Chapter Summary: Cersei and Joffrey have an appointment with their lawyers.

Notes: It was requested on tumblr that I do a fancast for some of the other side characters in the series. You can find them under the ACoFaF tag on my blog (username justadram). As always, if you have a different vision for a character in mind, go with that. Feel free to hit me up on tumblr any time. I love interacting with my readers and fangirling over the books and show.

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Cersei

If Cersei had a choice, she would never get in a car with her son. At least not when he's driving. Today she didn't have a choice. Robert washed his hands of the whole affair, Jaime refuses to show any interest, and while Jaime's cousin Lancel has his uses, he'd be hopeless in a legal setting. Besides, Joffrey wouldn't be thrilled about his not quite thirty year old cousin being included in today's visit to Qyburn and Clegane, Attorneys at Law. It's just the two of them, mother and son, and when he announced he would drive, Cersei knew to climb into the little red coupe without complaint. The path of least resistance is always best with Joff.

Joffrey is reckless in life and behind the wheel. On their drive across New Jersey, he's proven again that he's a danger to himself, his passengers, and anyone else on the road. When Joff was sixteen, Robert couldn't even be bothered to teach him how to drive properly and it shows. Weaving through noonday traffic, he trails close enough that Cersei wonders how his front end doesn't end in the trunk of the car in front of them before he nearly clips it, speeding ahead with a shouted curse.

You'd think his father's accident and injury would give him pause, but it hasn't. Over the years, she's come to realize Joffrey is Jaime without any of his golden finesse. Jaime is an aggressive driver, but she never felt unsafe with him. Not even when he was a teenager and had a car that could go just as fast as Joff's. Jaime never tried to kill her, whereas she thinks Joffrey is at least happily trying to frighten her.

Her hand slams into the side door and a crimson nail is sacrificed in service to preventing her shoulder from smashing into the window, when he swings across two lanes with a chuckle. It smarts, where it broke below the quick, and she curses with only slightly less creativity than her son.

With no regard for keeping his eyes on the road, he turns to glare at her. "What's wrong with you?"

She knows better than to criticize. Even suggesting he watch the car in front of him won't go over. Joffrey doesn't appreciate correction of any kind. Never really did, although she made no sustained efforts to correct what seemed like harmless high spiritedness in him as a child. He was her first and as much her true love as his father ever was. A little motherly indulgence was to be expected.

"It occurred to me I might have forgotten those copies of those forwarded e-mails." The ones from Margaery, Joffrey's fiancé.

Cersei doesn't like her—Jaime said she was pretty and Cersei thinks she's a little too friendly to be believable—but at least she's proven to be of some use in this mess with the Starks. They need ammunition against Jon Snow and Sansa, and being the girl's former dear friend, Margaery has it in spades. Rumors are one thing, but copies of texts and e-mails between her and the Stark girl are the kind of evidence that will make a real difference in teaching the Starks they should have never messed with Cersei or her family.

"You better not. That's the whole fucking point, Mother."

"Don't worry. I didn't," she assures him, reaching for her purse.

"Well, you forget everything. Is Alzheimer's a thing with people your age?"

She grits her teeth, as he blows his horn at a black Cadillac driven by a woman with white hair. Someone who might reasonably have Alzheimer's, instead of his mother, who was always the youngest mother in Joffrey's class. "People my age? I'm hardly ancient, sweetheart."

"Close enough. Margaery says women your age have to inject themselves with all sorts of crap to keep looking good."

"Does she?" Cersei wonders whether his fiancé is as forthcoming with him about the irons and wax and gel she uses to achieve her look. Who meets a boy's parents wearing shorts brief enough to be worn in a gynecological exam? Someone who is trading on her looks, not her brains. Someone who will happily inject herself to keep her face from falling some day. "She's right. Some beauty is fading. Maybe that's the case with her mother."

"Her mother is kind of hot for an old lady."

"Is she? They say a good plastic surgeon can do wonders for older women."

"No, she's pretty banging. Trust me. I had to check that shit out, so I didn't end up married to someone who will look like a prune in ten years. Divorces are expensive as hell. Judges give women everything."

Joffrey's estimation of the inequities of the judicial system are off, but forget a divorce. Cersei would like to prevent this marriage from ever happening, so Joff doesn't need to worry about what kind of shape Margaery will be in after a decade. Margaery seduced him and he's infatuated to whatever degree Joff can be attracted to someone other than himself, but there's always something that can be done to take the shine off the apple.

Wearing a sweet smile, Margaery feeds them information about Sansa. Meanwhile, Cersei looks for the same kind of dirt on Margaery. It must be out there. Something sorted. Something to reveal to Joff with a furrowed brow after all this business with the Starks is over. He'll melt down and then maybe be overwhelmed with gratitude towards his mother for having saved him for marrying where he shouldn't. Even if he forgets to thank her for it, busting up this engagement will spare Cersei from having that twit as a daughter in law.

What a bitch, talking to her son about whether his mother might use Botox and fillers. Margaery's beauty is purely the glow of youth. Cersei is a classic beauty. Jaime always said so.

