Warning: non-con.
March
They weren't supposed to get physical with the prisoners.
Unella never had much mind for that. She did what was necessary to straighten those girls. Nothing brought her a greater deal of satisfaction than slapping delusion and insolence off a junky's face, or wrenching apart a pair of blasphemous tarts and nudging a stun gun baton between them. Countless of times she'd watched the electricity deal out sharp, sudden clarity where the Holy Bible lacked in quote, heard the same sin-ridden wails gush from a thousand defiled throats—good, good. That should teach the dotty things better than to look for magic in the sparks. Sparks were dangerous and they could kill you, the kind that got administered in Unella's prison, on Unella's solemn watch. Better for them to be set straight early on, the silly moths, than to watch them all throw themselves at the flame before their time.
She set them all back on the right path even if it took a bit of starving, bludgeoning, and the occasional shock treatment. It was all for their own good. Even in the darkest of times Unella knew that God smiled on her work and the souls she rescued would thank her as they floated in Heaven someday.
Sometimes she found herself regretting that promotion Sparrow had offered, as it seemed to steer her away from her mission a touch. She always chastised herself for it afterwards. It was God's work, and who was she but a sinner to question His ways?
Time and again Unella had to remind herself that they were all sinners, some like her simply seen enough of the light to guide others towards it.
Cersei Lannister, for one, her latest project. Unella was vaguely familiar with the woman's case, what with it drifting over the news for a couple of months like a bad aftertaste. Media would always throng around the most distasteful of affairs like that; and why not? These days society seemed to crave those stories, the faces of sinners splashed flat on big smooth screens every day, normalized, their owners, all those Antichrist darlings turned into local Holywood headliners, a show rather than something to be truly condemned. The whole cycle disgusted Unella as few things in this life ever did.
The Lannister woman was certainly up there, though. In for some five years, the tart, after getting her sentence drastically reduced by virtue of her father's widespread connections. A ridiculous amount of time to serve, in Unella's good mind, for a convicted husband killer. She'd read the headlines, the sort of sob story the family had attempted to spin the crime into: they'd painted this Robert Baratheon as an abusive and unfaithful animal that had only been after Cersei's money and good name. By the end they'd have the public believe Cersei Lannister was but an unfortunate woman who'd run out of options for protecting herself and her children from a violent and toxic spouse.
It made no difference to Unella. Even if it were so, murder was murder, and the toll it took on one's soul was ever the same. It would take a great deal of effort to wash out that stain.
Cersei Lannister had not seemed very remorseful upon entering prison. She'd marched into the facility like a cat licking the blood of its prey off its face, and Unella had immediately blacklisted her for that. If there was one thing Unella resented, it was privilege. Privileged people were a deeply mistaken breed. Thinking their wealth elevated them, they believed themselves to be above the law. But sooner or later they all met the law, and Unella made certain the encounter was ever a memorable one.
Unella decided then and there she would teach this Cersei Lannister the harsh lessons of humility. They all learned under her supervision, one way or another.
Lannister had wanted preferential treatment at first. Unella had obliged, though restricted meals and showering hours were perhaps not the type of bias the woman might have hoped for. Then Cersei had started getting into fights with the rest of the inmates as they apparently refused to make her their leader, until a broken nose and some vague death threat note had her standing in Unella's office once again, pressing to be moved or else specially guarded from 'the brood of mad bitches', as the woman herself had put it in an uncharacteristic display of naked, angry distress. (Everything that flicked across the woman's face was mixed with anger, every time, always.) Unella had scoffed at the woman's vocabulary but again she'd met her insistence, though once more not in a way the Lannister creature had been thrilled about. In her years as head of the guards Unella had seen solitary break tougher women than Cersei, and Cersei was clearly not the type of person who'd fare well with a sum total of four walls and herself to talk to for two weeks.
But Unella had misjudged her. That place had not broken her. If anything, it had seen the woman undergo some unexpected sort of transformation, for when she walked out again she was all grins and teeth and good manners. If one didn't look very closely, they'd think she'd learned her lesson. But Unella did look closely, and she knew better. She had several of her birds keep a close eye on the woman's movements and indeed Cersei was planning something.
Unella was suddenly reminded why this woman had been such a destructive force on the outside—working crowds came naturally to that sinful creature, and she was attempting to pull the same stunts in here.
More contained, Unella was being told. Much more eager to make friends here and there. The other women had been dismissive of her, in the beginning, but Unella could tell she was desperately trying to blend in. Desperation could breed harsher things.
Lannister had her long blonde locks cropped near the shoulders first thing after settling back into the common rooms, and Unella had noticed a considerable decrease in the product coating the woman's face. She walked and talked like one of the inmates, now, but also as someone above them. She'd quickly gotten herself recruited by a problematic white power pack, and to no one's surprise, trouble was quick to follow.
