Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns Great Games, George R. R. Martin owns A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones, and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*

Summary:

The Great Games: a grand tourney where each district allows up to one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks. The Victor wins riches and fame, but some Districts have extra incentives. (OR: the one where Gendry wins, and it looks like Arya is his prize)

Reminder: We're in a pseudo-Great Games verse in terms of technology. No Capitol, just 13 Districts who take turns hosting an annual inter-district competition that gives the Victor fame and fortune.

Story so far:

Gendry Lannister's mother, Cersei, is annoyed that her son's friends (including Ramsay Bolton and Ned Dayne) have delivered Gendry's prize to her doorstep. The prize is a girl, one who has been a part of Gendry's (and thus Cersei's) life for longer than she'd like to admit.

The Great Games

Chapter 2:

how to breed monsters

"You are an honest and honorable man, Lord Eddard. Ofttimes I forget that. I have met so few of them in my life ... When I see what honesty and honor have won you, I understand why."

~ Lord Varys

Cersei Lannister had been blessed with beauty, or so she'd been told. She'd been blessed with brains too, but was smart enough to only let people see her smiles. She grew up in luxury, lavished with attention in one of the sprawling manors comprising the Victor's Village in District 2. Her father had been the well-loved champion of the 30th Great Games, continuing the legacy of his father and grandfather before him. The Great Games (an inter-district competition where the strongest warriors represented their home Districts and competed for glory) was synonymous with the Lannister name. No, that was wrong, Victor was synonymous with the Lannister name.

Cersei is gorgeous, with the renowned Lannister thick golden curls and striking emerald eyes. She is rich, through birth and through marriage. But, more than her beauty and her bank account, she is smart. She is intelligent in a dangerous, manipulating kind of way. Only her father knows this, and he allows it solely because she is as obedient to him as her mother was. Actually, no, that isn't entirely true. One other person knew she was capable of independent thought, and that was Cersei's only friend (unlike the other sheep whose daily bleating that she endured). Lysa was her name, Dr. Lysa Tully. Lysa was a few years her senior, and she was smart too. At only age 21, Lysa became the youngest physician to ever be registered in District 2.

At age 21, Cersei became a widow.

+-{+}-+

18-year-old Cersei is unsurprised when her father summons her to his solar, and formally commands her to seduce 28-year-old Robert Baratheon, the Victor of the 52nd Great Games, into sliding a ring onto her finger. She does not put up a fuss, despite their age gap and his origins, because she paid close attention to this year's Games. She easily inferred from how he handled his tasks that Robert is mostly brawn, negligible brain, and entirely malleable. Lysa on the other hand, does not understand Tywin Lannister's instructions at first, and is very vocal about it; the fact that District 2 West's princess is being given to an unpopular Victor. Unpopular in the West (the part of District 2 that actually mattered), because even though Robert is a Victor, he is from District 2 East.

District 2 West has a longstanding hierarchy built on names and tradition, and Robert is nothing but a single child from a deceased single mother from the lower middle class of District 2 East. In Lysa's repeatedly voiced opinion, Robert is a nobody who likely fancies himself one of the elite now that he is the first non-West Victor from District 2. And so, Lysa doesn't understand why Cersei's well-respected, well-bred father would even consider sullying his daughter and his line with the likes of Robert, who she considers to be only a marginally better option for a spouse than the grubby peasants and putrid urchins from the slums of District 2 South.

Cersei knows her father's mind all too well, and figures that there is a greater purpose to his selection of Robert. Normally she would work it out, but she needs to invest her mental energy towards the manipulations and scheming that will be required in snaring the doe-eyed fool. Cersei's father raised her to be obedient without question, so honestly, it would not matter even if he had no ulterior purpose to his instruction.

She owes him a debt, and thus her unfaltering obedience is expected, even though her loyalty alone will never be enough to repay him.

Tywin Lannister wins the 30th Great Games and then marries a girl with impeccable breeding and a good, old name from 2 West.