"Like Sansa. She's already got a stick up her ass. She'll end up a total shrew like her mom," Joffrey says, punching a button on the stereo. A song that's been playing underneath the roar of the engine grows louder. Some kind of rap song that grates on her nerves more than a little bit.

Catelyn Stark is an attractive woman, but she's also conservative and rather old fashioned. What you might call severe. Not that Cersei is going to argue the woman's virtues to Joff. If anything, it's a relief to hear he doesn't think she's hot too. As it is, Cersei's going to find it hard to be civil to Alerie Tyrell, when they inevitably meet.

So far they've avoided it and their communication has been entirely electronic. Cersei sends Margaery's mother e-mails about the wedding, instructing her on what needs to be done, when, and how. The Tyrells are paying for what promises to be a lavish affair—as they should. Paying doesn't mean they can be allowed to plan it without Cersei's expert guidance. The Tyrells are rich to be sure, but not well versed in New York society. If there has to be a wedding, it needs to be the best one the city has ever seen, and no one knows how to achieve that better than Cersei.

Margaery's mother has proved fairly complacent thus far. Working alongside Cat on this kind of thing would have been a nightmare. Her notions of what would constitute an appropriate reception would undoubtedly conflict with Cersei's vision for Joffrey's triumphal moment. Yet another reason to be thankful Joff didn't end up letting Sansa hitch her wagon to his. They all dodged a bullet there.

"What this shows," Cersei says loud enough to be heard over the music, "is that Sansa has no business acting like a stuck up prude."

She pulls out the copies that peek from the top of the buttery tan leather of her purse and fans them out before her, looking away from the horror that is Joff's driving. It's a pleasure to reread the damning evidence. Hours have gone by, while she went over these pages, wine glass in hand and a smirk on her face, reading how inexpertly Sansa exposed herself and her family. It will be an even greater source of pleasure to give these pages to her lawyers.

I embarrassed myself! If you'd been there, Marg, you could've stopped me!

You know I wanted to be! So busy here, hun.

I could die. No joke.

I'm sure it was fine, girl. You're supposed to be embarrassing on your 21st.

No. It was so not fine. I was drunk and flirty with Jon. He must have noticed.

What is wroooong with me?

Jon. Snow. Jon Snow!

LOL

I asked him to come upstairs with me, Marg…

And did he accept?

No

Pooh

Flipping through the thin stack of copies, you can chart the progression of their affair. First it was how nice he was. How good it was to hang out with him after their brother passed. How he understood. Then flirting with Jon Snow turned into waxing on about his lips in several text messages full of those inane little smiley faces kids use in their conversations. She said she'd had a dream about Jon that made it impossible to look at him at dinner. 'Accidentally' slept in his room one night. She talked about being confused and asked Margaery how to get over someone you shouldn't be crushing on. It's all honest and overly trusting and committed to paper.

What it isn't is a confession of fucking her brother. Doesn't matter. The lawyers don't actually need that for the case against Jon, and the media already believes it's true. When you pair that certainty with the business at the Night's Watch, what's going on between the two of them appears blatant. Why else would Jon hit Joffrey without provocation? There's simply no explanation other than some kind of testosterone driven jealousy. Joff was there first, before everyone else had a ride. Must sting a little.

Senator Stark hasn't denied any of it. They've been so laughably silent since the media began to run with Sansa Stark and Jon Snow's lurid affair. Incest in the Senator's townhouse. Sexcapades among New York's finest. What an unexpected turn! What an unlikely duo!

No one has seen Jon Snow, who always has been weird and solitary, not the kind of man you would swoon over the way Sansa did in these messages. Sansa's photo is only snapped getting in and out of the family limo, when she goes to whatever idiot job she has at that magazine. Ned Stark is not in D.C. His wife is absent from her usual charitable committees. The kids are on leave from school. They're denned up for a winter that is quickly coming to an end.

Joff flips to another song, equally loud and obnoxious as the last one, shouting over it, as the beat builds. "I knew she was a slut. Always did."

Cersei doubts that's true, otherwise he wouldn't have dated Sansa for as long as he did. But they certainly have ample evidence of her proclivities now. It's not just Jon Snow she fucked under the nose of her puritanical parents. There's Petyr Baelish too. A man old enough to be her father and a dean at her university. Cersei would think Sansa did it for some kind of advancement at school, but Margaery says Sansa failed out. Another delicious tidbit worth squirreling away.

Cersei wanted to know more about the dean. With the help of Osmund Kettleblack, a hooked nosed, hairy chested detective Cersei found in Tyrion's rolodex on a trip to Lannister Mercantile, she did some digging. They've peeled away the oniony layers of Petyr Baelish bit by bit.

He's an old friend of the Tully family. Cat's particular friend since childhood. His nickname in high school was Littlefinger, and Cersei can only hope that had its origins in locker room teasing. A bit of an upstart, he's the first one in his family to go to college, let alone end up teaching at one. Probably the type that's dying to be accepted by the right sort of people. Dying to find his way into a family as lofty as the Tullys or the Starks. Almost managed it too. He messed around with Cat's sister, Lysa, the unstable one with the ugly brat of a boy Cersei was exposed to on a vacation they shared with the Starks. Then he fucked Cat's precious daughter.

