The prompt: How bout an AU where Sansa becomes queen and Tywin is her Hand…as well as fulfilling other duties.
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*Note: This story contains allusions to and descriptions of sexual, verbal, and physical abuse. Please be aware of your own sensibilities and proceed accordingly.*
**This story was originally posted 2014-01-14, removed 2015-02-23, and returned for good right now.**
Initially beta'd by dealbreaker19, this story has since been reworked. Any errors are mine alone.
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The sun in the midday made the room look cheerful. It was in total contrast to the man with whom she shared the space.
Sitting behind his desk was the Hand of the King. It could be argued that he was the Hand of the Queen as well, but no one ever felt the urge to willfully argue with Lord Tywin Lannister. And although Sansa sat in audience with this man as the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, a woman of higher rank and station than he, she may as well have been a chambermaid for all the regard the Great Lion gave her.
She knew why she had been summoned. Knew why her day's engagements had been cancelled and was now in audience of the scowling harshness of Lord Lannister. Her marriage to King Joffrey had now spanned years, and during those years there had never been even the hint of her swelling with child.
Sansa tightened her jaw reflexively at the thought of every humiliating examination Queen Cersei had the inclination to subject her to. The goal: to discredit the bride of the North, to expose her as flawed and deficient. The conclusion of which was to either annul her marriage, that would see her maintained - willingly or not - as a mistress for the King, or execute her as one more northern traitor. An act that would see her used as the reason to torch the extensive and volatile treaties currently standing between her brother and her husband. Two kings at opposite ends of the map.
However, even with the honesty she buried deep and saved solely for herself, Queen Sansa could not decide which of those two ends would be more unpleasant.
There was no mystery to how King Joffrey treated his wife. Regardless of whether she covered his penchants with long sleeves and high necks, there would never be enough paint or perfume to mask gossip from those he invited to partake in or witness her abasement, or those who tended to her when he was through. As the queen he treated her thus, it would only stand to reason his mistress would fare worse. Without the weight of the title she wore there would be no rules to abide, no exceptions in regard to the safety of her person. The necessity to keep her alive or intact...
"Does he finish inside you?"
Like being pitched into freezing water, Sansa's mind converged the loose ends she was dawdling on and committed her attention to the man sneering at her - to the question he asked of her. Her mouth dried and she could feel the creeping heat of embarrassment ascend from her collar. Not only did the Hand know what her husband subjected her to, but he had also rightly guessed the reason for her... maladies.
"M-my lord?" She asked, stuttering. Her humiliation seemed complete.
"The question is not a difficult one, Your Grace," Lord Tywin said. His bored tone matching his gaze. "When you are performing your duty as a wife, do you prevent your husband from coming into your womb?"
"No..." she whispered, bewildered, shame not far behind. Sansa was wrong - she sat rigid, every muscle in her disciplined to be unmoving, unassuming - this path of inquiry was surely the height of degradation.
"No, what?"
His needling marched ahead.
Her courtesy kept her disclosure in step.
"I d-don't prevent-"
"Is it that you're frigid? That you are withholding from the King what is rightfully his?"
"No." Again she was bewildered. Sansa, better than anyone, knew her duty as the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. It didn't matter that Lord Tywin carried the conversation with an air of detachment, Sansa also knew better than anyone when a barb was meant for her. She knew to be wary. She was uncared for inside the walls of this castle, and that particular kind of callousness had been demonstrated nearly since she had set foot in it.
"What is it then?"
Her lungs felt frozen. "He can't-"
"Of course he can." The Great Lion trampled over the Queen's words without an ear for dialogue other than his own. "He is your King and your husband. You will open your thighs and give to him what your father and brother bargained you for."
Her eyes were like that of a frightened animal, more white than colour; she had no idea where she should look - deciding ultimately on the wall just beyond him - blinking at every syllable he threw at her. It was not until Lord Tywin cleared his throat in annoyance that Sansa realized it was her turn to speak.
Abashed, she began, "I... I do, and H-His Grace still can't-"
"Can't what?!"
"Finish!"
