Gossamers of Green and Gold
Full Summary: If the Gods wanted men to play Cyvasse, they would have made the world checkered, and the spaces between Tywin Lannister and Haraella Targaryen would've been carved by gossamers of green and gold. Alas, the world was not checkered, the Gods not so obvious, and yet, Tywin and Haraella find themselves dancing outside the board, shifting the game of thrones. Fem!Harry!Targayen/Tywin Lannister. Strong M.
Chapter:
The Fortune Of A Sheep's Smile
Warnings/Tags: Sapiosexuality (Sexual attraction to intelligence), political intrigue, assassination attempts, smut, strong language,
Young Tywin Lannister & Haraella Targaryen
I
Tywin Lannister was every bit the man his father was not. Keen, clever, acute, he was a dagger hiding in a flesh sheath.
Tywin did not laugh, not how Tytos did shrieking over cups of dribbled wine by a whisper from a whore's mouth. He did not smile, could not stomach too, could only imagine Tytos's smile, the way saliva, tawny coloured from guzzling Arbour Gold, dipped down his lip to lap in the crest of his chin. Tywin did not idly let threats fly by, let men capture him in shackles of iron and ransom him back to son and House, as his father once had.
That is, conceivably, why, when Haraella Targaryen came sailing back home astride a golden dragon the size of which had not been seen since Balerion the dread had roosted in the skies, Tywin did not flock to Kingslanding to pay homage to her, hoping for favour, eager for advance and benefit. Neither did he brace himself in his Keep, waiting to see scales overhead, to feel fire upon his fields.
Tywin Lannister sits, and Tywin Lannister waits, and Tywin Lannister plans.
Within weeks of her arrival, her cousin, Prince Aerys, Tywin's own childhood friend, writes to him.
Aerys is nervous, he did not say so much as showed between the uneven lines of his letter. Perhaps he had rights to be.
Yes, Aerys was Crown Prince. Certainly, he had recently wedded his sister, Rhaella, and she was expecting their first child, a boy if the Mother was feeling kind. Unquestionably, Aerys's position was secure, and no child from Duncan and that woods witch Jenny could usurp his place. And yet…
Yet, Haraella Targaryen has a dragon, and that changes everything.
Perhaps one day this Haraella would glance to the Throne. Perhaps one day she would see it a comfortable seat, a glimmer to the steal she quite likes. Perhaps one day she may wish to take it.
Who would stop a girl with a dragon between her thighs?
Or so Aerys believed.
Nevertheless, Tywin heard other information streaming back from Kingslanding on raven's wings. Joanna, his own cousin, a lady in waiting to Princess Rhaella, writes to him two days later. She tells tales of a kind girl swift to smile, a girl who spends most of her time down in Fleabottom, dishing out soups and furs to ragged children. A girl who's building a poor house down by the gates. A pretty thing, Joanna says, with moonlight for hair and a gentle hand.
Tywin does not care for the moonlight or gentle hand.
Neither does he care much for her community work.
Tywin was, however admittedly… Intrigued.
If only to know which way the coin would fall, with Aerys or Joanna, with throne-taker or Princess to the paupers.
When King Aegon V wrote a moon tide later, inviting the freshly minted Lord Lannister to Kingslanding for celebrations of Haraella's Nameday, Tywin accepted graciously, loaded his men and arms, and rode that very night.
II
The revelries were in full sway and would continue to be for ten and seven days, numbered the same seasons Haraella had lived, the bards playing a spirited tune, coy damsels twirling with handsome knights drunk on wine and the summer heat.
Tywin sat in the turn of the Royal Gardens, Cyvasse board before him, a nameless Lord spluttering his fury as he heaved his considerable weight from his cushioned chair before he left in mumbled gripes.
Tywin plucked his goblet free from its home and sipped at cherry wine.
It was almost as sweet as the loss of the Lord, many Lords, he had defeated in the game that morn.
However, insignificant delights aside, this was merely a gambit to pass time, time Tywin still had yet to meet the recently returned Princess.