It's too perfect. Only Days of Our Lives could script it better, unless it turns out Sansa is a practicing witch.

Cersei knew the girl was stupid, but if she had any thought for her future, fucking this sad dean was next level stupidity. Being indiscrete only compounded her error—talking about it in weepy e-mails, preserved for prosperity in Margaery's inbox and now in Cersei's hand, ready to be delivered to lawyers eager to rip into her.

When they build their case against Jon Snow, proof of Jon and Sansa's budding relationship will provide a motive for Jon's malicious attack. No one will question whether Joff was innocent. It's all they need. This information about the dean is icing on the cake. If the Starks so much as think about making an accusation of physical abuse against Joffrey, Cersei won't feel the least bit sorry with hitting them with everything they've got. For once Robert was right: who would believe the word of a girl like that?

"She's certainly made her bed," Cersei says, tapping the papers together on her thigh to straighten them before slipping them back inside her purse. "I hope she enjoys lying in it."

"I couldn't care less what happens to her. Good riddance as far as I'm concerned. It's Margaery who feels sorry for her."

"She has a funny way of showing it, doesn't she?" Cersei says, checking out her lipstick in car's side mirror with a tilt of the head.

Margaery needed no urging to produce this evidence, and she's been making unflattering references to Sansa to Joff for months. That's an ugly kind of friendship, which is precisely why Cersei doesn't trust women.

"She only gave me all that stuff on Sansa because she loves me, but she has a soft heart."

Doubtful, Cersei thinks, dropping her purse to the floorboards. Margaery clearly wants them all to believe she's a gentle hearted princess of a girl, deeply in love. Appearances can be deceiving.

The rugs in Joff's car are immaculate. Nothing to stain the leather on the bottom of her purse. Joffrey has his issues, but he's always been impeccably put together and obsessive about his surroundings. Tyrion once had the nerve to assert that if Joff was smarter, his meticulousness would make him a candidate for a sociopathic diagnosis. A double insult Jaime refused to respond to.

As it turns out, you can't trust men either. Which leaves her completely alone to navigate this mess.

"Let's not get too caught up in thinking about the wonder that is Margaery, hmm? Today's appointment is important."

"I fucking know that."

"Of course, and you know lawyers. We'll be on the clock, so we have to be focused."

Money shouldn't be an issue, but it is. Robert's brother Renly has the investors all jittery with his inflammatory statements to the board about Robert's spending. The board hired King's Guard Accounting—not Lannister Merc that could be trusted to make things look kosher—to investigate. Men in poorly fitting suits are going through Robert's accounts with a fine tooth comb right this very moment, and she's hamstringed to do anything about it. This meeting with her lawyers is the only thing she has any control of.

It's like Renly wants them all to starve or live like goddamn paupers. While he swans about his night clubs. Asshole. Greedy prick.

Thank God Lancel works for King's Guard. It was unpleasant, but his doe eyed appreciation for her blowing him in his apartment is the only thing that might save her and Robert from jail time for defrauding the company. You do what you have to do for your family.

She didn't do it for Robert. She has no interest in saving Robert. With Robert doing time, she could shape a life out of the ashes. Probably garner some real sympathy too for her situation as the unwitting victim of his dirty dealings. She'd survive, so he can rot for all she cares.

But Cersei's name is on almost everything they've taken with company funds—the houses, the cars, the boat—and proving she didn't know what was going on with her name signed at the bottom of document after document would be tricky. Potentially impossible.

She can't go to jail. Mothers have responsibilities. Myrcella would be all right: she's strong and never required too much in the way of parenting. But Tommen is still a baby. Who would take care of him? It couldn't be Jaime, when by all accounts Robert is his father. Not that she would trust Jaime to get the job done if she acknowledged him as the father. She can't even trust him to be there for Joff, who might not be a kid anymore, but who definitely could use some guidance.

She and Robert can't go to jail over this. It's Jon Snow who needs to end up in jail, not them.

"Don't lecture me," Joff says, slamming on the breaks hard enough to snap her head forward.

They're inches away from crashing, when she digs her nails, including the ragged, sharp one, through the fabric of her skirt into her thigh. But it's a miss and a miss is as good as a mile, so she breathes out and flexes her hand, schooling her tone to be light. "I wouldn't dream of it. I just want to make sure Jon Snow pays for what he did to you, sweetheart. Nothing else matters to me."

"Oh, he'll pay all right. Good old Qyburn and Clegane don't mess around. They'll go for the jugular, won't they? Like good dogs," he says, his head bobbing along to the thumping beat.

That's what Cersei is counting on—no mercy. The Starks don't deserve it. Not after Ned threatened her boy with a smear that would ruin his life. "They've never let me down before."

Her son turns to her, hands drumming against the steering wheel, as he flashes a blindingly white smile. "When I'm finished with them, those pussy ass Starks are going to wish they were dead."

Notes: Up next are:

Tyrion
Catelyn
Jaime

Just 10 chapters left! I do have two additional outtakes in mind, so expect a little extra Jon/Sansa interaction in those.