The word erupted, burning through the frost that was her hesitation, as her pain and embarrassment swirled away evaporated. She leaned toward the man who had, until that moment, held her fear and uncertainty at a precious ransom... Only to shiver at the reality wringing through her body. Like any flash of fire, the heat exuded is terribly finite. As such, Sansa's courage turned to ash blew away.
Eyes down, intently studying an important nothing on the Hand's desk, Sansa slunk back to occupy her original position, waiting for the punishment or admonishment the outburst had earned her.
There was only quiet for the longest of moments, and when her desire to suffer sooner rather than later devoured her patience, she looked at the man cradling her current fate in his hands.
Lord Tywin had not moved, had not changed his expression - from the void of his features to the reckoning in his eyes - he merely waited. And that was the greater injury to her dignity; the Hand seemed expectant of her tantrum, unsurprised at her weakness.
Sansa summoned every bit of will she possessed to fortify her northern strength. She continued in the most calm and matter-of-fact manner she was able to muster, behaving in a fashion - one she had learned through careful observation - Lord Tywin was more apt to acknowledge.
"King Joffrey cannot f-finish... inside me."
The statement mortified her, but her delivery was sound and her gaze never left his. Of which the only recompense for her discomfiture was witnessing Lord Tywin wince ever so vaguely as she spoke his own vulgarity back to him.
"Since our wedding night," she concluded in a hush.
The Queen tilted her head slightly to the side, silently begging an end to the conversation from the man whose grandson she was cursed to be married to.
Lord Tywin was stony. Aside from his initial tic, the old lion was sat rigid in the face of the Queen's revelation.
"Please continue, Your Grace," he instructed with a purr and an imploring roll of his hand.
It was a purposeful disregard, and although she followed the command, the undertone was one that did not lay idle with the Queen. Balling her fists, scratching where they rested against her thighs, Sansa readied herself to once more share her most personal shame.
"Once the King..." she cleared her throat, "My lord, he…" she gulped a large lungful of air and marshaled ahead at a quick pace, "H-he only finds his pleasure when I scream."
"Then I suggest you scream for him," he spat without hesitation. If the old lion wasn't entrenched in his disgust toward the woman denying her king an heir, he would have been dispassionate in his degradation. "You know your duty, girl, if he needs you to scream, you'll lie on your back and you'll do it."
She felt cold for the second time in that cheerfully sunny room. More than that she felt numb. Numb to her ignominy, numb to implied threats, and mostly numb to the man in front of her. He could no longer rile her, and that was as disturbing as it was freeing. Queen Sansa had lived enough years of cruelty at the hands of a fiend, she knew the moment she was in danger.
This was not such a time.
The Hand was a merciless man; an indifferent man toward all he felt could not serve him favourably. He had not spoken more than a handful of words to Sansa in the entire duration of her marriage, and even if none of them were disparaging, neither were they amicable.
The Queen had been, quite simply, until that very moment, of no use to him.
"It would not matter now if I did." There was no tremble anywhere in her. "You see," she said, composed with an impressive level of poise. "The King has... preferences. Preferences that do not lend to conceiving a child."
A surge of recollection assailed the lion; it was as if he was living his past, one with yet another king and his madness. But he could not accept that incompetence was the fault of his family, of his blood; this northerner was brought to them a maiden, and she was surely unrefined in the ways of bedding.
Surely.
"That you know-" he began, only to have his words carefully cleaved away.
"I asked, my lord," was her quiet declaration.
He looked on as the girl swallowed hard and started to fidget in her seat, remaining silent to obtain the rest of her tale. If she was physically uncomfortable after such a scene of bravery, he'd be more the fool to ignore what she had to say.
"The Queen Regent instructed me as you did, my lord. However, when it was all told - how… how Joffrey… takes me…"
"I assume she understood Joffrey's particular deviations were… unfruitful, Your Grace?" His voice still lacked event he smallest measure of empathy, but there wasn't any overt hate in it either.
The Queen nodded in earnest.
