Chapter 4: Kill the Cat

News comes, a week onwards. News comes, heavy and cold, the densest snow, the kind that falls sideways and blinds the vision, that suffocates and smothers. Oh, Cersei, what matter of being are you? Has vengeance truly become more to you than your own flesh and blood? Or are you simply playing me, thinking that I can never carry out my threat? Think me weak, Cersei, think me weak when I learn of my sister's body cut up like dead meat, and her head mounted on a spike for the ravens? Oh, Cersei you should not have tempted me…

The northern lords, they say in must be done. And I am broken enough to do it. They say if Cersei is allowed to play upon us, our word will ever be viewed as false, our declarations empty, our judgments too easily softened, holding no weight. The ax must fall, for someone must bear the weight that has been laid down. I agree with my head; I should agree with my heart. I want to make Cersei suffer for every drop she has extracted from us. Yet my soul is agonized, writhing, twisting.

I feel simultaneously stiff and light-headed as I trudge down to the dungeon, to see her, the one I do not wish to see, the one who has been locked up there for the past two days since I news came. Now this the third day. I do not wish to see the visage of my sister's murderer staring back at me, for that is the blood she shares, though she cannot help it. And they expect me to shed it. Certainly, any man among them would do the job if I could not stomach it. But they would view me low for not scrubbing the stains off my own clothes.

I shiver. Is a little girl's life merely a stain to be scrubbed off?

But she's part of them, I tell myself, part of them, stupid and sheltered from the world outside her little bubble. She doesn't know the depth of things that have passed here, cannot fathom the intensity of what her family has unleashed upon mine. I should hate her for it. For being alive when all those near and dear to me are dead. I should wish to even the score…

I open the door, and see her sitting there in the corner, in the dark, her hands clutching and unclutching the skirt of her dress. I can see her eyes by the torchlight now. She doesn't say anything. All her pleasant banter and silly chatter has been drained out of her. She is like a ghost of herself. She just stares, silently. She must know why I am here. She must have been waiting for me, surely. She must know what this moment means.

"Stand up, Myrcella Baratheon," I order her, my voice tense, closing the door behind me.

She does so slowly, her eyes searching into the dark. "Jon Snow," she whispers. "You came to see me." I make out the smallest hint of a smile on her face, pale and moon-like, knowing like every moon knows, death comes with the dawn. "I didn't think anyone would."

I feel a twitch, and am angry with myself. It is justice, this thing, justice and no less. It will save lives in the long run. This is the game we play; blood for blood, without remorse. I've killed many men before; I've felt the life leave them under my sword. But this feels…different…

No, no, if she dies…who will take care of that mangy cat? Who will I get books for? Who will I buy a fur-trimmed coat for? How will she ever take that bath? Oh, gods, am I a child, making such childish excuses for myself, when I know what must be done…? Oh, gods of war, help me do it, help me take a life I do not wish to take…

I pull out my sword, the one that is etched with the sign of the wolf. She comes towards me, as if she thinks I pulled it out simply to show her something. Her eyes are innocent. She touches the blade, and my throat goes dry. Both hands are on it now, and she's studying the insignia, curiosity dancing in her eyes.

"It's very pretty," she says, and my heart breaks.

I tear it away from her more abruptly than intended, and she jumps back, obviously startled. She knows now she is not safe. She knows…I am a wolf, a wolf's mission. Raw meat, raw flesh, raw blood and red bone…

Her breath hitches. "You…?"

"I am king in the north," I state, but it bears no pride, only pain. "I must carry out my own retribution, my own justice, as my father would. I must…look the death I inflict in the eyes, not leave it to other men."

She is cutting me to the quick, the way her eyes finally drop and she sees blood running from her hands. The blade must have cut them when I pulled it away so abruptly. "Oh…oh…" she is gasping, staring at the blood, and her breathing is rushed an panicked, and she is shaking now, and clutching her belly with her one hand. She looks like she will crumble on the ground before the blow even falls.

"Myrsella," my voice grinds out, "look me in the eyes."

She rings her hands together, and with an amazing presence of mind her eyes meet mine again, and they are bleeding hot, silent tears.

I feel that I cannot breath. I must get it done, while she is looking at me…must have done with it, and go on…

I lift the sword at an arch, at an angle, and it glints in my eye, the glint it always makes before it kills. She looks mesmerized by it, her eyes crossing between belief and disbelief and back again, her lips move briefly, I think they form my name, but no sound comes out. She is frozen, and my arm is frozen, afraid of the drop…

It all flashes before me, as if it had already been done. The way she will squeak as the blade goes through her, all the way through her, but still struggle not to scream as she sees the blood all over her dress. She will crumple onto the ground, panting like a wounded animal, looking up with horror-frozen eyes, trying to process if this is truly the end. And she will throttle on the floor, like the men I have slain in battle, and the blood will well up in her mouth, and she will choke on it till her body stops working and blue eyes are robbed of soul.

And I see myself, standing over her, and it is not myself any more, but Cersei.

And in that moment I know that I can't. Call me a coward, a weak, bitch-born bastard disgrace to my name, but I'm looking at her, and she's looking at me, and I can't…

I hear my sword clatter on the ground and turn, my arm pressed over my eyes. Then after a long seemingly endless pause, I blindly clutch at the door handle with my other gloved hand, yanking it open. My voice comes out in a choke, a rasp, holding on to too much pain to be recognizable as my own.

"Run…run away, you little Cersei…you'd better run before your blood runs…now go!"

She hesitates, for a moment, and then springs for the door like a frightened, cornered cat, and she's fleeing down the hall as fast as she might run, and I hear a suppressed sob finally come out of her, as my own weeping forces itself out of me, seeing Arya, my little Arya, torn apart by lion claws in my mind.

Stick 'em with the pointy end…oh, oh, oh, and she's the one who got it…oh, oh, oh…curse the day I gave her the needle, that stitched vengeance in her heart and sewed her eyes shut…