Unfortunately, Cersei's mother was unable to conceive Tywin a son. Only stillborn after stillborn, miscarriage after miscarriage, and a girl.

Tywin was the only child of a line of male Victors. So, by the etiquette of 2 West, Tywin had every reason to abandon his wife and daughter, and wed another more fertile bride instead. Because his family's legacy demanded a son, no one who mattered would fault him for abandoning a barren wife.

Tywin did not.

And so Cersei feels she owes her obedience to her father, a man who stayed true to her mother, even when the woman could not bear him a Victor - could not bear a son for him to mold. Tywin may be a cold, unfeeling man, but he is also a man who did not disown her, an action which would have left her with no more to her name that the rats of Southside. (It is a horrifying thought, one that she keeps away from her, for fear of ruminating over the fate she could have had).

Of course, she understands it was not love that kept Tywin Lannister true to his wife.

Tywin's marriage to her mother had always been political – her mother's family had many positioned in the District 2 Council, and had spawned over three Mayors (including Cersei's great grandfather). Moreover, his loyalty to a barren woman incapable of giving him a son to continue his legacy further endeared him to all of the District 2 populace, regardless of region. Wasn't Tywin Lannister kind. Wasn't Tywin Lannister noble. Wasn't Tywin Lannister just magnanimous.

When Cersei is eight years old, her mother dies in in childbirth, moments after the woman had delivered yet another stillborn babe.

Cersei initially suspects it was not the accident her father so convincingly mourned over, but Lysa had been an apprentice at the time, and told her that her mother's passing was natural. "Stress on her body from another failed birth," according to Lysa.

It doesn't take Cersei nor Lysa long to realize the advantages of marrying Robert Baratheon from the East when the next election announces that all citizen's votes will count as a whole vote, unlike before where any non-West District 2 citizen only had a partial vote.

Tywin Lannister, who is not only a Victor and bred in the East, but the grandson-in-law of a previous mayor, and father-in-law to the only ever non-West Victor, wins the election by a landslide.

Robert is tall with straight ink-black hair, a smith's broad shoulders leading to strong arms, and topped off with beautiful dark blue eyes. At least he is handsome, she thinks, as she orchestrates some happenstance meetings, uses her voice and her beauty to lure him into conversation and kisses, and forces a light sheen of happy tears into her eyes when he proposes to her.

Cersei is almost disbelieving of the sheer gullibility of her besotted fool of a husband. Robert is naïve. He is overly trusting. He tells awful jokes that she forces herself to laugh at. He is always chasing her about asking if he can do anything else for her. He shortens her name to a nickname that she only lets Lysa call her. He accommodates her request to keep her maiden name. He is from East. He is from a no-name family, and he grew up not knowing wealth.

But he is kind.

Cersei, at 19 years of age, locks herself in one of the many bathrooms of her husband's manor.

Her stomach cramps uncontrollably. She has tears running down her face and blood running down between her legs, the red a burning contrast to her ivory thighs. She collapses onto the floor, and the stark cold of the marble sticks to her sweat-drenched palms.

Cersei is only 19 years old and she is losing her first child.

Her thoughts are racing with everything she needs to do; with everything she should be doing instead of hiding in this godforsaken bathroom. She needs to call Lysa. She needs to cover this up somehow. She needs to make sure her father never hears of this. (What will he do to her, if he suspects her womb is just as inhospitable as her mother's was? What Tywin Lannister he do to her, if he even begins to suspect that she is incapable of continuing his legacy?)

Her stomach twists, and she throws her face over the toilet before puking.

Oh god, what will her husband do to her?

Robert has never raised a hand to her before, never even raised his voice to her before. But that was before she lost his child. He is still as strong as the day he won his Games, he could easily beat her to within a breath of her life, then drag her into his bed and plow into her until another child fills her womb to make up for the one who is currently bleeding out of her.

Cersei starts shaking uncontrollably. She does not want to die on this icy floor in a house that isn't hers. She does not want to be beaten by a homicidal husband. She just wants a son to give to her father - a son to pay her debt so that she can finally be free of her father's tyranny.

