara Hetherspoon wails. Jaime is a grandfather. He has known many a crying child. He holds open his arms. She flings herself to him. Slowly, Jaime falls to sit, gently allowing the girl to cry. He wonders if Melara ever cried like this, alone, when they lived. He soothes and rocks.

“I did not even know your name,” he confesses, “That is part of what struck me the most. My own self-absorption. I did not know the girl who died. And yet, I was given your sword, but I had not known your name. I am sorry, child, truly.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad. You used Oakspoon to protect innocents… You changed so many people’s fates with your regrets. I don’t mind it in that case.”

He hummed. She hummed back. Her voice was lovely, even as a hum.

And there is peace in his heart.

Chapter Text

Joanna Lannister watches as if from a very, very far place. 

Because the fate of Westeros, of her House, changes . It takes three people to tear the Realm asunder. Each and every single death haunts her for the rest of her life. No other soul she loses after that moment ever affects her quite so harshly. If anyone asked her, she would be hard-pressed to say what occurred, exactly that morning. Days, moons, years of reflection, and Joanna cannot remember. She knew a struggle had occurred. She remembers that. She remembers the yells, the screams- She knows the King had pulled- And she had heard the horrific crash of Tygett’s armor. Melara's horrifyingly small whimper, and the Dornish Prince's bellow of rage and disbelief.

But beyond that, she doesn’t know.

Because that day she stands, breathing heavily, in stupefied disbelief.  Her good brother is dead. She realizes it, palm against the wall, her other hand on her mouth as she stares down the stupidly short stairway just off the side of the great hall, heading towards the front gates. It is barely twenty stairs, perhaps the height of two horses. But there he is, splayed out, his neck broken, eyes vacant and dead. He weakly holds Melara in his arms, his once strong arms slack. The girl is a small bundle, a ball of fabric, nearly still, if not for the small movement of her shoulders. Joanna prays, softly, that Prince Oberyn will reach her in time, as he sprints down the steps. 

Her prayers go unheeded. For Melara lifts her head.

“ Tygett !?” Melara’s voice is a shriek. A devastatingly pitiful scream that only a young girl can produce. High and keeping and wretched.

That scream will reappear in Joanna’s dreams for the rest of her life.

So odd, that she forgets most of this day, but that will be with her until she breathes her last.

"Sweetling, don't look," whispers Oberyn Martell, voice thick and careful, as he finally kneels by the girl’s side, "Come along."

He reaches for the girl, careful and delicate. 

Melara is helplessly shaking at Tygett, sobbing his name in the repeated mantra. So fast it blurs together into nonsensical sounds that barely sound human.

His green and black eyes still stare at nothing, and Joanna takes a tentative step forward, chest heaving.  Melara keeps reaching for his face, begging softly. Calling his name with a howling grief that shatters Joanna. She is injured, broken and twisted arm, and perhaps her leg as well. It is jutting oddly from beneath her skirt… It is why Oberyn is incredibly delicate when he tries to pull her away. 

“Look away,” whispers the Dornish Prince, and he gathers the girl close. Curls her carefully into the crook of his neck and rocks her like a babe.

“He promised to take me to my Hethers,” she whispers, helpless and horrified.

Joanna goes still on the stairs. Her heart pounds.  

He meant to take her away. He meant to remove her from the Rock. Melara- Melara wished for it. She has resigned herself from Jaime, no matter how pretty she blushes with him. 

“I will give you the Hethers, my Lady, I will,” whispers Obyern, soothed like the young father he is, and Joanna cried softly as he crooned to the girl she called her’s, already in her heart and mind, “We will sail today if we must. I will petition for your guardianship to get you home, we will take my girls to your lagoon, to your Hether cliffs of orange, yes? Don’t look, don’t look at him, sweet girl, please, please.”

“He was mine,” whispers Melara, and it is devastation itself, “He swore to me to protect me. I killed him. He was not meant to die. Not today. Not today .”

“Shh, sweet girl, I will take you today, I swear if I can, I promise-”

The King.

Joanna has always hated him. She hated him the moment they met as children, and he looked at her and never stopped looking away from her as if she was something for him to consume, to fucking own beneath his thumb like a fucking pet.

But her hatred that day, and towards him forevermore-

It becomes so acute, so devastating that Joanna never knew she could be so hateful, even to him.