Lord Tywin continued, "Did the Queen Regent instruct Joffrey on what was perhaps a more beneficial manner in which to conduct himself?"
"She did, my lord." Queen Sansa answered easy enough, the distress in her breathing was unmistakable.
Tywin raised a brow and inclined his head - a definite sign of agitation. He had no room for compassion nor games with her, not with the stakes at hand; he needed real answers with more than two words. His patience was quickly sinking to ire, and Queen Sansa seemed keen to this kind of mood, how to placate it.
"I was unable to sit proper for the better part of a moon, for her trouble, my lord."
When Queen Sansa leaned back in her chair, Tywin could not help but scoff; she wore an air of defiance that was clearly the influence of his daughter. Nonetheless, he immediately sobered to the current matter of import.
Confessed indiscretions mattered little compared to the acknowledgement that Cersei had kept the information from him for years. She knew the importance of a child, yet chose to shelter her own once again. She knew the boy used torture as pleasure, yet failed to ensure he abided his duty to the kingdom by fucking his get on his queen at least once.
By the time Lord Tywin addressed her again, his tension was smoothing to calculation - his mind already accumulating structure and endgame.
"Tell me, Your Grace. You must want children."
Lord Tywin looked to have opted now for cooperation instead of accusation, but it made her no less circumspect.
"It is no longer a matter of what I want, my lord, it is a matter of need," she said with open candour, then watched as his brows pulled in deeper - his frown dropping proportionately.
Sansa knew her error. "The need I refer to, my lord, is not... personal."
Sansa met his eye again and spoke almost at a whisper - as though she was at fault for the information she knew, even if she was the Queen and perfectly privy to such. "I know of the tensions coming from the North." Her focus flicked away from him. "I also know an heir would quell that tension," she offered with a hint of resignation. Her eyes closed then. "At the very least divert it."
Tywin never thought the girl incompetent, unlike most in their circle, he just never bothered to care. His grandson was a waste of a crown, but his queen indeed had the inkling of comprehension - the potential to help right the failings of her king...
"You will have to breed, Your Grace." The observation was as crude as it was brash.
"Yes, I know." Sansa hated how the words squeaked out, but inwardly lauded her lack of hesitation.
"Ser Jaime," the lion said confidently, though nearly to himself. "Lord Commander of Kingsgaurd, he will serve for this purpose-"
"No." Queen Sansa's perpetual blush seemed to redden further as she cut him short, but she managed to keep his eye. "N-no one else can know, my lord."
When her brows raised and her features wore something made of a grimace and a plea, the old lion sat back with a huff and looked down his nose at the girl.
At the Queen.
Her standpoint held no fault, he knew it.
His jaw worked, his lips thinned and his eyes narrowed - the Hand knew exactly what his queen was asking of him.
"Very well," he said in a tone that was utterly flinty. "When was the last time you bled?"
Sansa's mouth hung loose at the inquiry, howbeit she answered dutifully if not distractedly. "Eight... Yes, eight days past..."
"In six days send word of where to meet you that evening." Lord Tywin drawled at the girl like she was truly dull-witted. "Discretely," he concluded.
The world felt like it was moving too fast. Sansa's mouth spoke at the same moment her opinions formed. "The King will know if-"
Tywin did not oblige the question; his tone snapped dismissively, "King Joffrey will assume as he always has: that his potency is righteous. And you, Your Grace, will have finally achieved some form of worth."
She looked quickly to her lap then, toward clasped hands and restless fingers, her face pinched in hurt. His words cut, but they were the truth of her circumstance. And there was no greater power she could possess than knowing exactly where she stood.
Sansa gave a determined nod, a motion of fixed agreement. Raising her head to the man she had chosen to father her child, she continued nodding in tiny increments - to him, to her, to what they were about to embark on.
It was done - their deal had been made - and as Queen Sansa left the chambers of the Hand, she felt strikingly at ease.
She had endured Joffrey for years; the risk that this man could inflict upon her anything that would jar her sensibilities was a minor one. Yet the wager was her life, potentially the North, and her bet fell to the perception that this very man was as true to his responsibilities as she.