She feels thick arms come around her shoulders, and she wonders if her naïve, besotted, overly trusting fool of a husband will strangle her. (He isn't stupid enough to not know what the blood on the floor means. 'Oh god, oh god, I'm going to die here.')

Only Robert doesn't strangle her. Instead he pulls her to him, holds her close but not too tight, not with the grip an angry man should have.

"We'll be okay Ceri. We'll get through this. Shhh, it will all be okay."

His words aren't sarcastic. They aren't bitter or tinged with threat. They are kind.

She immediately turns in his hold, then buries her face into the crook of his neck, and clutches the fabric over his chest as she sobs. And sobs. And sobs. And while she continues to sob, Robert continues to whisper comforting things in a soothing voice.

Then he begins to get up, taking her with him.

In that moment Cersei feels like such a fool. He tricked her, she knows, and she expects to be hauled into his bed, forced into giving him an heir on a bed soaked with the blood of her dying child. Or perhaps he would rather yank her towards the nearest window. After all, the stage is already half-set for a grieving woman taking her life after an unfortunate miscarriage.

Instead she is slowly carried into a large porcelain tub, where Robert takes a soft wet towel and gently washes away the blood, the tears, and the sweat off of her. And when he seems sure that she is bleeding no more, he gently lifts her once more. He lays her carefully on their bed, and he does nothing more than hold her as she drifts off to sleep.

He is kind.

Robert stays kind, even when she loses two others.

She asks him, once, why he stays with her. (For all her and Lysa' s blustering about his breeding, Victors have overflowing pocket books that attract any woman easily.)

He looks baffled at her question, then almost offended, but finally understanding when he replies. "Oh Ceri. I married you because I love you, not for an heir. If we are lucky enough to have a child, then I'll be overjoyed. And if we never can, I will still be overjoyed because I will get to spend the rest of my life with you."

'Fool.' She thinks, eyes wet from his honesty, her heart becoming just another bit softer towards the man she married.

"You don't drink." She notes one day. She honestly hadn't paid attention before.

Robert snorts. "Hate the stuff." He frowns. "My father was a drunkard, got himself killed in the mines because he was wasted when he went to work. Left my mom and me with nothing." His eyes change the moment he mentions his mother. "She was good though, the best. The kindest person who ever lived. Until you, she was the only person that I had ever loved."

"What was her name?" She asks.

"Genria" He says with a nostalgic smile.

Ceri wonders then what it would be like to kiss him honestly. No mask, no debt. Just a wife who cared for her husband.

When Ceri is 8 months pregnant, the furthest she has ever been, she does not pray for a son to give her father. She does not pray for a son to buy her freedom.

Instead she prays for a daughter to give her husband. A girl with his kind eyes and his honest smile. She prays for a daughter that they can raise together.

She is drenched in sweat when she first hears the cries of her child.

"It's a boy!" Lysa exclaims from the foot of the bed, as she and her nurses go about dealing with the child and the afterbirth.

From Ceri's side, she hears the familiar smooth baritone of her husband. "You'll be such a great mother." Robert says, with a calming voice as he brushes the bangs plastered over her eyes, and gently kisses her sweat-stained forehead. His hand is still clasped in hers, where it has steadily stayed for every second of the past hours of painful labour. She looks into his cobalt eyes, that are so deep and so happy and so warm and so thankful and so loving. "What would you like to name him?" He asks her. (They hadn't talked about names at her request, her being too terrified to name a child she was liable to lose.)

She has no doubt Tywin is expecting that his grandson - the heir to the Lannister legacy - be named after him. Perhaps Tyrion, or Tytos, or Tybalt. But she does not want her son to be her father. She does not want her son to be a Victor or a debt payment. In that moment, she wants her son to be kind and to be honest.

She looks directly into her husband's eyes when she names their son after the woman who raised him.