For the King comes in with his fucking ego and fuckery and it destroys what Joanna had decided for her son, for the West. And he takes one more thing from her, more than her peace, more than her dignity before the Realm, more than her goodbrother’s life. He takes this girl she has chosen, this child she who had begged for solace and safety, and he makes a fucking liar of Joanna. 

He breaks her. A fragile child who had been held together by the merest of tethers.

This, Joanna remembers with utter clarity .

The King comes and he does not leave well enough alone.

“Child,” The King calls voice shaken. He swallows, and shakes his head, slowly, as he spews his fucking cowardice and self-justification, “Child the man should have stayed still, it was not-”

Melara rightly shrinks into Oberyn, and clings to the barely a man who has sought to hold and console her. Joanna is struck by Oberyn’s youth then when he turns his blazing brown eyes to the King.

“You have just killed her sworn shield, you have no right to speak to her!” he yells back.

The King is a fool.

“Who are you to speak for this child?!” he spits, “I have killed no one that did not try to flee without my leave-”

“You’re a monster, and I swear to the Seven if you do not leave this girl alone I will gut you myself!” 

The King is a fool. The King is a short-sided, egotistical fool. But then, the Prince is brash and young.

“YOU THREATEN THE KING?!”

A gesture of the hand. A Kingsguard comes, sword in hand.

Melara screams. Prince Oberyn takes out a dagger in defense- And then… The Prince lies deathly still. His knife is still in hand. A quick, economical slash across the throat. And he is dead.

He drops, Melara with him. Atop of her. Again, Melara is covered in blood. 

Joanna screams.

Melara screams higher, more wretched.

“ No !” the girl cries, howls, even louder than the King, she roars, a lion cub, not a girl, “ NONONONONONONONONONO! ”

Her words bleed together. People leave the hall, and it is Princess Elia who sees it all first.

“BROTHER!” Cries out Princess Elia, sobbing, stumbling down the steps. Towards the bodies- Her lady is attempting to drag the girl back. 

“ NONONONONONONONONONO! ”

Without warning, without another word, Melara draws a knife. The Kingsguard draw swords against a child . They stand in front of the King.

Melara heaves a breath.

“ You are the ruin of House Targaryen, Aerys The Mad ,” she says, and her hysterical shriek has a near musical tone now, her voice a croon despite its fierce rasp, “ Your legacy will be bone and ash, your House dead in just two generations. You will be nothing, nothing but scraps of shattered bones and food for the worms, and your House legacy will die ingloriously at the hands of your own child . ”

The King stood deathly still. Looked wide-eyed at the girl.

She slits her own throat.

Melara silts her own throat. She drops. Gurgles. It takes-

It takes her too long to die.  Joanna screams. Hands on her mouth. No, no child no.

She feels a twist in her womb. 

A sudden, rushing gush-

Her babe is coming.

Joanna screams . House Lannister’s guards come thundering for her, too fucking late.

Joanna acts .

“ SIEZE THE KING, ” She bellows, dripping blood and birth water, a savage and cornered lioness who just lost her cub to madness, “ KILL THE KINGSGUARD! ”

No Westerlander hesitates .

Tywin comes too late. 

Resentment is born in her that day towards her husband.

He had always refused to see the worst of the King, and because of it, three people are dead. Three people that were her’s, were dead. At his heels is Meria. Some conversation for trade or something- Joanna does not care. Still, at the beginning of birthing, she grabs the front of Tywin’s doublet and hauls him by his collar to meet her eyes. She knows she looks crazed. 

She does not care.

She will not care for some good time. 

“Call the Lords. All the Realm is here. Aerys has murdered your brother, the Dornish prince, and my girl in our very halls. We will not stand for this,” she tells Tywin, tears slipping down her cheeks, her womb clenching fiercely, “No more, Tywin. No more .”

His face is pale. And in his eyes, she sees his devastation. Tywin has loved his family, no matter the man he is. And this. This was too much even for him.

“No more,” he whispers, fiercely.

Joanna sobs.

She does love her husband. But she feels resentment to him, and she will feel it for the rest of her life. If he had just listened to her, this would have never happened. 

“That girl shall be sent to her Hethers, buried with her parents,” She demands.

“Of course, Joanna.”

She hauls him closer too, teeth bared. 

