The Red Wedding aftermath continues.

And what do you think Tyrion is doing when he feels bad?

He drinks.

TYRION IV

It was almost night. Tyrion was sitting with his squire, Pod, initiating him to drinking. He had initiated him to whoring not long ago, it was time for another sin now. Tyrion drank deeply and quickly. Sansa was off with Shae to the godswood for hours, so they had all their time. Perhaps she was praying for his death. The boy barely managed to follow, but he did. He always did what Tyrion ordered him. If he ordered his squire to jump from the battlements of the Red Keep into the bay, he would probably do it. Not that Tyrion would order him to do so. He liked the boy. And he didn't see how useful such an order could be.

Tyrion reflected on the last three days as he got drunk. It had been some time since he was drunk for good. The last time was during his wedding. He had drunk in hope to forget the events of his wedding night next day, but finally it had proved useless. Except for keeping his head when he threatened his nephew. The so-called king who rejoiced so much at the idea of his mother-in-law and brother-in-law's deaths. Tyrion felt bad for them. He didn't know why. The boy was insulting when he received him at Winterfell, a sword before him to show Tyrion there was no hospitality for him. And Lady Stark arrested him on the word of a brothel keeper and it started a war that led to the death of all her family but her eldest daughter. Tyrion couldn't believe how stupid the Starks were in the name of honor. Ned Stark supporting against all odds Stannis Baratheon, a man despised by most of the people and loved by none? And his refusal of Renly's help? Or warning his sister that he knew about her children? What a fool he was. If Ned Stark had accepted to be Regent of the realm, he could have kept Joffrey in check. The war between the Lannisters and the Tullys would only have been an accident for the beginning of a new reign.

And what about Catelyn Stark? She started the war with his arrest. And what was her idea to bring him to her half-mad sister and her sickly nephew who had less brain than Joffrey? And Robb Stark, who lost his war in the bedchamber. And by beheading one of his most important bannerman. Pride and honor. Sometimes you had to accept to bend the knee to people you hated if you wanted to survive. Sansa had understood this. She had learned to hold her tongue and to do what was asked for her. And she lived. Tyrion was admiring her for that ever since her beating before the court. He could never have done it in her stead.

Tyrion knew he was being unfair to blame the Starks for their own deaths. Joffrey and Cersei were far more responsible for this war than Ned Stark who only tried to do something he believed was right. The man wasn't interested in power, which was more than rare in the Seven Kingdoms. He would have made a good regent if the City Watch and this butcher Janos Slynt hadn't betrayed him. Not to mention Baelish's role in this. And it was his father who organized the Red Wedding. What a hypocrite he was to blame the Starks because he had petty problems with Sansa. And to say he had made a deal with Catelyn Stark to send her Sansa and Arya if she gave him back his brother. A Lannister always pays his debts, but it was difficult to pay debts to dead people. The best thing he could do now was to protect Sansa. Here is how I fulfill our deal Lady Stark. I marry your daughter in order to protect her against the people who had your husband, your son and you killed.

They emptied cup after cup, a handmaiden bringing them more wine and taking back the empty jugs. Podrick was struggling more and more to follow Tyrion, but he wouldn't give him a second of rest. He had to remember his first drinking time. With some luck people would talk about his drinking performance as well as the other one very soon. All that thanks to Tyrion Lannister.

As he swallowed the rest of his goblet, Pod wasn't able to finish his own. "Keep up." It was an order. He didn't wait for the boy to empty the rest of it and filled both their cups again.

"I don't think I can, my lord." Obviously he believed he couldn't take anymore. So Tyrion had every reason in the world to encourage him even more. The more drunk you got the first time the better.

"It's not easy being drunk all the time. Everyone would do it if it were easy." Pod looked droopy. He should wait to see how he would feel next morning.

"Leave." His dear sister appeared from the balcony, as always clad in the red of House Lannister. As Pod left, Tyrion wondered if the boy was relieved. His sister had ruined the first drinking night of his squire as she always ruined everything. "So, enjoying married life?" With a smile, she served herself a cup of Tyrion's wine. "An unhappy wife is a wine merchant's best friend."

"She doesn't deserve this." And he thought drinking would help him to forget his problems for a time. He should have known Cersei would prevent it. To make him suffer, one way or another, was something she enjoyed.

"Deserve? Be careful with that. Start trying to work out who deserves what and before long you'll spend the rest of your days weeping for each and every person in the world."

"There's nothing worse than a late-blooming philosopher." Light chuckles escaped from his sister's lips. He didn't like it. That meant she had something behind her head. "Will you be facing your marriage to Ser Loras with the same philosophical spirit?"

"I won't be marrying Ser Loras."

"I seem to remember saying something similar about my own marriage."

"You're not me." Cersei would marry Ser Loras whatever she did. Tyrion knew it. They could fight between brother and sister, but against their father they were powerless. "You want to make things better for Sansa? Give her a child."

Tyrion almost laughed at the stupidity of the suggestion. Cersei was never good at this game, but now she reached a peak. She didn't care at all for Sansa. Did she really think he didn't know the true reason of her suggestion? "So you can tell father it was you who finally talked me into it?"

"So she can have some happiness in her life."

"You have children. How happy would you say you are?"

"Not very." His sister took a great inspiration before she pronounced these two little words. Tyrion rarely saw this reaction with her, but he knew that when it happened it meant Cersei didn't play anymore. And her answer demonstrated it very well since it was undermining the suggestion she did right away. "But if it weren't for my children, I'd have thrown myself from the highest window in the Red Keep. They're the reason I'm alive."

