Disclaimer: I do not own A Song of Ice and Fire; it belongs to GRRM.
Author's Note: This is the fourteenth fic in my one-word prompt series. This plot idea comes from Tommyginger at AO3 who wanted a story from Ned's perspective about how he would react to finding out that his daughter had eloped with Tywin Lannister. It was supposed to be quite a bit more crack-y, but apparently, I can't write that. So, here's the result, please enjoy!
Family dinners at the Stark home were shrinking in size by the year. Robb had married and was starting his own family, Jon had been deployed for several months now, Sansa was away at school, and Arya, Bran, and Rickon had after school clubs and activities.
Well, the boys did anyway; Arya had been suspended for fighting, again. That night, she joined Ned and Catelyn in the kitchen for their evening meal. Catelyn was clearing away the dishes and grimacing as Arya recounted, blow for blow, her fight with some boy named Rorge while Ned sipped on his glass of red wine, laughing when Arya mimed breaking the boy's nose.
Arya's retelling was interrupted by the sudden ringing of the doorbell, followed by Sansa's cheerful voice calling out her helloes. Ned watched as Catelyn snatched up a towel to dry her hands and rushed out the kitchen door to greet their daughter.
"Did Sansa tell you that she would be by tonight, Arya?"
"Why in the hells would she tell me? We're still fighting over that thing with her room."
Ned nodded and smiled indulgently, recalling the longstanding feud between the two sisters, "Oh yes, what was it you did in there again?"
Arya smiled wickedly, "Blew up her—"
A shriek from the front of the house cut her off; she and Ned looked at each other before bolting out of their chairs and dashing to the foyer.
Arya got there first, and her yelp of surprise echoed the one from seconds earlier. Ned pulled up short behind her, eyes frantically searching the room for the cause of the alarm before landing on Tywin-bloody-Lannister standing not three feet from his doorway. What in the hells was he doing here? And Sansa, she was—she was standing next to the bloody man!
His confusion was becoming too much to bear, "What in the Seven Hells is going on here? What is that man doing in my home? Sansa, why are you even with him? Somebody say something, dammit!"
Catelyn and Arya looked just as confused as he felt, Sansa was blushing and closemouthed, and fucking Tywin Lannister was standing there with a smug smirk on his face. Ned felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding sweep over him, so he took a drink from the glass that had miraculously managed to stay in his hand; if he was lucky, he would come through this with his nerves intact.
As he was in the process of swallowing, Sansa revealed the reason for her unannounced presence, "Mr. Lann—I mean, Tywin and I got married this past weekend."
In the silence following her statement, Ned could feel his throat closing up, preventing the wine from going down; he started choking, and then coughing. Wine spewed forth from his mouth, staining his face and shirt; Catelyn called out to him, but his ears seemed to be filled with cotton, and his vision was clouding over.
Ned's knees gave first, and the rest of him followed. His body hit the floor with a resounding thump, and that was when the shouting started.
He wasn't out long, at least he didn't think he had been, but when he came to, his head was cradled in Catelyn's lap. She was screaming bloody murder at a still smug, now amused, Tywin Lannister while Sansa looked horrified. Ned saw Tywin's arm loop around Sansa's waist, drawing her into his side, and then he saw red.
"Take your godsdamned hands off her, you godsdamned whoreson!"
"Daddy, don't call him that, he hasn't done any—" Sansa cut her protestations short when Tywin squeezed her slightly.
"Don't concern yourself with explaining to him, Mrs. Lannister, he clearly doesn't have the faculties to understand at present."
'Mrs. Lannister, Mrs. Lannister.' The words replayed on a looped track in his head. Ned had never known Tywin Lannister to be a man who indulged in practical joking, which meant only one thing: this was real. Tywin-fucking-Lannister had married his little girl; his little girl who was just starting to make her way in the world when she had been snatched up in the jaws of a sick, twisted old lion.
This could not be borne; he would see the other man dead before allowing this farce to continue.
Ned staggered to his feet, ignoring Catelyn's pleas to be reasonable and Sansa's cries to stop. All he wanted to hear was the crack of Tywin Lannister's bones under his fists. He advanced on the other man, eating up the ground between them.
Sansa shocked him out of his fugue-like state by stepping in front of Lannister, "Sansa, sweetie, you need to move away from him. Now."
"Dad, you don't understand—"
"Sansa, get away from him now!"
"Dad—"
"Sansa, n—"
"Dad, I'm pregnant!"
The silence of earlier was nothing compared to what descended upon them now. Cold dread seeped into Ned's bones. Pregnant, she was pregnant. Pregnant with the spawn of Tywin Lannister. How did—how could this—Gods, the bastard had fu—touched his daughter sex—intimately. No, no, no, no, "No, no, no, no," he was shaking his head hard in denial.
"No, that's not true, Sansa. It can't be true, you would never let him—"
Ned could feel his knees weakening again and stumbled over to grasp at a chair. Then, anger returned to him, and he was vibrating with the need to commit murder.
"Lannister, you conniving bastard, I don't know what you're hoping to get out of this, but if you don't leave my house right now, I swear by the old gods and the new, I'll murder you right now."
"Ned, you shouldn't talk like that," Catelyn sounded frantic.
"Dad, please, you don't get it, I love him!"
Gods, that was even worse. Of course, she would love him, she was innocent and good, and she would want to try to reform him. "Sansa, you don't need to do this! I'll do anything, give you anything, if you just step away, right now. Please, baby, you don't know what he is!"
He recognized the set of her jaw and the defiant glare in her eyes, he'd spent years staring at those same features in the mirror. "No, dad, you don't know him. I do, and I know that he's mine."
Ned could see her leaving him, leaving them, her family behind, all for that rotten old snake. It was like a blow to his stomach, and he sat down to prevent himself from retching. He could feel his entire life crashing down around him with a well-placed strike from Tywin Lannister. Such a ruthless man would ruin his little girl, grind her up into nothing until she was but a shade of her former self.
Small hands patted his face and smoothed down his hair. Ned knew those hands, had marveled at them for twenty years, had watched them grow and become strong. Soon, she would bear witness to the birth and growth of her own child.
Suddenly, it hit him, he was going to be a grandfather, to Tywin Lannister's child, yes, but it would also be Sansa's, and he had always praised and admired the works of his children.
He grasped Sansa's hands, looking at them in awed wonder, "It's alright, Sansa, I'm alright now."
He felt her grip his hands tightly, "Are you sure, dad? I-I know it's a lot to take in, but I was just so happy. I wanted to tell you, I wanted you to be happy with me."
Ned looked at his little girl, his baby, and knew that she would always be his daughter, which meant accepting Tywin Lannister as his son-in-law…oh gods. "I am happy for you," he smiled, albeit painfully, "I'm happy for both of you. Still, I never expected to have a Lannister in the family."
Tywin gave a slight nod in acknowledgement of the situation's strangeness.
Arya, who had been silent the entire time (aside from her startled yelp), began to laugh. She laughed until she cried, and then she laughed some more. "Gods," she giggled, wiping away her tears, "just wait until they hear about this at school!"