A Dance with the Stranger
Chapter One / An Old Song
Author's Note: Originally written for ASOIAF Kink Meme. Based on the musical Elisabeth, where the Empress Sisi has a love-hate relationship with Death. While there are dialogue references and section headers based on the musical, you do not need any familiarity with Elisabeth to follow the story. Enjoy! Reviews greatly appreciated.
"No one was as proud as her.
She despised you.
She laughed at you.
No one ever understood her.
Spoiled! Threatened!
We were scared of what she desired.
A shadow laid on her soul,
A curse laid on her life.
- Elisabeth
… Prolog …
Cersei Lannister's heart would be heavy, were she not leaving to marry Rhaegar Targaryen. Her father prepares for King's Landing and will bring her along as his charming, beguiling daughter. In two or three years, she will wed her dragon prince and be the happiest girl in the world. Her father promised.
Jaime has scarce left her side, knowing she leaves to become a princess and he stays to become a knight. To be a princess—and later a queen—has a price. But Cersei will pay it.
The feast buzzes around her, words too jumbled to hear. They have a grand hall but the summer breeze has made the day so beautiful that her lord father erected giant pavilions outside the castle. She looks down the table to Tywin but he is speaking with Aunt Genna. Good. That means she can go find Jaime, who had disappeared after the swan was served. Graciously excusing herself, she makes for the courtyard.
Instead of her twin, several lordling sons tramp around.
"My lady," greets the taller one. "Help us find your brother."
Cersei eyes the young man who is trying, and failing, to grow a beard. Of course Jaime still plays hiding games. He forgets he is not a child anymore. But Cersei knows where he must be. The courtyard hosts a lion statue three times as tall as her father, brought from the Free Cities,. It sits on its haunches, claws jutting from its paws, guarding Casterly Rock. Dragonstone has its crumbling stone gargoyles. She has a giant lion.
"You're behind its mane, Jaime!"
At her voice a blond flash of curl wisps out from behind the lion's neck, but quickly pulls back. He always hides up there, tucked in the hollow between its pale shoulders, free to laugh at all the people who are too scared to look.
But Cersei is not afraid. While Jaime would eventually come out if she asked enough, she is reckless after several cups of wine and restless after hours at a dull feast. She kicks off her slippers and steps onto the lion's paw.
"My lady, you can't climb it."
Cersei turns to smirk at the lordling. "A lioness has claws, and mine are sharp enough."
Cowardly boy, to be afraid of a statue. She has climbed it before, albeit with Jaime there to guide and pull.
Yanking her dress to her knees, she wedges her foot in another hollow, then another, and then her hands find their own spaces. Finally, a blond head pokes out above her. Jaime looks down and laughs. The afternoon sun catches his hair just right. No dragon has hoarded such fine gold.Until Rhaegar marries you, of course. Cersei grins. She is no limpid southron lady, nor a wild she-beast of the North. She is a lioness, proud and elegant and fierce. And she wants to look down on Casterly Rock one last time with her brother.
"Sister, fine, I'll come down." He edges around the lion's mane, feet effortlessly finding the nooks in its muscular shoulders.
"Stay, I want to come up."
She climbs higher, fingers and toes starting to ache but paying no mind. She is almost halfway.
"My lady, get down at once!"
Wrinkled crone. Cersei is furious the crotchety septa will accompany them to King's Landing. Paying her no mind, she pulls herself up. How could Father punish me anyway? Her brother looks caught between amusement and unease. She grins, even as her feet scrape painfully against the rock. Like as not he imagines a kiss between those lion shoulders, a hiding place where they are safe to touch and kiss and play. At last he kneels and extends a hand. Cersei is too high to easily get back down. It will have to be with Jaime. The wind pulls more at her gown.
"Cersei Lannister you will—" but her father's glacial voice snaps off as Cersei's dress, so fine and delicate, catches underfoot.
She digs in her good foot and heaves, a lioness's desperate leap for the top. In truth, she has no claws. But her lunge does push her back from the statue, back and down. Jaime dives, swipes, trying to grab her wrist. Too slow you fool! Cersei feels a screech in her throat as she plummets, straight to the stone-paved courtyard. It hurts. Breath wheezes and she swears her lungs have collapsed. Nothing compares to the crack of her head hitting stone, or the ringing in her ears that heralds only black.