Soon enough the rumors started, setting out from Jocelyn Swyft's split lip and floating all the way to convoluted contraband schemes, always there but never proven. Unella would not stand for this kind of behavior. She took personal charge of Lannister's day-to-day activities. No luck. The woman smiled whenever Unella was down for inspection, yet there was no humbleness in her eyes as she did so. It was clear to Unella that this was not a woman on her way to penance. Something needed to be done.
The problem was, none of the suspicious actions conducted by this camouflaged sinner flat-out cut against the official prison rulebook. Nothing to give solitary for, not even a slap on the wrist by the guards. Unella could sit the woman down in her office and have a very stern talk with her, but she doubted that would amass to something. A woman like Cersei was far too deep into her vices to fold out simply from being told off. No, she needed something, an excuse to truly get the woman under control.
Lannister's unauthorized phone calls to her twin brother proved to be the pretext Unella had required. She had to fire the guard the woman had been bribing of course, that should be causing some idle rumors in the yellow pages, but Unella was a mistress of God and not the tabloids, and so it was a negligible price to pay for uprooting corruption.
Pupils dilated and nostrils flared, Unella descended into the beasts' burrow, smelling victory. She found her in one of the common washrooms with Taena Merryweather, the Spanish pimp, and savored the look of surprise on the blonde woman's face as her eyes landed on Unella's towering form.
"With me, Mrs. Baratheon," Unella beckoned in an even tone that had each syllable exploding from her mouth. She could tell Cersei was not fond of being called by her husband's name. How arrogant. Marriage was holy and Unella would call the woman by the name God had accepted for her.
Lannister's jaw was quite visibly clenched, but she followed. "Where are we going?" the woman was asking noncommittally. "I have a right to know where I'm being taken."
"To answer for your transgressions," Unella crooned, listening for the intake of breath behind her. Cower, she thought. You should. Fear was good, fear was at the root of compliance.
"I'm already in prison," Lannister rasped, voice pitched a note higher than its usual velvety chord.
"You've committed more crimes," Unella breathed as a reinforced metal rectangle swam into view at the end of the corridor, deep rust interrupted by an orderly sticker sign placed right in the middle, grey and impartial in its spelling of Unella's favorite word. THERAPY. "Retribution is near."
Cersei Lannister paled, and stopped. "No. No, I haven't done anything." But the men were already on either side of her and dragging her into the room and pulling her onto a chair. All the while Cersei Lannister was huffing dangerously, saccharine attitude forgotten like an old song, hissing out threats and promises and more threats. It might have moved a non-believer but not Unella, never Unella. Oh the Devil could be a many-faced thing, Unella knew. Cersei tried to get her to talk, but you did not negotiate with evil, you did not speak to it, you thought nothing of it. Only pain could draw out wickedness in full and extract it from the mind like toxin from wound.
Cersei's eyes widened a little when Unella rounded in on her with a simple oak stick, and ordered the men to vacate the room. "You mush-brained bitch, are you that jealous, I have been the perfect fucking prisoner, you cannot do this to me! I am Cersei Lannister!"
Unella's lip curled in disapproval. Sinner. Arrogant. Unredeemed. "Sinners must pray."
Cersei crawled away to the far corner of the room, knocking over the chair as she scrambled to get away. Oh, how the high and mighty had fallen. Unella headed towards her. They always ran, those powerful women she brought to heel behind closed doors; they never did get very far.
The stick whisked in Unella's sure grip. It split through thin air, promising prolonged punishment the longer Cersei insisted on drawing this out.
Defiant as a cornered snake, Cersei glowered and barred her teeth up at her, eyes flashing stubbornly with a sort of darkness Unella knew would not be easy to expel. "I'll be out of here soon, you realize," Lannister warned, empty words from an empty vessel. "I'll ruin you. I'll ruin this whole place for you."
Unella descended upon her in curt, efficient movements, catching a sharp elbow. She yanked the body up the wall, keeping it pinned, boxing the woman in, extending above her.
"God will punish you," Unella snarled, up close, feeling the woman cackle bitterly in her face at that.
"God," Lannister bit out. "Where is your God when you—" But Unella let her say no more, did not allow her to despoil the Lord's name any further with her profane remarks.
Her calloused fingers locked around that bare white throat. Squeezed at sheer, throbbing impudence. God would punish her, but Unella would punish her first.
Unella's other hand found the elastic waist of the woman's grey surgical scrub pants—easily, far too easily—and tugged harshly. She heard the woman wince and gasp a little, and she was saying something, but Unella never heard her. All of her blood was in her ears, and the next thing she knew she was shoving the woman around and pulling on the fabric of her garments, exposing parts she knew God normally intended for her to just see in the mirror.