For a Targaryen, she was proving to be abnormally illusive and frustratingly capricious. When Tywin first arrived at the Dragon's gate with his supplement, she had already flown for the Stormlands, to greet her distant cousins, the Baratheon's, of which it was said she was instantly and unconditionally fond of. She had gone so far as to offer Steffon Baratheon a ride upon her dragons back, the only one to gain such an offer, arriving home in a fit of giggles, windrushed, and rosy cheeked.
Then she was in Dorne, playing Targaryen delegate to the Martells.
Then she was sweeping over the Neck, off to see the Wall at the far North, a tale that had caught her attention, at which she ended within Winterfell and became jovial cohorts with Brandon Stark.
Then she dashed back to Dorne to sup with Oberyn Martell on his sisters, Elia's, Nameday, rumoured to have been an immediate favourite of hers.
Then, as she arranged to return to Kingslanding, she instead stopped over the Reach, and took her time viewing their gardens and garlands and nibbling on peaches.
Now having a taste for the South and North, peaches and barley ale, she took her time to see the Riverlands, the core of Westeros, to fly over the Tully Rivers and dine with the Fish Lords in their wet halls.
It seemed, then, that Kingslanding was the sole place Haraella Targaryen was not.
Until she was.
Until she was everywhere all at once, in every corner, every nook, every angle Tywin Lannister turned, there she was.
III
The Cyvasse board was set anew, ivory and jade pieces arranged in pretty little battle lines.
The chair opposite Tywin Lannister squeaked as it was drawn back. By the time his gaze flittered from the crowds about him to the seat, to gander at the Lord foolish enough to match him, the person had taken their liberties and had already sat.
It was no Lord at all, Tywin saw.
She was not beautiful as the other women around her were. There was no demure rehearsal to her appearance. Her hair was not oiled and painstakingly curled and cast, no rouge or blush or silk in sight, no paper painted fan to coyly conceal half her face, or perfume to beckon a man closer for a breath. Nothing alike which Tywin Lannister was used to noticing from the fairer sex.
There was nothing soft or subtle about this woman.
She had scars, Tywin saw, one right above her arched pale brow, the same shape and shadow as a lightning bolt. And that was it, Tywin distractedly thought.
That was her.
Lithe and swift and sharp.
So sharp the mere sight of her cut somewhere deep below, somewhere only those ungodly green eyes could reach and wretch and screw into knots, a face fitting on the frescos of the Maiden chiselled to something intense and fatal, of ruin in relish, crowned in braids so silver and light they were almost white.
A startling contrast to the plain black leathers she was donning.
And she was toying with the jade King on the Cyvasse board.
"I can't say I've ever played this game before, although by layout it appears similar to chess. How about a match then, while I learn?"
IV
She smiled and it was dimpled, and even this, something that would naturally soften another's face only sharpened her own. As if those dimples were splendour spiked pits a man could fall in and never be able to climb out of again.
She lowered the King back onto the board, and gently pushed out an Elephant, stealing a square closer.
Tywin coughed into a closed fist, briefly glaring at his half empty goblet, for what must be wine induced vertigo, mentally vowing not to touch another cup that night, as he bowed a head in greeting before moving one of his own Elephants.
"Then I shall endeavour to go easy, my Lady. You must be Haraella Targaryen?"
Her eye flashed up from the checkered board, crashed against his own across the way, eyebrow cocking, smile severe and sudden, something dangerous in the green.
"Just Harry will do. And easy you say, Lord Lannister? No… Now that is foolish, and I had heard such great things about you."
She had heard of him, then?
From whom?
Joanna would have been kind in her summation of him… And, perhaps, the only one to be so.
Aerys, possibly, if not under one of his spells of suspicion, could be fair in his judgement.
King Aegon V liked Tywin well enough but knew to keep his cards close to his chest.
Preoccupied by his thoughts, Tywin only observed one of his Spearmen dropping when the piece clinked against his square.