Rhaegar…
… Schwarzer Prinz / Black Prince …
Her cheek rests against something soft. Incredibly soft—like a maiden's velvet, or a rabbit's downy fur. Cracking an eye open, she sighs in relief when there is no bright light. A chuckle rumbles above her. Who carries me?
She snaps up, ready to scream. But she only looks into two beautiful violet eyes. Her brow furrows. Rhaegar Targaryen is carrying me? The crown prince looks down at her and offers a wry smile. She sees the glint of one incisor. Yet…she is at Casterly Rock, and Rhaegar lives in King's Landing. And his eyes are wrong. She fell in love with her dragon prince because of his melancholy gaze, gentle but never weak. The eyes looking down at her are sharp with humor. And something sharper.
The fall. Cersei writhes, trying to hook an arm about his shoulder and make him stop. The Stranger? She was falling, smashing—dying? No! She has a prince to marry.
"Put me down, I am Cersei Lannister!"
His grin grows wider and toothier, so different from Rhaegar's brief smiles, "Why should I care? I claimed a kiss from Aemon the Dragonknight and Queen Visyna. You are just a lion cub."
Anger, hot and freeing, sharpens her thoughts. She slipped, Jaime missed, her father shouted, and the stones crunched. His arms are hooked beneath her back and knees, like a hero in a song, but no one sings about the Stranger.
"I am no cub, and I said leave me!" Before she can think, she slaps him.
Her skin meets cool flesh, hard bone, but no sound snaps back. The Stranger's eyes still widen, amused, almost surprised. Cersei glares. Everything around them is dark and billowing, aphotic even. Like he carries her beneath a bottomless lake.
Then she feels a softness beneath her. He settles her on…on my bed, with cold fingers grazing her brow, pushing back a lock of hair. The Stranger sits beside her, all care for propriety gone.
Her thoughts make her giggle. Of course she dreams. She hurt herself so she dreams of death, she loves Rhaegar so she dreams of her silver prince. People who hit their heads think funny, and Cersei remembers stones and cracking and ringing.
"Why should I?" he repeats, soft, sonorous, like an unchecked tide.
If this is a dream, her father cannot chastise her for being rude. Cersei looks him straight in the eye. "Because I am Cersei of House Lannister, soon to also be Cersei of House Targaryen, and you will not stop me."
The Stranger chuckles again, something she feels more than hears. He wears black, his doublet studded in dark rubies. Velvet or leather? The texture seems to change every moment. He is a courtier, then he is a hunter…but he is not Rhaegar. Though his silver hair frames his high cheekbones and his lilac eyes gleam in the scattered light, he is no dragon. Or human, she thinks. But he is beautiful. When has she thought the Stranger beautiful? Her septa makes her think of an old hooded man, cold like her father, cruel as a death in childbed. But her bed is so soft. It pulls her down, cradling every bit of her. It would be lovely to close her eyes…no, don't sleep!
Something steels in his eyes and he leans down—Cersei has not spent so long with Jaime as to not realize, and her hand covers his mouth.
"I am no tavern wench," she says, lowering her voice like her father, who almost never yells, but still scares every man at court.
The Stranger pulls back and she sees something soften.
"No you are not." He takes her hand and kisses it, his lips like ice. If they had touched her mouth, somehow she knows they would freeze all the breath in her body.
Still, some instinct makes her reach up and cup his cheek. The one she slapped, even if he deserved it. His other hand settles on hers and Cersei marvels at his long ivory fingers.
He is not Rhaegar, and certainly not Jaime. And yet, the look he gives her—as if his eyes have seen countless centuries and only now find something to intrigue them. Of all things, the Stranger pays her court. To feel the curiosity of something so old and wise and untouchable…her throat tightens, her eyes sting. For this, she loves him a little. Before she knows what she is doing, she pushes herself up to kiss that cold and perfect mouth.