When Gendry Baratheon-Lannister spends his first night at home, it is in a golden crib. Ceri watches over him as he breathes his small breaths, his little fingers curled into soft fists. She feels safe, encased in Robert's strong arms as they both stand faithfully by the crib until dawn.

She decides she wouldn't mind staying like this, in this moment, for the rest of her life.

Robert is naïve, overly trusting, ill-bred.

Robert will make her son weak.

Or at least, that is what Tywin warns, when she is once more summoned to his solar (in the house where she grew up, but not the home she now has with her husband and son in another plot of Victor's Village). Tywin, with the same unflinching tone as before, informs Ceri that Robert needs to be disposed of.

She panics. She cannot disobey her father, but she cannot bring herself to harm her husband, to rob Gendry of his father. Robert is kind, the only infallible kindness she has ever known, and he does not deserve to die.

She thinks quickly.

"I have an heir, so I'll remove him if that's what you wish," she lies. "But perhaps I should secure a spare first?"

She watches her father consider the reasoning, her breath bated. She tries to keep her expression placid, while she tries to think of another way to buy her husband time in case her father rejects this one.

"A spare," Tywin nods, "not necessary, but not invaluable if you can birth another boy. Provide a spare and then get rid of your husband."

"Yes, father" she says, while debating if she cares enough for Robert to run away with him. (Tywin would hunt them until the ends of the earth, but perhaps if she left Gendry she could keep Robert?)

Ceri grew up with servants and staff at her beck and call, so it is a novel experience for her to have so few. Robert hires a cook and a cleaner, who do their duties every morning and then allow the small family privacy for the rest of the day. During Gendry's early months, it was her and her husband who woke up to see to his needs. They were raising him together, as a family. And Ceri finds she likes it - having a home.

Any time that Robert is not catering to her or playing with their son, Robert spends by volunteering as a trainer for future Great Game tributes. There is a 48-hour long exposition today at the Training Centre. Some of Robert's favourite students are competing. He promised them he would attend. However, Ceri is 8 months along in her second promising pregnancy and Gendry is just over a year old.

Pregnant women and infants are not allowed in the Training Centres.

"I swear to you, the minute you call for me, I will be back by your side." He promises.

And she believes him, because Robert never lies to her.

He jokingly says he can bring Gendry along with him, to give her and Lysa a girl's night, as he tickles the infant's stomach. Baby Gendry is lying supine on a fluffy blanket, squealing in delight and clapping at his father, who bends down to blow a raspberry onto his son's stomach. "Dah!" Gendry sings. "Gendry!" Robert sings back. Ceri can't hold back her smile as she looks upon the antics of her two silly boys.

"How about you stay with Mommy and Aunt Lysa, and your future little sibling? Would you like that better, Gendry?" She coos at her son while playfully nudging her husband out of the way and ticking the boy's feet. Gendry just squeals again in delight, smiling even wider. "Mah! Mah! Mah!"

"Such a Mamma's boy," Her husband accuses impishly, while sighing and rolling his eyes good-naturedly. He lifts Gendry up to the sky, and spins him round and round. Ceri laughs freely at Gendry's glee and uninhibited wonder. "Dah! Fy!" Her son yelps with joy. "Fy! Fy! Fy!"

The perfect moment is broken when they hear a knock at the closest door. Robert tries to set his son down, but Gendry petulantly clings to his father's legs. Her son's adorable pouting just serves to widen Ceri's smile and she gently disentangles the boy's grip from Robert's training pants. Her husband thanks her with a wide smile. His arms are warm as he envelops her in a strong hug before giving her a kiss that takes her breath away. He rubs his hand over her protruding stomach, smiles even wider when he feels a kick. He reminds her again that he is just a call away if he is needed, before going to answer the persistent knocking.

Robert leaves for the exposition, Lysa enters, and Ceri continues smiling at her goofball of a son. She raises an amused brow when her son starts demanding his pregnant mother let him "fy" the way his father does. For a second she thinks he is trying to mirror the expression, and the sight of his endearing consternation makes her heart swell.