Theirs was a compromise struck for the necessity of peace and for the settling of politics.
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Godswood
It was the lone word she had sent to Lord Tywin six days after their meeting, and was the safest place she knew of; the only place she could think of that could accommodate the privacy they would need.
Joffrey had only summoned her to his chambers once in those six days, and Sansa wondered if the Hand had more to do with that than luck. Either way she was not as sore as she could have been, but that did not hinder her queasy nervousness overall. However, the ill feeling subsided slightly when she heard a steady stride making its way deeper into the wood where she stood waiting. Taking a moment, Sansa marveled that Lord Tywin had such a defined gait she was able to recognize him from that alone.
Entering the clearing, making a cursory assessment in the limited light, Lord Tywin addressed his queen in a tone that clearly smacked of disdain.
"If you think I am going to rut with you amidst the bracken, you are three decades too late."
Her eyes widened, her hands wrung, and her feet shifted nervously at his reprimand. She cared only of the seclusion the godswood offered, and really did not know what was required on the outset for the deed to be performed properly.
"I… I'm…" she stuttered.
"We'll make due," he clipped. Sweeping his arm around in what was a ridiculous gesture for Lord Tywin Lannister, he spoke in the caustic manner Sansa was expecting the first time. "Pick a tree, Your Grace."
She did.
His instruction was clear, and it was the part of her that intuitively stooped to the degeneracy of her husband that had her obeying without question. She chose a tree with a wide enough trunk to lay both her palms flat upon - one that had coarser bark, but whose roots were deeper than the other trees, that would let Lord Tywin stand comfortably - and took a stance she knew all too well: her arse in the air, bent steep at the waist, wrists close together but not crossed. This was a familiar position for Sansa. Save the fact she was not yet bound or already being struck, it was very much what she was used to.
He could only watch. He dared not think past the initial impact of seeing this woman, this queen, assume a position normally employed for the implement of torture; engaged in a manner she obviously surmised was conventional for the act they were about to perform...
The old lion flexed his jaw in disgust; an opinion that was in no way aimed toward the woman before him.
Using an almost tender touch, Lord Tywin straightened Queen Sansa's posture to a less severe angle. She complied without a question; pliable under his hands, and Tywin knew this to be a trait of training, not of respect or trust. She would follow his lead and submit to his every whim, and if he were a lesser man without control, without the rigid compunction of duty, it would mean opportunity for the blackest part of himself to reign.
Again he felt disgust, and again it was directed away from her, aimed precisely at the man who did allow depravity to govern his common sense.
Carefully lifting and draping her skirt high on her waist, he found that exposing her did so completely; she was not wearing smallclothes. Tywin bit back whatever praise he thought to consider for the girl's practicality as it dawned on him that such measures may have been more a habit in regards to Joffrey than any concession she made for him.
Even in the weak beams of moonlight that seeped through cracks in the canopy above, Lord Tywin could identify the discolouration of bruising and the raised threads of scarring that were scattered quite liberally on the sparse allotment of skin in front of him. The Queen uttered no explanation or apology for them as he speculated a young woman might; there was nothing from her save an empty kind of stillness.
...he only finds his pleasure when I scream…
Tywin pushed that knowledge away with force, yet touched the girl with an opposite extreme. His fingers ghosted over her hips and down the sides of her thighs as far as he could reach. She was soft, and she was lovely that way; it made no sense to him that she should be ruined with harm.
Sansa liked the careful contact Lord Tywin gave her, but she also felt at odds with her caution. She could not predict him like she could Joffrey; however, the distinct hiss of lacing being pulled undone set her to rights, in that she had an idea of what was to happen next. When she felt the immediate placement and warmth of his prick laid against the cleft of her arse there was a pang of worry. Mayhaps she misjudged Lord Lannister, mayhaps he would take her the same way the King preferred. Yet there was no further motion in that regard, just more touching.
Still, it did not stop Sansa from mentally preparing for what she feared was inevitable pain and intrusion.