Instead, he pushes her back, gentle as the sweetest poison. Cersei saw the flash there, the hesitation, the fleeting surprise he refused her. And his desire, still a warm and unvarnished concept to her youthful mind. Could Jaime ever present a gift so grand?
"Not today," he says in whispery amusement.
Finally he stands, and Cersei marvels at his darkness, his pride, his beauty. His hair falls past his shoulders, a pale silver unnaturally of mortal earth since the Targaryens claimed Westeros. But to take his hand and demand he bring her along would mean an end, and Cersei's song has not even begun. So she stays, giving him a calm nod, puzzling if this is a silly fever dream or…something else. She dreams, and this gives her a rush of poised daring. Why can she not be both wanton as a doxy and regal as the queen she will one day be?
"We are alike, Stranger." She carries all the solemnity of a foolish girl who thinks she is in love. "Proud, oft alone because of it. You are a black prince, and I am a golden queen."
The amusement sharpens his eyes again, the dark pupils larger than the violent ring, making them more precious in turn. She knows, somehow, there will always be a detached cruelty there, no matter his regard. "Before you are a queen, you are mine."
Cersei scoffs at her obstinate dreams. She is a queen, first and forever. A dragon's golden queen. But his phantom disappears then, stepping back into the dark, departing her dreams. Cersei wishes…no, that is silly, for she is dreaming.
It seems a moment later she awakes in her bed. Someone lies alongside her, face buried in the hollow of her shoulder. She shoves Jaime off, wriggling until she can breathe without her stale breath rebounding off his skin. Immediately the stones grind into her skull and she whimpers, fighting back nausea. Her brow is slick with sweat, cheeks chilled from a broken fever.
Jaime stirs beside her, sleepy as a child one moment, alert as a hunter the next.
"Cersei…"
She looks at him, at his bright green eyes and golden waves, so like her own. Green, not violet.
"What?"
He rolls on top of her, his elbow propping him up so he does not lie with his full weight on her chest. His kiss says more than words, warm and sweet, caring but too ardent to be gentle. She considers pushing him away but she tastes his panic and grief.
Foolish brother, she thinks, for her tongue is otherwise occupied. The Stranger pays me court. I would never die from something so inglorious as a cracked skull.
"I'm sorry," he chokes. "I let you fall."
She hears the guilt and kisses him more deeply. When she touches his warm cheek he flinches, making her draw back enough to see. The sputtering candle means she feels him more than sees him—sometimes she forgets which is which. But she knows his cheek bears a bruise, likely in the shape of a signet ring. Shall I treat him to my powder?
"Father?"
Jaime nods, his forehead against hers, breathing raw with worry and protective lust. Her brother has never taken her maidenhead, but she has had him in every other way.
Cersei leaves for King's Landing three days later, still prone to headaches but her father's sympathy is at an end. As far as he is concerned, her fall is her own fault. A lesson, not to reach so high.
…Der letzte Tanz / The Final Dance…
As Cersei sits at her wedding feast, a beauty of six-and-ten, her thoughts waver between joy and sorrow. Her dragon prince is dead, his chest smashed in by her new husband. Young King Robert could not save his lady love, a she-wolf who seduced Rhaegar Targaryen—Cersei refuses to believe her sweet prince would kidnap a woman and rape her. But Lyanna is dead, and Robert Baratheon has claimed a Lannister as a wife.
He bears not the beauty of her prince. Where Rhaegar was chiseled and melancholy, Robert is muscled and boisterous. A friend to all, some say.Unless you are a dragon. Her thoughts pause when a callused hand extends to her.
"The first dance is mine, my queen." His wine-soaked breath makes her nose burn, but a dance is his right. Many kinds of dances.
Smiling is not so hard as she feared—he is handsome and strong, with all the practical grace of a rutting stag. His eyes always match his mouth, and now they smile back at her. They dance to a gentle, spirited melody, his steps strong if not so deft, her own lithe feet easily keeping time. She is a queen, a stag's queen if not a dragon's. The only queen in all seven kingdoms. That is worth something.
