Chapter 4, Tyrion II
Tyrion may have seen Sansa off with a smile, but as soon as she was out the door, he threw his head back in dread of the conversation he was about to have once his squire returned with his mistress. He loved Shae, he truly did, but Sansa… Sansa was his wife now, she would be the mother of his children, the woman by his side for the rest of his life. He couldn't marginalize that for the sake of keeping a mistress. Even Ned Stark had a bastard, but as he'd told Jon Snow, "All dwarves are bastards in their fathers' eyes." So what would that make his bastard of a dwarf? He didn't want to dwell on it. All he knew is that now, with things going so much better with Sansa than he ever could have hoped for, Shae could not stay. But could he actually tell her to go, when he still loved her? He doubted it. And he doubted she would leave on her own. Gods, fuck me.
A knock at the door, and Tyrion straightened up to see Podrick open the door for Shae, still carrying the bloody sheets, albeit now folded, Sansa's maiden's blood on display at the top of the pile of linens.
"Podrick, would you find some chests and trunks and take them to Lady Sansa's chambers so that her belongings can be packed and brought here?"
"Yes, my lord," he said, bowing his head and excusing himself, closing the door behind him. There's certainly something to be said for a squire who doesn't ask too many questions at the wrong time.
"You bedded her," Shae said, dropping the sheets down on the chair Sansa had been sitting in not long before. She was upset, and Tyrion knew this was going to happen, no matter how much they'd talked about it.
"It was my duty, Shae. She is my wife."
"She's a child."
"Not as much as you might think," he mused, thinking of her calling out his name the night before. He tried to keep his voice level, but some of his wistfulness must have come through.
"You love her," Shae said accusingly.
"I barely know her," Tyrion said, shaking his head. "But she is my wife. We talked about this."
"Yes, we talked about this," she said, her accent thick, her voice low. "She is your wife. And I am your whore."
"Shae—"
"What? Are you going to say something clever? Go on, say something clever!" In that moment, she reminded Tyrion terribly of his father, all the times he'd said those words to him to spite him in retort, but he shook the rebuke aside.
Despite the animosity coming from his mistress, he approached her slowly and took her hand. "Shae, I care for you very much." She huffed at the pronouncement, but he carried on. "I care for you, and you will always have a place with me, as long as you want it." He shouldn't have been so weak, he should have told her to go, but he couldn't, he couldn't send away someone who seemed to truly care for him. Not again. "If you don't want to stay here," he paused, feeling his words in his chest. "If you want to leave, I promise I will provide a good life for you."
"You want to pay me to go away?"
"No, of course I don't, I want you, I…" he shook his head and hung it down before he could gather his thoughts. "I will take care of you, no matter what you choose. That's what I'm saying. If you want to leave, if you don't want to be around Sansa—"
"You think I don't want to be around her? I love that girl as if she were my own family. More than my own family, truly. Do you think that makes this all easier, seeing her with you?" Shae paused then in her rant before her tone softened. "She looked happy, this morning."
Tyrion nodded, absentmindedly. "Well, I did try my best." Shae ripped her hand from his, and he grimaced as he realized what he'd said and to whom he'd said it. "Poor choice of words, I'm sorry."
"Oh, I know all about that. 'Language can be a bit tricky here,'" she said mockingly, throwing his own words back at him to cruel effect and turning her back to him.
"Shae, I have always been kind to Sansa from the moment I returned to King's Landing, and she knows I mean her no ill will. For whatever naïveté the girl still has, she trusts me, and I'm not going to break that trust by carrying on with a mistress behind her back." He struggled for his next words. "And... this is what we're born to do. Sansa and I… neither of us chose this marriage, but it's our duty to make it work. Regardless of how we might feel for others in our lives." He put his hands on Shae's hips and pressed his forehead against her lower back.
He lowered his voice to a near whisper. "If I could have married you without consequence that first night I lay with you, I would have. But I refuse to see you go through what Tysha did, or worse." Shae turned around and put her arms around Tyrion's shoulders, giving him the courage to go on. "I… I don't have the strength to send you away, Shae. I'm too selfish. But know that so long as you live, my lady, with me or away, I will always take care of you."
She looked at him for a while before speaking again. "Answer me one thing, my lion."
"Name it."
"Who do you prefer?"
Tyrion hesitated, just a moment too long, and he could see the exact moment any affection she had for him in her eyes snuffed out like a candle. Her hands pressed down angrily on his shoulder, and he winced as she disturbed the scratches from the previous night.
"She scratched you?" Shae asked incredulously, throwing her hands away from him.
"Not intentionally." Tyrion circled his shoulders with a grimace, and Shae drew back and turned away from him.
Tyrion closed his eyes, knew that she was going to leave. All she had to do was say the words, and he will have lost yet another person who cared for him.
"Let me stay as her handmaiden for a while longer. Give me time to say goodbye." She said it stiffly, and Tyrion knew there was nothing left. She was casting him off like so many men before him.
"You can stay as long as you want," he told her.
"I don't want to stay here afterward. In Westeros." She turned back around to face him.
"Pentos?" he suggested, and she nodded.
"I'll see that you live like a princess," he promised.
Shae nodded again. "Maybe ask Lord Varys if he knows any merchant princes looking for a mistress."
He knew she said it just to hurt him, that she didn't really mean it, but it didn't make the comment sting any less. "I'll mention it to him."
Shae nodded, and then curtsied. "My lord."
