Survivor
DISCLAIMER: Don't own a thing.
This is a continuation of my Mafia-themed series, preceeded by "Liar, Liar", "The Mockinbird's Song", "Players and Pieces", "Ghost of the Past", "Wrapped Around Your Finger" and "Take Care of the Ones that You Lost".
*A/N* A possible ending to my AU, suppose I'll give you others before long.
Also if you can't tell which movie stood godfather to this fic... well, then you missed out on one of the best finales in movie history and you better go look it up right now.
Also, TRIGGER WARNING: I don't want to give spoilers but you know me. Good people die in my fics, and they don't die of old age. This is ASoIaF, after all. You have been warned.
(III)
The end of the Mafia war?
Mafia clan wiped out – KLPD: "Hundreds of Suspects"
"The biggest mafia war in the last sixty years has come to a bloody stopping point this morning when all three members of the Lannister family, accused of numerous crimes such as conspiracy to murder, human trafficking, embezzlement and racketeering, were killed during the night.
Investigations are ongoing, as of now it seems twins Jaime and Cersei Lannister as well as her son Joffrey died in separate locations within less than an hour of each other.
Joffrey Lannister's death was the first to be reported by an eyewitness who alerted the Police department to what appeared to be a fatal car crash on highway 46. Further investigations revealed Lannister's car had been wired to a bomb. "There were enough explosives to take down a building," one of the officers at the scene of crime is reported to say.
Less than an hour later, Jaime Lannister was found dead in his apartment, killed by a shot in the head.
Finally, Cersei Lannister's body was discovered by an employee at her office of Casterly Rock Inc. in the early hours of the morning, her throat slit –
His head was spinning. When, HOW-
"Look what this world has made of us," he heard her whisper, just before he'd seen the blood blossom on the white sheets.
The newspaper rustled in his hands.
"Don't worry, darling," she'd told her baby, "don't worry, it's over. It's all over." and he'd never understood what she'd meant but there it was -
Clever girl, he thought numbly, staring at the article. Bold clever girl.
She would have made for a great boss, better than Cersei.
Better than any of them.
Sansa would have made for a veritable queen.
(I)
"You said she'd be safe here!"
A part of him was tempted to point out that was just not applicable. A part of him wanted to say taking her to Ireland, to that godforsaken stretch of nothingness where Petyr had first seen the light of day, had been to keep her safe from the Lannisters, from the war they had started, and it had.
A part of him wanted to inform Edmure that even if your IQ wasn't a disgrace to your heritage like Tully's evidently was, even if you had studied your chessboard for all eternity and figured out every possible move there was to make – even then there was no way to prevent this divine intervention, as daft little Roslin had called it.
Another part of him wished he had become the good Catholic his father had tried to beat him into so that he could have at least made a reasonable bargain with a higher force, so that he could have at least put up a fight.
All those parts needed to shut up, and soon.
It wasn't helping. None of it.
"I thought people only died giving birth in the Middle Ages," he heard himself say, very calmly. "Could your med school perhaps not afford contemporary books?"
"Sir," the surgeon said, fighting to keep his cool. "We've tried everything we could-"
"Your patient is dead, and your standard phrases aren't going to help anyone," Petyr bit back quietly. "So spare me. What of the child?"
The baby looked at him and her eyes were silver and green and they saw right into his soul and he was petrified (don't look don't look you'll never forget you don't know what it's done to your mother don't look it'll ruin you too-)
"The baby will remain with us for the night, just for monitoring purposes. It's standard procedure, given the… the complications."
"Fine. I'll be here for her tomorrow." He left the room before anyone could say another word.
He didn't ask the question that had been hanging in the air ever since he'd seen the blood soak through the cheap hospital sheets, ever since she'd started spilling secrets and truths and accusations in that breathless feverish whisper; the question nobody would ask ever since she'd started to cry and told them to take her child away and then smiled at him in that broken, cruel, beautiful way –
(Did she do this to herself?)