She shivers as icicles prick her neck. She wears a Southron wedding dress, with elaborate cream skirts but a fitted, shoulder-bearing bodice. The shiver stays, vacillating between alluring and uncomfortable, like a hundred eyes on her exposed neck. Robert slows, his arm growing heavy at her hip, his feet sluggish. Even Jaime, standing near their hideous brother, wears a blank smile more sleepy than forcibly neutral. And the dark—she feels it as much as sees it.
Robert's eyes stare at nothing and he stills, like a puppet frozen on its strings.
An icy hand grabs her wrist, spinning her around, and she looks into the face she thought only a dream. The Stranger.
Curse him, he still looks like her dragon prince. Has he no respect for the dead? Cersei would snap at him, but his eyes chill her blood. They crackle with glacial fury. As if she is in the middle of a lake covered in paper-thin ice.
He smiles, canines sharp. "You wasted little time," he says, voice like slithering frost. Never like Rhaegar's.
His other hand drops to her waist and he draws her too close, so she must tilt her chin to meet his eyes. Behind him, the feast hall has gone still and silent.
Cersei still scoffs. As if her time was hers to waste. "Did you put a cloak on me?" she asks, not caring if she speaks with bravado.
"I merely wish a dance with the ephemeral bride. And to give my condolences."
Her ears sharpen around his last word. "Don't be a fool."
"Dance with me and I will prove otherwise." The threat is there. He pulled back from her lips once, but Cersei knows, with the certainty of an expecting mother who awakens to bloody sheets, he will not have a second moment of weakness. But she finds herself fixing him with her lioness's bloody smile, slipping into a dance that's tune only exists in her head.
Few dances have only one partner, even among ribald peasants. But her feet follow his, too long trained not to find his steps. Still, it is a strange dance, full of sweeps and turns—is he trying to make her head spin? All she hears are their voices and sorrowing music. Her shoes make no sound over the stones.
She will always meet his eyes. "Why would a young queen as beautiful as I need condolences on my wedding day?"
The Stranger loses his smile. Years ago he softened, but death can never suffer tenderness for long, only cool mercy.
"You were told why, in part, my sweet murderess."
Ice lances down her spine. Cersei never thinks about that day, of cursed fortune tellers and drowned companions, but she remembers the words.
"Nonsense," she hisses. "Did you see me living past that day at the Rock?" Cersei jars to a halt, tearing herself from the Stranger's cold embrace. Perhaps she dares her luck, but she cares not. Wine and crowns have made her bold. "War and death may lead others. Not me." She is a lioness, she is led by no one.
He bows, all mocking grace—did my bitch of a septa ever imagine this when she prayed? "Enjoy your cage, dear lioness. You gave me a dance, brief though it was." Cersei smirks. What wouldn't be brief to him? But his face does not change from its wrathful grin and she finds herself stepping back. "The shadows grow longer. One day, we will dance again."
Cersei backs into her husband, blinks as she collects herself, and suddenly sound returns to the hall. Robert's hands squeeze her shoulders and he plants a wet kiss on her neck.
"We will have the bedding soon. Sooner, by the looks of it. You make a beautiful queen."
But not a queen of love and beauty.
We will dance again.
She dares any maid to give a better wedding night than her. She and Jaime have made each other moan in a dozen different ways. Her maidenhead did not survive to her wedding night; Cersei vows to cut herself if need be, but at least the pain will be less. It is, barely. Seven save her if she had gone to his bed a maiden.
Her king chooses to reenact the Battle of the Trident, a damn sight drunker, and aiming his fury at her imagined maidenhood instead of Rhaegar's chest. Jaime, her beautiful Jaime, has made her scream and whimper, but for entirely different reasons. But she could bear that. Perhaps in time she could learn to like his beard scraping red marks over her chest and cheeks, his bulk making her gasp, and his thrusts hammering all the way to her lower back. What comes at the end, she cannot.
"Lyanna," he moans, his wine-raspy voice hot and wet against her ear.
"Cersei!" she snarls before she can stop herself. But he has already collapsed half upon her. Unlike Jaime, there is no protective love in his embrace. Only desire for a girl she knows for a thrice-damned fact he barely knew.