Instead she felt what could have been an unsure grasp of her left hip, and then an altogether unexpected brush of fingertips under her skirts and around the front of her. It was a soft searching motion; teasing through the course hair at her center, seeking her furrow. Light sweeps, first down then up; each pass pressing just a little more into her curls, until he found the tiny knot of flesh that had only ever before been bitten or viciously pinched in an effort to coerce her terror. And though there was no maliciousness in Lord Tywin's grazing nudges, she found that terrifying in its own right.
Again she felt utterly out of her depth, having no idea what to anticipate if not hurt; it was crippling just how pathetic it confirmed her to be.
"S-stop... Stop."
Even as she was saying the words, Sansa lowered one of her hands to grip and push away the wrist of the hand that offered such a foreign caress. "What are you doing, my lord?" she said warily.
"Trying to make you ready."
There was a definitive frustrated growl accompanying the puffs of air warming her neck.
When there were no other words, no noise save for the push and pull of their breathing and the natural rustling of the godswood, Tywin came to a very regrettable conclusion.
"Have you never been... touched... as such, Your Grace?"
The silence became repressive before Queen Sansa offered brittly, "I haven't, my lord."
Suddenly the young woman he was leaning into, that his cock was pressed snugly against, sounded like a pitiful child.
He led her to stand straight with hands gently guiding, Lord Tywin turned her to face him. "Close your eyes, Your Grace."
This time his purr was not laced with callous judgement. If Sansa were to define it, she would vow his intonation was sincere. But mayhaps, in her position, she was not the most ideal person to entrust with such a task.
Her eyes fluttered closed at the same time she leaned back on her chosen tree.
...her chosen tree.
What a bloody fool she felt. Luring the Hand of the King, the great Lord Tywin, out into a coppice for the express purpose of infidelity.
This was her moment of doubt, yet the man made no effort to perpetuate her insecurity... not that she could see.
When her were eyes closed, she was alone; left vulnerable in same way she was those first days and moons after the death of her father. An involuntary need caused her hands to reach out in her darkness - where they met resistance. Living, breathing resistance.
Lord Tywin stepped closer to her, there was no indication of danger; her hands stayed clasping the soft, warm fabric of his doublet. It was the kind of anchor she needed to move forward in her situation, to reassure herself this was not a solitary endeavour.
The old lion said nothing of protest, nor did he attempt to remove her hold on him.
She felt her skirts bunching up higher, and the night air slide cool across the front of her this time. She felt his clever fingers again, at a new angle, dancing their light pet over the most private part of her. When he grazed around her delicate bump, Sansa breathed in sharply through her nose. If she had granted herself a voice in these times, she was sure she would have gasped.
"Spread your legs for me." His voice was deeper, roughened, Sansa noticed. He wasn't panting, just speaking with a taste of urgency. It felt like excitement, and it helped to stoke hers as she carried out his hazy command.
There was a rumble of approval from the man; a good girl perhaps, or simply good, but the Queen was lost in the touch and feel of her new-found gratification - her only-found enjoyment in an undertaking and concept that would usually denote torment.
She knew better than to squander this. Even if it was with a man who was not her husband, who was a man she should fear and not give over to. Yet when one lives an existence of dejection, one has to hold close and cherish any moment of happiness - regardless of where it's derived.
Dipping his fingers low into the heat of her, Tywin felt the boon of his efforts in the slick moisture they spread around. He could feel the Queen growing warmer in her gown, getting wetter in her quim, and breathing heavier at his ministrations - yet she remained silent. Her lull was curious to be sure, and something Tywin would have addressed if he had a scrap of interest to do so. As it were, his was merely a function of duty; for the betterment of the realm.
...for the betterment of the realm.
His cock was hard, his fingers slipped in her lather, and his need was making the world blurry. At that particular time the betterment of the realm was the furthest care in his inventory of priorities.
Turning her to lean toward the tree once again, lifting and placing her skirts, his hands a little more impatient than overtly gentle, Tywin noted her eyes were still closed; her face was lax and serene - all the more for his encouragement.