"This is what you like, isn't it, whore," Unella growled between gnashed teeth in a voice that was not her own. "You think this will save you from God's wrath. No. You have fallen. You're only a sinner."
Lannister's breathing was fast and uneven, yet her eyes were wild and unfocused as they skipped back to the bolted door, and she did not move, Unella's bulk towering menacingly over her own, shadow wide enough to confine all Lannister skin there was.
The first blow fell as easily as the next, and Unella made a sound low in her throat at all the things she did and did not feel as she battered away.
Her cheeks burned with empowerment, how good it felt to deliver the forbidden penalty, how each bruise to that brazen flesh brought her higher, closer to carrying out her solemn mission. This was justice, to be doing it was to be translating the holy message to a language understood by the woman under her.
It would take no less to reconcile a sinner this far gone with the Holy Spirit. Pain and shame. Unella knew the path by heart, and soon enough even a woman like Cersei would be able to spot it, too.
A particularly harsh blow had Lannister's bottom quiver, once, scream swallowed. The woman was shaking with her forehead slammed against the wall, palms barely supporting the drag of her trembling weight. Unella briefly thought of Warden Sparrow, what he would have to say if he ever learned about her methods. Perhaps he wouldn't mind too much. He understood. That was the reason he'd given her the promotion, after all. Unella plucked the useless rules and bent the wrong ones to maximize this facility's potential. It was through the physical that one worked towards molding the rubble into tolerable spokes of society—by teaching boundaries, respect, esteem for authority.
Cersei Lannister was sobbing by now, quietly but plainly. Her shoulders shook as her front slumped down the wall little by little, cheek solid against the glazed tiles. Her derriere bore a shade of plum similar to what Unella had caught glimpses of across the leaked photographs of her husband's corpse.
Oh, how Unella longed to put her hands places even more deeply forbidden; show this sinner even better what it meant to answer for her crimes before God.
Lannister surprised her by daring to speak up, voice hoarse from choking up her small cries. "Yes, do it, why not, I bet it doesn't get any better for you than that." The smooth curve of the woman's backside swung boldly towards the dip of Unella's pelvis, challenging her. "Brainwashed freak."
Unella's mouth twisted with hatred. She grit her teeth, trying not to make the kind of noise she needed to.
This was not how it was supposed to go. The woman was clearly resisting the lesson Unella was trying to teach. She meant to pull her under the surface, spread her disease over to her. Disgusting.
"Is this how you treated your husband?" Unella barked, cracking the wooden stick across the ruined flesh once more, hearing Cersei gasp out in surprise as she curled up the wall. "I pity him. No man should be forced to live with a whore."
With that, Unella drilled her fingers deep into that haven of sin. The air became saturated with purgation in this one instant. Cersei inhaled, Unella exhaled; the stick dropped to the floor with a scathing clank so that Unella's other hand could join in the effort of holding the woman in place as coarsened knuckles were being worked in around her.
Cersei's low grunts ripped through the stillness. "I'll murder you," the woman managed as she writhed and clawed at the slick hard surface in front of her. Unella was too far sucked into the act to properly register the venom in her voice. "I'll be the last thing you'll see in this world."
"Repent," was all Unella said, feeling her fingers slide more easily now, hearing the reluctant panting, offering up this woman's sins to the Savior. "Repent." All she did, she did in His name. "Repent." She was doing God's work. "Repent." In that, surely the heat in her cheeks, the sweat dripping down her heaving breasts, the slight tremors rocking her waist as she pounded away would all be forgiven. "Repent." In her service, her flaws would be acquitted.
Cersei squirmed, whimpered, and finally cried out. Transfixed as if witnessing a holy miracle, Unella watched the body twist, listened to the noises as they tore from somewhere deep inside the woman. It sounded a lot like a prayer.
When the waves finally subsided, the green eyes fluttered open with a quiet moan. Unella could tell the woman was struggling for breath. She was blinking, unfocused, as she got her hands under herself, her palms pressed flat, and turned her nose into the wall, taking a deep breath before pushing herself upright.
"You... What did you do this for," the high society trash snapped. Her voice was hushed, like a deep insult laced with shame.
Unella considered her answer for a heartbeat.
"The use of the Inmate telephone service is a privilege," she intoned eventually, voice dripping with contempt, "that must not be abused."
And with that Unella stalked off, confident that the Lannister woman had a clear idea of where her place was now. She'd shown her just how thoroughly sinful she was at her core, how much she had to atone for.
If not, Unella would just have to remind her again.
One year, ten months later
The Advocate headlines:
Spouse murderess Cersei Lannister released on house arrest after serving two years. Louisiana Correctional Center on fire, cause to be investigated. Among casualties are acclaimed warden H. Sparrow and prominent 'Thorns' actress Margaery Tyrell, in visiting convict brother. Ongoing search for the body of correctional officer on duty.