Castamere: The Story of Tywin and Joanna Lannister

by GilraenDernhelm

Part 7 of 'Be The Lightning In Me.' Having spent a bit of time inside Tywin Lannister's head during the course of this series (and having rather enjoyed how fiendishly difficult he is to write), I've decided to write a prequel to parts 1 to 6 about Tywin and Joanna, to see what sort of person he was before her death and to take a look at what their relationship might have been.

1. Chapter 1

Prologue

It was raining. The sea swirled about his knees like molten glass, transparent in his grief, boiling like the tears of the twisted, gnarled child in his arms who screamed out his existence to the heavens, mocking him like a curse from the gods.

Tywin looked over his shoulder at the cliffs beneath Casterly Rock that loomed grey and mighty above him, and for a moment the sun broke through the clouds at the memory of two children, Joanna and himself, loitering casually at their edge.

'If you haven't jumped in the next three seconds, I'm going to!' Joanna challenged.

And she had; Tywin hurling himself after her immediately and whooping outrageously as the wind tore at his clothes, but frightened, even then, that something would happen to her.

He had no idea what had made him stay in the birthing room this time. He hadn't, when Jaime and Cersei were born; sitting upright and still as a statue in the adjoining anteroom, glaring bitterly at his father as he drank glass after glass of wine, and made insipid speeches about the joys of fatherhood.

But this time. This time Tywin had been at her side, her screams tearing right through him, her hand clutching his desperately, her forest green eyes searching constantly for his, drawing out his strength. He had gifted it to her, again and again. Take my life as well, if you have to. Take me.

When the child had finally been born after a day of labour, Joanna's face whiter than the cliffs beneath them, and Tywin closer to tears than he would have liked, the maester had cried out in alarm. It was gnarled and twisted as a weirwood; its face contorted as it yawned out its first scream. And suddenly Joanna was screaming too as the bed beneath her began to turn red, leaving nothing unstained but her skin, which was beautiful and honourable, even in...

'Joanna,' Tywin had murmured, when the screaming had stopped, 'Joanna.'

And he had waited and waited, because she always replied. She was incapable of not doing so. She would outlive twenty men trying to have the last word, even if it meant arguing for another three hours while the supper turned cold and the children fell asleep in their chairs.

But when she did not reply, the world had turned to silence and torment, and he had taken the crooked and distorted little creature from the maester's arms and straight down to the beach, meaning to let the sea swallow whole the monster who had killed his own mother.

But as he looked down at the waves that swirled about his knees and tried to avoid the eyes of the child in his arms, Tywin also looked down into the past, into his past, and hers, and thought, ever so briefly, of life.