She curls away, scraped, sticky, and sore. Cersei knows his courtiers wait outside. She is half-tempted to throw open the door, teats unbound, and direct their gawking to her besotted husband. But instead she drifts off, wishing she were still in that feast hall where her feet made no sound.
Dawn is a mere suggestion when she wakes. Robert sleeps the sleep of sots. Shrugging on a dressing gown, she checks her face in the vanity mirror. Beautiful, as her mother birthed her, her father raised her, and her brother worshipped her. Her green eyes give away nothing of her own drinking. Cersei glances up, and startles from her fleeting thoughts. Violet and white-silver flash just out of sight. Her silly dreams, of course. Her king dreams of his dead she-wolf, his queen dreams of her broken dragon.
At least Jaime still lives.
She knows she is being reckless but she cares not. Her brother barely has the door open and his eyes rubbed free of sleep before she ducks under his arm, hissing at him to lock it. Jaime has not asked what would happen to them. The last time he did, he wound up in the Kingsguard and named the most dishonorable man in the realm. Yet he takes what she offers.
It is not long before Cersei knows now why the Stranger, however angry, still managed a spiteful smile at her wedding.
…Stationen einer Ehe / Stations of Marriage…
The stations of marriage soon become her world of quiet fury. Cersei imagined a queen as contributing to the rule of her king. Their first few years, she contributes to his bed when he wishes to feel dutiful and his arm when he holds a feast. Most days, Stannis frowns, Renly titters, and her father tells her to be grateful and beget an heir.
Cersei is not grateful when Robert insists she go with him to Dorne, despite Lannisters being less welcome there than modesty. Her father's men murdered the Prince's niece and nephew. Cersei would kill a dozen tasters. But he pesters, pushes, until finally she unsheathes her claws.
"Why not take the wolf-girl's bones? You two would make a far more loving—"
The backhand sends her reeling as numb heat cracks across her cheekbone. Her blood tastes sour and coppery. Robert stalks closer, less stag than ill-tempered sot.
"If you ever mention her again…" Robert trails off, the storm-blue eyes she once thought handsome narrowed in venom.
Jaime almost goes after him when his mouth smears her powder and her sighs turn to flinches. As a compromise, he begs her to take a personal guard—not a Kingsguard—and suggests a minor noble's second son. She grimaces at his burned face when she first sees him, but when the towering man holds his own against Jaime in the practice yard, she appoints him her sworn shield. Only afterward does she realize he is the younger brother of Gregor Clegane, her father's fiercest dog.
Even with a brutal hound as her shadow, she has precious little to do but chatter with vapid women and remind her husband not everyone falls for his sledgehammer charm. Some days, she knows not if boredom or anger will kill her first.
Joffrey changes that. His birth is a battle, bloodier than Robert's same-day takedown of a poor doe in the kingswood. Even Jaime sitting behind her cannot chase away dreams colored in red and viscera. They only fade when she holds her lion cub. There is not a trace of Robert on him, nor on Myrcella and Tommen who come in due time. In him is a different matter. Joffrey is a lion, born for red and gold, but even young he shows a ferocious temper. It reminds Cersei of her husband, but of course fools mistake it for an echo of the Mad King.
With little else to do, she gives him her hound. Whether it is fear or respect Cersei knows not, but the younger Clegane keeps him civil.
Robert still hates Joff though. Her golden boy is fierce and prone to temper, and her king refuses to think he had any influence. Entering Cersei's chambers one night, taking her with his usual force, then mumbling he wants the boy sent off to foster, is the first time she considers gouging his eyes out with a sewing needle.
In desperation she writes her father. Does he want his grandson tainted by Starks or Martells? His reply comes short and swift.
Dictate a price.
What does she have that is not already his? Cersei puzzles over this. By rights he can fuck her ten times a day…but is a lioness constrained by daft laws? If she were, she would have died that day in the courtyard, her brains congealing around her head. Instead, she seduced the Stranger.
She has not seen her jealous black prince since her wedding feast. Sometimes she feels a prickle, or sees a flash in the mirror, nothing more. Until she names her price.