Lysa picks up Gendry and takes him upstairs to get him ready for some playtime outdoors. "Once this little rascal is set to go outside, I'll make us some tea Ceri!" Lysa exclaims over her shoulder as she starts up the stairs.

Ceri's smile falls the moment Lysa is on the upper floor. Ceri doesn't think she is capable of leaving Gendry anymore, and is completely sure that Robert will refuse to abandon his son. However, as she is constantly reminded by her growing stomach, she is running out of time to figure out a way to save her husband from her father.

Ceri makes it to the birthing bed again, but this time a month too early and without Robert by her side.

She screams for him, begs Lysa to call her husband from his stupid exposition, because something feels wrong this time and she needs him. She needs him here, holding her hand and telling her it will be all right because this time she is growing increasing frightened with each hour that passes; she is scared that she will die in a bed of blood the same way her mother did.

She hasn't seen her husband since they shared breakfast this morning, before he left for the exposition. She had entered labour ten hours ago, with Lysa as the sole witness.

'Where are you?!'

She is terrified, not just for this child who refuses to come out, but also for a husband who is too kind, too understanding of her fears, to have ever willingly left her to this alone if he'd had another choice. She knows in her gut her father must have not wanted to wait any longer. Again, a contraction yields pain without progression, and Ceri knows for certain that her husband must be dead, and she will soon follow.

She thinks of Gendry, her sweet little boy who still clings to her skirts, her darling son who shrieks with laughter every time he tries to escape a bath.

Another contraction rips through her and she screams.

She is dying. And Gendry will be an orphan, left in the severe hands of her ambitious father.

Ceri is drenched in sweat, but there are no cries of a child this time.

"Stillborn." Lysa says, with more pity than kindness.

When she finally sees Robert again, a few hours later, he is spewing apologies and excuses.

(An exposition structure had collapsed. He helped extract the younger students who were stuck underneath, close to dying. No one had told him. No one had called him or else he would have been right by her side. Etcetera, etcetera.)

The truth is that even if he had been the one that was dying, he should have crawled through the damned streets to be there for her. He should have known. He should have been there holding her when she sobbed after giving birth to a corpse.

Robert is kind, kind enough to help others instead of protecting her.

Robert is kind, but Robert wasn't there.

Robert has made her dependent on him.

Robert has made her weak.

Cersei will never forgive him for it.

Robert collapses in the middle of the Training Centre, urged to go help rebuild one of their structures by his wife only three days after news of his stillborn daughter. Cersei sells her part as the grieving widow well.

Lysa does the autopsy, so on paper it says that Robert died of heart stress. (Of course that's not entirely false, but not entirely true either. Lysa is loyal enough to keep the relevant tidbits out of the report.)

"Good riddance," Lysa exclaims as the duo share a bottle of champagne after Robert's funeral. "A shame that Gendry has to share blood with the ill-bred fool, but soon no one will remember that." Cersei takes a large gulp, draining the flute of liquor as Lysa continues her tirade. "At least Gendry won't have to suffer the fool as he grows…"

Lysa' s words fade as Cersei remembers the way Robert would playfully spin her son in his arms. She refills her glass. Gendry still asks for his Dah; the stupid brat doesn't realize he no longer has a father. To be frank, she doubts he has much of a mother anymore either. Gendry is an orphan in all the ways that matter now.

"... right, Ceri?"

Cersei looks down at her glass, which is empty again. She reaches for the bottle when she responds. "Don't call me that anymore."

Even if Robert's death was in any way suspicious, which it very much is (a man in peak health dying from heart issues, a widow granted full control over all of her deceased husband's Victor Funds); no one would dare whisper a word against the daughter of District 2's Mayor. And honestly, the people who matter, the people from the West, well they don't spare a second glance at a dead man from 2 East.

Likewise, no one says anything when the hyphenated last name of her son is shortened to reflect only her family's name.

The last of Robert's stain on her son is gone.

(She drinks herself to the point of blacking out on the day her father tells her to erase Gendry's last tether to his father.)