“The plans she had will fall to me,” she says, “Her legacy will be at my hands and I will make all she wished for true. Melara Hetherspoon will be remembered .”

“Joanna-”

“I meant her for Jaime. Jaime loves her,” she whispers to him, sobs to him.

He stills.

Eyes going wider.

“She was to be my legacy, not the other way around. Tywin,” her voice strains with harsh flutters of birth, and she cries out, “I loved her as well. She was mine, mine , my love.”

“She will be remembered, Joanna, I swear it.”

She breathed.

“Call the midwives and the Maester.”

Tywin blinks.

Joanna sobs and clings to him.

“The babe is coming.”

Then.

She sees him. Jaime . Her brave boy. She realizes with a jolt that he is with his father. He, as he has been for the last two weeks, with his father.

Again, she is too fucking late. 

Her kindest child. He is with Tywin. Staring at Melara’s emptied-eyed corpse. The girl he loves, dead before she bleeds, dead before he could truly understand love. The morning after he has realized he was in love. She wrenches herself from Tywin, ignoring his reaching for her son. She pulls his face away from Melara’s body.

“She was- She cannot be dead. Mother,” he says, simply, helplessly. 

Joanna stares at him, she holds his face.

“I’m sorry, Jaime,” she says helplessly, “I’m sorry, my son.”

“Mother. No. Please, she- she had just escaped her horrors. No. No, it’s not fair ! ” he screams, he tries to pull away, “ MELLIE! MELLIE! MELARA ! ”

He keeps screaming her name throughout her labor, and she sobs as she sets to her birthing bed.

Joanna labors for nearly four days.

She screams. Screams and screams herself hoarse. What she sees is the swift, economical way Melara had slit her throat. What she sees is Tygett’s vacant eyes.  The unnatural angle of his neck. She sees Oberyn’s hand still clutching his blade. She hears her boy’s pleas for it all to be a lie.

She screams .

Tyrion is deformed.

When Joanna sees him, sees his little face… She loves him. She cannot lose anyone else.

Her husband is cruel.

Holds him as if he is trash, not their son. Born in the light of tragedy, Joanna clings to Tyrion with all she is. The resentment born the day Melara died cements truly when Tywin tries to kill her last child not moments after he has breathed.

“No Tywin, I cannot bear death,” she pleads. 

“He nearly killed you. If you had birthed any longer-”

“Do not take another child from me, Tywin.”

Tywin Lannister listens to his wife.

She will never trust him, truly, with any of their children ever again. 

The realm is in an uproar.

This is no petty house thrown to burn.

This is House Lannister, House Martell that have suffered at the hands of the King.

Little speak of the Hetherspoon girl. She was a child, and they do not say anything of her, beyond the pity of youth lost.

Joanna will find every house that calls her the instigator, and she will make them remember the ‘ Rains of Castamere’ if it is the last she does in life. 

King Rhaegar, the First of his Name is crowned in their sept, the eyes of the Realm on him. His father in chains. 

Her words to him, no doubt, echoing in his ear.

“ You will look to your kingdom, Rhaegar Targaryen, or I will rip your House asunder. You owe me a debt. Your father murdered what was mine , and I will bring in that debt unless you hold yourself well. If he were a good king, he would not have subjected us to his vulgar desires. Hold yourself true, boy King, or we will come for you. There are no dragons now, Rhaegar Targaryen. Only men. And men die as any other.”

They take Melara to her Hethers.

The Isle is strangely misnamed. It is not one, but two islands, encircling each other like a knot, one which nearly encompasses the other, with high cliffs with its farmlands. The inner island is smaller, and it houses its keep upon the Oaken Mount which once was the place where a Lannister King named a hedge Knight a lord by his bravery and a spoon. 

At Joanna’s begging, Tygett is buried with Melara. He had died for her and he was her’s. Oberyn- Oberyn’s body is with them as well. They will hold their funeral here before his bones are to be taken to Sunspear. 

Princess Elia had begged for it herself.

“All he wanted was to make her smile,” she confesses to Joanna, “He would want to be with them, a while longer.”

She holds poor little Tyrion held tight to her chest.

In the morning of mid-Winter, the Realm at their backs, she sees the Hethers. Sees the precious, precious thing that Melara had longed for. The fields of Hether, dormant in the cold of the winter, are still beautiful. The terrace cliffs and the saltwater lagoon, the secret sweet, underground water of the Keep that feeds the rivers that follow out to the rest of the isles… She sees what had born the child she was ready to make her’s and Joanna feels sorrow beyond what she can name. She had thought all her tears were gone. 