He blinked down at the fallen piece.
Blinked again.
A jade Elephant now in its place.
Deft fingers sweeping the fallen ivory away, to the side, lost.
She had… She had taken his piece in two moves.
The first he had lost all morn.
How had she done that?
"Perhaps I have misjudged your skill."
She laughed like the song of swords clashing mid-swing.
"I dare say you have."
V
"And how have you found your time in Kingslanding thus far?"
Tywin Lannister was not a man of empty chatter, but he thought it was worth it, here, now. If only to see if the Lady Haraella could keep up, could play two games at once, one upon a board and the other between pretty words.
"As good as any other man would I suppose."
The dilemma with this appraisal, Tywin found, was Haraella Targaryen was no other man. She was a dragon rider, a Targaryen, and if hearsay and rumours were to be believed, at least in half, she had won wars, defeated death itself, and liberated a people from tyranny unsaw beforehand with nothing but a twig and her own brand of luck.
More still, by being here, in this garden, in this palace, in this Westeros, she had upset a long-standing balance first formed by the decline of dragons in the sky.
Her mere presence changed everything.
Aerys was arrogant, but he was not foolish.
A girl with a dragon did, in fact, change the game of things.
A girl with a dragon, with growing contacts throughout the realm, Martells and Baratheons and Starks, a healthy wealth all her own, and a steadily expanding web of favourites tooting her horn changed even more so.
At the feast tonight Haraella would be seated on the right hand of King Aegon himself.
Not Aerys, his Crowned heir.
Not the Hand of the King.
Not his wife.
Haraella.
The message of turning tides was as clear as sunrise over the cliffs facing the Sunset Sea back home.
A new player was on the board.
A new player who didn't move in the squares she should, but outside her boxes, unpredictable, impulsive, dangerous.
Perhaps this thought should not have excited Tywin as much as it did.
Haraella did not glance down to the board again, even as she moved her Catapult into an L sculpted curve, instead choosing to watch the planes of Tywin's face.
That's where the real moves were birthed from, not down on the field but upon high. They were their own Gods, Cyvasse players. Gods who could be kind and slow, or cruel and brutal.
Shrewd, Tywin would give her that much.
He crept his Dragon backwards, refusing to glance at his Spearman down the left.
"Ah, but not any other man can say they have the pleasure of finding themselves royalty upon arrival. It must be enjoyable discovering yourself surrounded by so many kin after having none for so long."
The barb worked, nestled in deep below her skin, the reminder of her common upbringing, and she reached for a Trebuchet an-
Dropped it.
Swept down her closed line, to the other side, grasping the plinth of a Heavy Horse before she tipped it forward and struck down Tywin's unguarded Spearman, which had only been three moves from her King.
Perhaps the barb had not worked at all.
Perhaps she had been humouring him, and perhaps there was no perhaps about it at all, not with that stretch of her keen grin.
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
Tywin took a Catapult but lost two Elephants.
"I suppose you are the former and I the latter then, yes? Is this what you speak of? Not much of an insult, I must inform you my Lady. A Lion does not concern itself with the smiles of sheep."
She flicked down Crossbowman, slipping home a Rabble of all things.
"You misunderstand me Ser Lannister. There is no insult to be found here. Only advice. One does not negate the other, you see. One can be both. I can be both. You can be both… Aerys can be both. One man can bring both smiles and sorrow in equal measure. As they say, one man's hero is another's villain."
They play, and Tywin lost more pieces but took some of Haraella's own in the checkered dance they were swaying to. It was equally matched for a long time, a piece for a piece, a square earned for a square lost, and she was quick and keen in finding the rules she could bend to her own means.
Just like he did.
"Tell me, Lady Harry, are you the Dragon or the King?"
He stole her Light Horse, and in return she took his Trebuchet.
"Neither, I would say. I think I fancy myself as the Rabble. Queen of the ruckus, one might say. Especially my cousin, Aerys. He wrote to you, didn't he?"