There was no point, it made no difference. It was over.
(II)
The red roses on her mother's grave still looked fresh the day he had Alayne baptised, just him and Edmure and Roslin and little Hoster in a suit.
It was what she'd have wanted.
Petyr thought a black christening robe would have been far more appropriate, but it was a melodramatic notion and he was in no fit state to argue with a catholic priest over the colour of a piece of cloth.
That girl had a lifetime ahead of her to wear all the black lace she wanted, he would make sure of that and if it was the last thing he did.
There was a necklace around the baby's neck, a baptism gift from Roslin, with a picture of her mother inside. Another melodramatic notion.
There was no point to it, but Petyr was too tired to argue.
"You made me fall in love with you when my father's death is on you, and you never told me, and now nobody can save either of our souls, and you're a fucked-up sick bastard, Petyr, but you're all I have. All she has."
The organ started to play, so loud Petyr thought his skull might shatter. The baby in his arms was crying and he supposed he should do something, but he didn't know what, so he just stood still.
"Tell her I'm sorry."
"What name have you given your child?"
Edmure's elbow hit him in the ribcage, the sharp pain startling him awake.
To piousness through pain, he thought. Just like old times.
"Alayne."
"What do you ask of God's church for Alayne?"
Well, he thought bitterly, since you've asked, how about you give her back her mother, you bastard.
Her voice in his head was drowning out the priest and he wondered if he was to take this never-ending echo of her as some kind of punishment.
"Do you reject Satan?" asked the priest, and Petyr nearly laughed.
At some point of this, he mused, he was bound to be struck by lightning. "I do."
"You know, I wish you'd drowned, Petyr."
"And all his works?"
"I do."
"I wish you'd drowned when Brandon shot you... I wish you'd died a good person, that you wouldn't've had to become like this. I'd still have a father, and you… Look what this world has made of us…"
Those last words he just couldn't forget - he didn't understand what she could have done that she had felt so terrible about…
Maybe he'd never know.
He'd better hope Alayne would never ask, not about any of it, because what could he say?
I literally planted a seed in that poor doomed beautiful girl that wound up tearing her apart?
I have her blood all over my hands, and so do you, and I'm forcing you to live with that?
You see, love, I'm what they call a monster, but that's okay because God forgives the sinners?
Forgiveness was a pretty lie told to the weak so they could live with the things they had done.
Motherless, and stuck with him, this poor girl was bound to come to that same conclusion, but maybe not for some time.
Maybe, for some time, she wouldn't hate him, hate herself.
And at least she didn't have her voice in her head, repeating like a scratched record over and over and over…
He pitied her.
He envied her.
"Why couldn't you at least let me hate you? Why did you have to take all of my life and then make what was left all about you?"
"Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?"
"I wish you'd drowned."
Edmure elbowed him again.
"Just remember me, Petyr, because I never wanted to but I love you and I would've loved your child too –"
.
The baby's fist closed around the sleeve of his jacket. She had stopped crying, and her eyes – silver and green and no shadows in them – looked up at him almost conspiratorially, with a smile that seemed to know better, to be mildly amused by the stupidity of it all.
The vast emptiness in those monotonously recited phrases, the blatantly obvious pretense and pointless tragedy of it all; she seemed to have found some sort of bitter hilarity in that.
You and me both, darling.
He smiled back at her fleetingly and suddenly, there was silence in his head again.
"Mr Baelish, do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins-"
Well, he supposed it was only appropriate he introduced his daughter into the world with a whole bunch of lies, and by interrupting a priest.
"Yes. I do."
(Fuck you.)
He didn't say it.
(Not in front of the kid.)
*A/N* You see, I'm apologising for it being weirdly sappy, but I'm not apologising for the rest because:
"If anything in this world is certain, if history has taught us anything, it's that you can kill anyone." - Michael Corleone, The Godfather part II
(And I say you can in fiction.)
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