But the Hethers bring more tears after all. 

The Sept of the Hethers is beautiful, made of the same green serpentine stone that makes the majority of the Keep. The Castle itself stands at the very center of the inner Island, encircling the saltwater lagoon in its walls, save for a sea gate. Its windows are large, frightfully so, circular, and lovingly painted in orange hethers and oak leaves with holy images.

Melara is a contrast to Tygett and Oberyn.

While her good brother and Oberyn have started to rot-

Melara frightfully looks as if she is simply sleeping, her throat covered by a large silk choker the size of the self-inflicted wound.

The prayers are said.

Her children cry.

Jaime loudest of all. 

But Melara is laid in her Hethers, Tygett is with her, and in that, Joanna is content at that promise fulfilled.      

Even if she cries in despair.

For no mother should have to bury her child. 

Time passes.

Jaime, her son, mourning, near wild with it, refuses even the conversation of an engagement. Joanna holds onto her boys. Her Jaime, wild in grief and becoming such a man that Melara would have loved within a handful of years. Tyrion grows in leaps and bounds, mind fierce and inquisitive and wonderful.

So she holds her sons to her, desperately, even as her daughter runs to her ruin, to her folly. She will wither, Joanna knows. 

A Queen has no power, not truly, and Cersei has stupidly captured the young King’s attention. Courted it, invited it, snared the Dragon King to her hand. 

And her daughter is too much of a fool to see it. Too blind, too impatient in her avarice. 

Joanna could do nothing for her now.  Cersei secures the King as her husband. Against Joanna’s wishes, against her counsel to them both, Rhaegar Targaryen weds her daughter in the Great Sept, and Joanna weeps, and rages .

Tywin thinks himself secure, his Legacy to be of royalty again.

All Joanna knows is that Cersei will be eaten alive, and she can do nothing for her child.

Her daughter’s crown is golden. 

And her smile is poison and triumphant.

Joanna watches, and despairs.

Cersei writes.

She hates the King.

She is hated, she writes, whining and furious, she is ‘degraded’ by his lack of attention. 

Joanna laments the fool she has had.

She mourns the daughter she has lost, a million and one times until the day she dies.

The only good missive that Cersei sends is that she is with a child.

Her grandchild is to be on the Iron Throne, but Joanna feels nothing but emptiness at the thought.  

Cersei is dead within the year.

Treason .

Tywin rages, as Cersei is caught in an affair with some partly Westner. Caught in the King’s bed. All she is said to have said is that the King did not pay her enough attention when Joanna asked. Joanna weeps, and she can do nothing to save her daughter. She is pregnant, she is only seventeen, and she will die after her child is born.  

She will be dead because of her idiocy of cuckolding the King.

Joanna weeps, and rages , as she had known her daughter would have been a horrible Queen. She tells Tywin as much and reminds him bitterly of her own protests of Cersei’s capabilities.

They fight as they have never fought before. 

She does not speak to him for moons after that, and neither does he to her. 

She moves her things to the Lady’s rooms in the Casterly Rock, and their marriage, she knows, will never be the same. 

She is gone before the morning, to King’s Landing. 

She will be with Cersei.

That, she could do.

Cersei is all schemes.

All plans.

All ignorant and dependent on a forgiveness she will never receive. 

Joanna can do nothing but be with her. 

Cersei’s schemes fail.

Cersei tries. 

And tries.

She fails.

Her royal imprisonment is switched to the black cells.

The only reason she is not dead yet is the babe that might be royal.

Joanna sees something die in her daughter.

Arrogance gives way to fear. 

Cersei realizes too late that she is doomed. 

Joanna holds her when she breaks. 

Cersei’s child is born.

It is a boy.

A boy with violet eyes and silver curls. With his eyes and his hair, his father is in no doubt. No other man would look like the King. 

The King names him Aegon. 

Cersei begs for absolution, for her mercy for giving birth to the crown Prince.

The King gives her nothing. His eye, Joanna knows, has wandered.

A she-wolf with fierce eyes had been crowned the King’s Queen of love and beauty while her lioness rotted in the black cells.