"Even Joffrey?"

"Even Joffrey." She turned on her right, looking outside. Tyrion knew now that for a rare moment his sister was being honest. Talking about her children were the only moments where she was vulnerable and sincere. The only moments Tyrion saw her drop her mask of pride and smugness. The only moment Tyrion felt she was his sister. "He was all I had once. Before Myrcella was born. I used to spend hours looking at him. His wisps of hair. His tiny little hands and feet. He was such a jolly little fellow." Tyrion could hear the emotion and the happiness of his sister as she talked of her son. The proof of her one redeeming quality: her love for her children.

Tyrion could understand. He loved Tommen and Myrcella dearly. As for Joffrey, despite all his hatred for his eldest nephew, he couldn't really believe that one day he would cause him permanent harm. He was still family, and family was more important than anything for a Lannister. All the three children of Tywin Lannister understood that at least. He remembered how he felt when he sent Myrcella to Dorne. It hurt him to see his niece and Tommen cry for being separated. But he had to do it, for their own safety and for the family. Tyrion wondered how Myrcella was now in Dorne. Did she like it? Was she happy? Doran Martell was a good man as far as he knew and he never heard anything bad about his son Trystane. He hoped she could blossom, far away from the bad influence of her mother and her eldest brother. Seeing the way Cersei's education turned Joffrey into a new Mad King, he probably did the right thing for his niece. But still, he had felt like shit to take a daughter from her mother. As he had taken Sansa forever from her own when he married her.

"You always hear the terrible ones were terrible babies. "We should have known. Even then we should have known." It's nonsense. Whenever he was with me, he was happy." Tyrion half listened to her, lost in his own thoughts just like his sister. "And no one can take that away from me, not even Joffrey… how it feels to have someone. Someone of your own."

It was one of the rare moments Tyrion had some sympathy for his sister. However horrible she was, she was still a mother. Tyrion's life had been a hell ever since he came into the world, but Cersei had her hardships too. The Mad King refused to marry her to Rhaegar Targaryen, the last of the dragons, a man every girl in the Seven Kingdoms wanted to marry. And Cersei seemed to have loved him from what little Tyrion heard afterwards. She had stayed shut in her rooms for days apparently when she had discovered there would be no marriage. And she married a man who loved a dead woman over her and humiliated her with his excessive whoring. Tyrion wondered how Sansa would feel if he had continued to whore after their wedding. Probably no better than Cersei had felt. He realized how easy it was to be Robert Baratheon in these circumstances, to not care about the ones you were bound. But he couldn't act like Robert. He couldn't resolve himself to make Sansa even worse than she was now. Even if it destroyed his relationship with Shae he couldn't. He couldn't.

His sister was now sitting next to him and they both observed a deep silence, lost in their own thoughts. That was what happened when they were truly a brother and a sister. Tyrion broke it as he often did in these situations. "How long does it go on?" How long did they all have to suffer and make people suffer?

"Until we've dealt with all our enemies." The answer of his sister didn't make him feel better.

"Every time we deal with an enemy, we create two more."

"Then I suppose it will go on for quite a long time." Tyrion knew she was right. He also realized the sister he cared for was gone and the Queen Regent was there again. "Give Sansa a child. If you really care for her, that's the best thing you can do." And she left on this.

Tyrion started to drink again after his sister departed. But he drank slowly. He didn't have the heart to get drunk again. He was thinking about what Cersei had told him. He didn't know if it was his sister or the Queen Regent who was talking when she told him to give Sansa a child. Perhaps the Queen Regent influenced by his sister, which was quite surprising since most of the time it would be the sister who acted following the command of the Queen. Would children make Sansa's miserable life better? How could he know? He never had children. Once he had hoped, the first time he was married, but the hope seemed foolish now. Sansa would never accept him after the way her family died.

As he thought so the doors opened. He tried to not look as his wife and Shae entered. The two women who despised him the most in the world. Sansa didn't look at him a single second. Who could blame her? Him? Shae went to his side, looking down at him, half angry half sad. Tyron knew what it meant.

He left their chambers. It wouldn't do for him to be present while Sansa dressed in her clothes for the night. He went to the library and tried to lose his mind in books he never read before. It proved to be as ineffective as the wine. And he couldn't go to brothels or ask Shae anymore, so he had no choice but to brood. He remembered the walk. How far away it seemed to be now. As if it had taken place in another world. Finally, after a few hours, Tyrion decided he could try to sleep a little.

When Tyrion went back into his chambers, his boots out of his feet as usual to make the less noise he could, he heard the same sound he had heard these last three nights. His wife was sobbing, her back turned on him. Each night Tyrion wanted to comfort her, to tell her he was there for her, that he had nothing to do with this and was only here to protect her. But he couldn't. She would probably slapped him. Or, more probably, she would run away from him, never looking at him even a moment. The man who destroyed her life.

He changed his clothes as he always did, his back in her direction, and stretched on the couch. She wasn't looking toward him so why try to hide? He looked one last time at his wife who continued to weep. Cersei was wrong. Lannister children would never make things better for Sansa. As always, there was nothing he could do. He slept maybe two hours before he got up and spent another day working, as far as he could be from his wife.

I hope you liked my exploration on the brother-sister relationship between Tyrion and Cersei, however ambivalent it is.

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Next chapter: a new character POV (It's a surprise.)