She turned without hesitation and left, shutting the door behind her. The door's snap echoed, and Tyrion was left with a hollow ache in his chest. She wasn't truly gone, not yet, but she was done with him. No more drinking into the morning hours, intermittently setting aside the wine to fuck themselves silly; no more tavern games and bawdy stories with Bronn; no more laying by her side, smelling her dark, wavy hair as she slept; no more listening to beautiful nonsense in her Lorathi accent; no more. For a while, Tyrion just sat and drank. He didn't weep, as he did for Tysha. He knew this day would come eventually, had known it since the moment Bronn had brought her to his tent. As with all things, he knew there would be pain, just not when, and this had come to him sooner than expected.
At last, Podrick returned. "I gathered five chests for Lady Sansa's things, my lord, and her handmaiden had just returned to begin packing as I was leaving."
Tyrion didn't look at him for a moment. "Good lad. Here, have a cup." He poured a cup for his squire and motioned for him to sit down. He moved the bloody sheets to the floor and patted the chair for Podrick to sit in.
"Thank you, my lord." He sat and picked up his cup.
"To my lady wife," Tyrion toasted.
"To Lady Sansa," Pod said, and they clinked their cups together and drank. After a moment, Pod asked, "My lord, are you alright?"
Tyrion looked at him. "You're too clever for your own good sometimes, you know that, Pod?"
"I probably get that from someone. Not sure who," the boy quipped, a rare break in propriety.
Tyrion chuckled and patted Pod's arm. "I'm fine. Just adjusting to married life." It wasn't the truth, but it wasn't untrue either, technically speaking. "Come, help me find something to wear today that won't give my wife second thoughts." He stood up, still surprisingly sober, and went to the wardrobe to dress.
Once he was buttoned and tucked and his hair was somewhat smoothed after Sansa had thoroughly ruffled it the previous night, he poured another half cup of wine and downed it. "Right, let's go see my father, Podrick. Bring the sheets. Tuck the top one under though, would you?" Tyrion found it rather distasteful that Shae had put the blood directly on top. The whole of the Red Keep may already know that he was a lust-filled monster, but there was no reason to drag Sansa into his poor reputation.
It was a long walk to the Tower of the Hand, but finally he stood at the doors that had once been his own and entered the solar. His father sat behind the desk, barely looking up as he and Podrick entered. He motioned for Pod to set the sheets on the corner of his father's desk before dismissing him outside. No point in condemning more people than necessary to his father's unpleasantness.
When he'd finished the letter he was working on, Tywin Lannister reached out for the bed sheets and flipped them open to reveal his wife's maiden's blood, as well as some of his own dried seed that he hadn't noticed before in such glaring detail.
"Satisfied?" Tyrion asked him.
"Yes… Is there something else?" he asked when Tyrion didn't move right away, sure his father would want to say something about the feast the previous evening. However, Tyrion did remember a certain promise he'd made to Sansa. "Sansa is a lady of House Lannister now. Cersei claimed most of mother's necklaces, but I would like to gift one to my new wife, if you'll allow it."
A moment passed in which Tyrion wasn't sure whether his father was merely thinking, or considering chucking him out a window for daring to inquire about having one of Joanna Lannister's jewels. But eventually, his father nodded.
"I suppose she is a lady of House Lannister now. She should look the part." He turned his attention to one of his desk drawers and pulled out a key. Without a word, he rose from his desk and walked down a hallway to stop at a tapestry. He pulled it aside to reveal a safe.
"I didn't know that was there," Tyrion commented curiously.
"Nor does anyone else. I had it installed by my own men the last time I was Hand to Aerys. I never mentioned it when I left, and it was untouched until I opened it again recently." He put the key in the lock, and it turned over, but before opening the safe, he paused. "You embarrassed our family last night." Tyrion gave a smug grimace to himself, knowing this would come up sooner rather than later. "You embarrassed our family with your drunken antics and careless words, our family and your new wife. Don't let it happen again. If not for your family's sake, for Sansa's." His father's voice took on an almost soft tone. "Our family needs you to be better, Tyrion. If marriage doesn't make you the man you should be, then nothing will."
With those words of fatherly love hanging in the stale hallway air, he opened the safe. "You may choose what you like for your wife, save for the items on the topmost shelf. Close the safe and return the key to me when you have finished." With that, he walked away.
"Not as if I could reach the top shelf anyway," he muttered under his breath before reaching into the safe. It wasn't all jewelry. There were maps, a Valyrian steel knife or two, letters Tyrion wouldn't mind reading if he had the chance at another time, bags of gold, silver, and copper. But when he finally sorted out the jewelry, most of it was of yellow gold and rubies, big bold pieces that Sansa would have hated for being akin to a Lannister collar, a claim on her. That wasn't what he wanted to give her. He wanted her to look the part of his wife yes, but in her own right. He wanted something light, and fresh, and beautiful, and…
"Perfect." He smirked to himself, having found just the heirloom for his new wife. He carefully tucked it back into the box it had been laying in for thirty odd years before closing the safe and pulling out the key.
As he returned to the solar, he handed the key back to his father. "Thank you," he said, without an ounce of irony or mirth. He even gave his father a nod. Even more surprisingly, his father returned it, albeit a more brief, cool nod. Even so, Tyrion wondered if his father was right, if being a married man again would change him. He knew being married to Tysha had changed him, but he had loved her. He cared for Sansa, but he didn't love her, not yet at least. He didn't think so, anyway…