Gendry Lannister is trained by Tywin Lannister mercilessly.

Gendry starts walking at two years old, and is holding weapons before three.

Cersei supposes she should help the boy, that she should care enough to spare him from the brutal upbringing Tywin was never able to give to a son of his own. But, she knows that giving Gendry to Tywin has finally fulfilled her debt to the man.

Gendry isn't really her son anymore anyways. He's the son her mother never gave her father.

(Even more, Gendry is the reason Robert is dead. If she had just been able to leave the little leech, she and Robert could have run away together. She and Robert and their daughter could have lived happily together far away from here while Tywin fawned over his heir in District 2. And if Gendry had just been a girl or even stillborn, she could have at least had Robert for longer. She would have had time to forgive him, to talk herself out of her anger, to not poison the only honest kindness she had ever known.)

Cersei has a large wine cellar installed in the basement of the manor. She is the only occupant now. Gendry has a few rooms for show, but as the boy grows he spends more and more nights with his grandfather. Cersei spends her time drinking instead of eating, shopping with her dead husband's money, hiring staff to cook for Gendry when he deigns to stay with her, and being waited on by servants who she hires to maintain the house.

(It is a house now, it will never be a home again).

Cersei cannot bring herself to love her son, who continues to stray further away from her and grow further away from the person his father would have wanted him to be.

Gendry is the reason Robert is dead. And yet, Gendry is the only piece of her husband that she has left. The latter fact was what made her remove the pillow from its position over a sleeping two-year-old Gendry's face, when she had almost attempted to suffocate him. Not even Lysa knew about that. Or about the other four times she almost suffocated her son when he was a toddler, only to be stopped only by the ghost of her husband.

Gendry has straight black hair and cobalt eyes.

She hates his existence, and yet eagerly awaits for him to grow into his father's face. Her inner conflict is maddening, so she resolves to pursue with indifference. There are no more attempts at suffocation. But there are no more smiles and cooing either.

She still talks to the boy, of course. Though it is easy to see that as the boy grows older, he never quite cares enough about her to love her back. Perhaps he is smart enough to know that she disposed of his father, she suspects he hides his brains like she does.

(Or perhaps he just remembers the feeling of a pillow pressed over his mouth, and choking on air that almost wasn't there.)

They are a broken pair. Gendry has a grandfather and his sword, while Cersei has a ghost and her wine.

End of Chapter 2

"There are no heroes...in life, the monsters win."

~ Sansa Stark, Game of Thrones

Review pretty please :) Did anyone catch the hint with Lysa' s name? What do you think of Cersei and Robert now that you have some more AU backstory? Did you catch why/when I did the whole Ceri and Cersei thing? Poor Robert. A part of me wanted him to live after I wrote this chapter, but that would totally destroy what I have planned for Gendry and Arya in the future. Speaking of, next chapter will have LOTS of Gendry and Arya! What do think of the writing, grammar, plot pace, dialogue, etc? Constructive criticism and feedback very much welcome!

Preview of Chapter 3: how to feed obsession

"There are plenty of ways to break little girls, Gendry. Explore your options."

...

(she bred a monster, she isn't surprised)

...

Tywin laments over the creature in front of him... and wonders how much of his grandson's cruelty was born from his own relentless training of the boy, versus how much was due to his daughter's indifference. It is cruelty that is unmatched; he remembers every detail of the gory report given by ... of what the boy was capable of at just 15 years old (of what he did to the girl he now wants to own).

...

And we finally see some Gendry and Arya!

AN: Sorry for the preview confusion, I was initially going to have chapter 2 and 3 as one chapter, but the whole Cersei and Robert storyline ran away from me ;P This chapter was essentially me delving into Gendry's early years, and an opportunity to begin explaining the convoluted relationship he has with his family, especially Cersei. It's essentially the backbone for a lot of his issues later on, and part of the reason his relationship with Arya is so messed up (a relationship which I promise you will learn more of in Chapter 3 ;) )

REVIEW PLEASE ;)