Joanna hates the boy-King with every fiber of her being.  

Cersei is called the ‘One-Year-Queen’ and whore in the same breath.

Joanna receives her daughter’s body. Her beautiful golden curls had been sheered off before they had taken her head.

With her body, she receives a royal invitation to a wedding. 

Cersei had practiced. In the black cells, she had quietly practiced on how she would kneel before the block. Pregnant, and swollen with child, Cersei had practiced in the last weeks of her life.

“ I am lioness, ” her daughter had said, face wane and unrepentant, “ They will not see me weak. My son will be King. My son will sit on the Iron Throne. That is my legacy. ”

She does not weep.

She has found her tears are gone.

She resents her husband, all the more, for allowing her stupid, vain child to throw herself to her death. For ill-preparing her mind for the tasks she would have to overcome as queen.

No mother should bury her child.

Yet Joanna has already done it twice in her life.

And she feels emptier for it.  

Tyrion finds love.

Unexpectedly, suddenly, he finds love in a poor girl with no great name or anything but her sweet love.

Tywin tries to teach a lesson. Tries to damn their youngest to be as cruel as he. Joanna’s resentment grows, and she stands between the man who made the Rains. Her back is tall, her gaze is fury.

Jaime stands next to her. It is a lioness who hunts in a pride, and she reminds her husband of such when she grips that ignorant, lovely peasant girl who loved her son truly. Takes her to her feet, and makes a lady of her. Makes her worthy of her son's hand. 

Unharmed, unhurt by her husband’s cruelty.

Tysha Lannister lives, and grows dearer to her, every year. She gives her her second grandchild. A sweet blond girl with Tygett’s and Tyrion’s eyes. 

Joanna weeps when she hears ‘Melara’ for the first time in nearly fifteen years, bestowed by Tyrion, softly. Weeps hard as if she is dying.

Jaime weeps with her. 

They visit the Hethers.  

Most of the time, it is her and Jaime, with Kevin or Genna or Gerion making the trip with them on occasion.  Yet every year, they go to the Hethers. Tyrion cannot bear to come, most of the time. He thinks himself an intruder, and though he speaks of the girl ‘who was my sister’ fondly, he demures as soon as he is old enough. He is grateful for the girl whom he had never known, whose name is his babe’s, but he does not wish to intrude on Jaime’s and her time with someone they loved.  

They visit every year on the moon that Melara, Tygett, and Oberon died.

Jaime whispers to the coffin that holds Melara, every time. He places a wreath of orange hether, jasmine, and goldenmane at her feet. He has for every year they have come. He is older now. Nearly thirty, unwed. He has vowed, he told her, to never wed. 

His devotion is true. Foolish, perhaps, as Tywin despairs, but Joanna cannot bring herself to be angry for it. 

They will be song of it, one day, she knows.

They will sing of the Prince of Fireflies, the Fool, of the Dragonknight-

And of Jaime Lannister, the Golden Lion who loved a knightly girl who sang covered in blood to the Realm. 

The Golden Lion and his Bloody Bird, young and forever separated by a blade’s cruel kiss and a Mad King.

Joanna Lannister dies, old in her bed, with Tyrion’s daughter holding her face gently and promising she will be the best Lady of the Rock, that the Hethers will continue to bloom long after she is gone.

Joanna dies weeping and smiling at Melara Lannister’s vow.   

Melara sits at the bottom of the steps, and next to her, Joanna sees her goodbrother, sees Prince Oberyn. 

She weeps.

She had forgotten the exact shade of Melara’s eyes, the breath of Tygett’s shoulders, the sweetness of Oberyn’s laugh, in the years since they had died. It is a joy to see. 

“Sweetling,” she cries, and she rushes, despite her advanced age, to reach for the daughter she had lost. 

The girl stands, her smile soft and wondering. 

“Hello, my Lady,” Melara calls to her, voice like honey.

She sobs. Kisses upon her brow, her cheeks.

“I am so wretchedly sorry,” she cries, "I should have protected you more. I should have been more careful with you. I didn't know, truly, how fragile you were. I'm sorry."

The girl laughs, slightly.

“Tienes miedo?” she whispers, and it is a language that Joanna does not know. 

She grips her tight to her.

“I love you, sweet girl, I have missed you,” she says, desperately. 

Melara smiles. 

“And I you, my lady.”