With a firm grip both on her waist and on himself and not a word between them, the lion teased the tip of his cock along her seam. Sliding like silk through her wetness, he played against her sensitive bump a handful of times before catching at her entrance.
He fit into her with one heavy push forward.
There was still no sound, no voice of delight or discomfort from the Queen; but she was so hot and she was so tight, Tywin could not fight the groan that shivered out of him for the duration of seating himself fully inside her.
The Great Lion moved in long strokes, letting the night chill him before slowly burying himself again and again. When he felt the experimental squeeze of the woman he was within, it sparked and fueled his headiest of desires; remote feelings that seemed to be resurfacing by degrees every moment they were joined.
No, Lord Tywin thought, this was no chore.
Without warning, the lion tucked a hand under the front skirt of her gown and used his fingers in the same manner as he did to make her ready. Sansa had no recourse to this kind of stimulation other than to claw her fingers in a harder grip into the bark, shut her eyes tighter, and purely hope that she could keep her knees and stay standing.
Her head was swimming, but it was her body that was the greater wonder.
The manner in which they conjugated was not unknown to her, but Sansa's previous turns at that type of bedding had always been fleeting - abandoned for acts more heinous and grotesquely perverse.
Apprehension never truly left her; while scarce in the back of her mind, the fear that violence might still play its role was a preservation instinct she knew better than to ignore.
Yet Lord Tywin's nimble fingers again played with her, and again she refused to spoil it. There was a pressure she could feel pitted deep in her belly, and with every movement the man behind her was making - with his fingers and with his prick - that constraint in her belly was forcing its way outward.
All at once, she was overwhelmed, and Sansa felt her body clench seemingly everywhere: her jaw, her fingers, her lungs, and even inside where Lord Tywin was. She would have feared such an introduction to an unknown nuance of herself if it hadn't felt so, so good.
He felt her both give way and grip him in one shuddering wave; his arm moved to encircle her, to help keep her upright. Leaning over her back, his other hand left her waist and rested itself above each of hers on the tree to sturdy him.
Bending his knees minutely warranted a deeper angle to take her; his rhythm was waning, his thrusts were sharp - his release was upon him.
The arm around her body cinched and pulled her up a little more, steadying her as those bright ripples of pleasure subsided. Her back laid flush against Lord Tywin - both still bent in a slight hunch - his mouth was near her ear and all she heard through her own fog was a broken groan that accentuated with each snap of his hips.
He was coming into her, she knew.
Sansa also knew the importance of it and made every effort to remain motionless - to provide him what he needed... to finish.
She had never before felt a man's seed planted where it would produce a child and blushed scarlet at such an improper thought. For all that, Sansa found herself opening her eyes to the actuality and grinning, as well; smiling into the darkness at the fact that it simply felt right. Messy, but right.
At length, Lord Tywin stayed unmoving; recovering his breath while conceding to the natural shift of her body pushing out his softened cock.
She felt him replace her skirts with the same care he used to move them, then step away to tend to his own clothing.
Sansa had no true reference for what to do next. Her husband tended to flaunt his debauchery and unfaithfulness in front of her, but she was sure Lord Tywin was not so inclined.
If she were perfectly honest, she would say he was at as much of a loss as she was.
Though it was his voice that ended their impasse.
"I need not tell you the importance of washing yourself only when unattended."
He was sure he could see her flush red to her ears even in the shadowy moonlight. Her jittery reply, an attempt to play the shy maiden, was his confirmation; it was also the reason his mouth twitched at the corners.
"O-of course, my lord."
The mood from there lent to a kind of awkwardness; one that Sansa could not tell if it was made more so by the intensity of what they had just done, or if it was the singular intensity of the Hand of the King.
Whatever it was, it was ripped apart by the abandoned motion Lord Tywin made toward her; he reached a hand to her, but seemed to think twice and recoil.
Some courtly nicety, perhaps? Mayhaps a late remembered gesture of chivalry? Sansa would never know.
Scowling anew, the Great Lion turned quickly on his heels; retreating toward his tower within the Red Keep.
Leaving the Queen to the night and the woods around her.
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