They both lose their Catapults three moves apart.
"So you know why I am here, then?"
Tywin thought he had her King on the run but saw too late the ploy to take his Crossbowman too many squares out to save.
"Thrones are exceedingly uncomfortable seats, Lord Lannister, particularly ones made out of bloody swords. Tedious too, I believe, with all the parchment they come with day in day out. I can't fly if I am stuck in a chair from sunrise to sunset. Aerys has nothing to worry over. You can tell him that."
Ivory and jade Dragon edge around each other, daring the other to move first.
Perhaps Aerys did have nothing to worry over.
Perhaps… Perhaps Tywin had everything to worry over.
"Or perchance he has everything to fret over. Perhaps it might not be you who takes the seat for themselves but others. You have been here for such a short amount of time, and yet you have many friends. The Tyrells, the Martells, the Starks, to name but a few. Quite the backing, for a Queen of the ruckus."
Tywin diverts course, saw the trap for what it was, stealing her last Spearman with his Dragon.
Haraella hesitated, fingers drumming on the edge of the board.
"You don't see yourself as part of the board at all do you, Lord Lannister? Not as King or Dragon or Spearman or Catapult. No, that is too easy, too simple. You see yourself as the player behind the checkers. The man with the pieces. The man with the plan. Shame."
Her Elephant follows and-
Knocks over his last piece.
Only his King alive, on the run, besieged.
"Sometimes, Lord Lannister, even the smallest of pieces, even the Elephants and Rabble, can rebel. When that happens, no King or player behind the board is safe. Keep your Elephants happy, and the rest falls into place. You should tell Aerys that too."
Game over.
Lost.
Tywin Lannister had lost.
The first, and only, game of Cyvasse he had ever failed.
To a girl three seasons his junior.
She smiled at him again, reached over, took his ivory King in her grasp, she eyed it, running thumb over carven face.
"I think I'll keep this piece. It reminds me of you. Just as frowny."
She slides the thing into her breast pocket, stood from her chair and-
Winked.
"Maybe next time you will give me an actual fight, yes? Good evening, Lord Lannister."
And then she was walking away, fading into the crowds, only to stop abruptly a few feet away.
"Oh, and Ser Lannister, one last piece of advice if I may?"
Tywin lapped to silence, just as she turned to gaze over a soft sloping shoulder.
"Discover what piece you wish to be and take it. You may think yourself above it all, the player behind the match, but you're not. No one is truly off the board. Not even Gods and Monsters. We all have a square, we all have a piece, we all have set moves we can make at any given time. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner you see the fortune in a sheep's smile, the better your life will be and those around you… How terrible it is to be caught up in a game when you have no understanding of its rules. Lions may not concern themselves with sheep, but sheep outnumber lions by the thousands. I wonder why that is?"
Then she was gone in a flutter of white and green and something gold.
Tywin stared down at his missing King, his ruined board, his lost game.
Joanna found him moments later, coming from the small clapping crowd he and Lady Haraella had gathered without notice, slipping soft hands upon his shoulders and squeezing.
"What a good game! Half the court has been entranced. Come, let us fill our goblets and toast a match well played."
Idly, Tywin reached up and patted the hand by his neck.
"You go. I shall follow shortly."
Joanna nods, Joanna goes, and Tywin stayed seated for much longer.
It would do no good to shame himself twice that very day by standing with breeches inappropriately tight for all the court to see.
NEXT CHAPTER: Haraella faces an assignation attempt that is not at all what it first appears to be, leading the young dragon rider to not only begin looking closer to home for adversaries, but to begin an alliance that will eventually alter the fabric of Westeros itself…
A.N: Ask and you shall receive! (Sometimes). This was originally a one shot that I was just going to let gather dust, but the muses kept whispering, and when one or two lovely readers asked for a continuation, I just couldn't say no. So here it is, and it's going to be a long ride folks! Hope you all liked it and are looking forward to the next chapter! Until then, stay beautiful ~AlwaysEatTheRude21