In a cage with a lioness

Prologue

A hand came to rest on my shoulder and I let out a groan as it began to shake me awake, all I wanted to do was sleep for a little while longer. I had a late night at the pub the night before and I had to deal with plenty of rowdy customers and all I wanted to do now was just sink back further into the bed and sleep until it was time for my next shift.

But the hand was insistent and I let out a heavy groan pushed myself up with my hands and glared at the blurry shape in the dark room that had woken me up, it was a woman's shape and so I had to assume that it was my sister and I did have to wonder how she had gotten into my apartment but then I remember that I had given her a key she could use in case of emergencies.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, do you have any idea what the time is?" I asked as I brought up a hand to to rub at my eyes, god this had better be important.

"I apologies your Grace, truly I do. But you must awaken." A couple of things occurred to me in quick succession, one that whoever this woman was she was not at all my sister, two I was not in my flat anymore, three there was someone else in the room with us, a man in white armor with a lantern in his hands that had a candle burning bright behind the glass and a moth fluttering around the flame.

And did this strange woman just call me your grace? And...why was my hand not my fucking hand!?

It was smaller than it had been the night before, a shade paler as well and smoother too. It was a woman's hand and the other hand was much the same and I was really starting to freak out as well, so much so that I didn't hear whatever the man in armor was saying. It certainly sounded important, going by the tone of his voice.

"Pass me a mirror." The woman and the man in armor looked at one another for a moment and I did not try to stifle the groan that came out of my throat a moment latter. "Or a looking glass, whatever you call it. Just pass me one, now!"

The woman jumped and ran across the room and scooped up a hand mirror that had been laid on a desk, it's frame was golden and studded with rubies and the glass had been polished to an incredible shine. The woman handed it to me and I brought it up to look at my face, but it wasn't my face.

It was a woman's face, a beautiful woman at that. Her features were sharp and her eyes were bright emeralds, her hair was golden and it almost seemed to be shinning in the light of the lantern.

I stared for a long few moments, then I screamed and threw the mirror away. The woman, the handmaiden, stumbled backwards and the man with the lantern almost dropped it as my hands, her hands, came up to clutch at my hair as I tried not to break down. My chest that was not my chest heaving up and down as the pressure on my hair, on her hair, tightened so much.

I recognized her.

In truth, I had never seen the face before but I had read so many descriptions of it that I could not help but recognize it, recognize her. She was beautiful, and terrible as well.

She was Cersei of the House Lannister, and somehow I was her and she was me. Oh god, I think that I'm going to be sick. That, or scream again.

They were looking at me like I was mad, and the irony of that did not escape me. It made me almost want to laugh, except I was still trying to not empty my stomach on to the bed or claw into my face. It had to be a dream, that was it. I had been reading the books a lot more of as of late and reading theories about what would happen in the later books and how they would diverge from the show so of course A Song Of Ice And Fire was on my mind a lot and so it only made sense that I would be dreaming about it.

But I didn't think I ever expected that I would ever have a dream about being Cersei fucking Lannister, of anyone I could dream about being it wouldn't be her. Who would want to be her, after all?

Getting strangled by Jaime is not something I would ever want to dream about.

All though, if my memories of A Feast For Crows was right then I wasn't near the end of Cersei's story at all. In fact, this looked like it was her first ever POV chapter when she was woken up from a nightmare because Tywin had been found dead in his privy and they had come to get her in order to take her to him, so that she could see for herself.

The handmaid was still looking at me like the Queen that she served had lost her damn mind and to be fair to her it wasn't like she was entirely wrong. Cersei wasn't in her mind anymore, at least if her conciousness was still in her body she hadn't put an appearance in yet and I wasn't about to pretend that I was at all broken up about that.

All of this was absolutely insane, the last thing that I needed at the moment was having to deal with Cersei Lannister's own thoughts on the matter. The man in the white armor, Kettleblack, that was it. Osmund Kettleblack, one of the sellswords that Cersei had hired during the events of the second book after Tyrion had sent the guards that their Father had given her away to Riverrun to leave his sister without any claws.

Of course, the Kettleblack brothers had turned out to be a poor investment as Tyrion had been paying them more than Cersei had been, at least at first. But then it had happened that the Kettleblacks had been truly swayed over to her side, Osmund had been made a member of the Kingsguard and his younger brothers had been given their own promises though if my memory was right then the books had never said what those promises were.

Of course, promises hadn't been enough. Cersei had...sweetened the pot. It set a squirm going in my belly when I thought about it, I had never really...had sex before. Which had got me more than a fair share of mocking from my friends over the years, it wasn't that I was anti sex or something like that I just never really felt the urge to do it.

But the bigger problem was that I knew that he and Cersei had been having sex before this point, which meant that he would try to have sex with her while I was in her body and there was a lot of issues with that there and I wasn't certain which made me feel worse. Top two contenders were the fact that sleeping with another man was not high up on my list, the second thing was that while I was not the biggest Cersei fan in the world, to put it lightly, even the thought of using her body for sex without any imput or consent from her made me feel awful.

"Your Grace?" Kettleblack spoke and took a step forward and without even thinking about it, I took a step back. "I'm sorry if I've disturbed you, but I need to tell you something terrible. Your Lord Father has been found dead, he has been killed in his chambers. Someone killed him with a crossbow, I am deeply, deeply sorry."

For a moment, I wondered if I should try and make myself cry to appear like I was Cersei but then Cersei wasn't one for crying. I cleared my throat. "I...I see." For a moment, the voice that had came out of my mouth had startled me. Of course, it wasn't my voice. It wasn't my mouth, when it came to that. "I would to be on my own, please leave me to my grief."

The handmaiden nodded and looked like she was about to turn to leave but Ser Osmund stopped her from leaving by placing his hand on her shoulder. "I am sorry again, my Queen. If it were up to me then I would leave you to your grief as you say but your uncle told me that I was to bring you to the tower as soon as possible."

I nearly cursed out loud at that but I just managed to stop myself, bitting on my bottom lip. I chewed on it for a long moment before I spoke again. "Fine, just wait outside. Both of you." That seemed to confuse the both of them but neither of them looked like they were about to disobey me and I couldn't deny that it did give me the slightest sense of satisfaction and I didn't like it when it faded away.

When the both of them had left the room, I turned. Okay, so by logical elimination Cersei's clothes would likely be in the trunk at the foot of her bed. Okay, calling it a trunk was doing it a disservice as it literally looked like one of the most ornate pieces of funiture that I had ever seen in my life up to that point and it probably cost more than my entire apartment and all of the things in it.

Opening the trunk proved that my hunch was right as there was a large number of dresses at the bottom of it. I just grabbed one at random, it looked like it would be fairly simple to put on and it was a dark shade of red. It would do, wouldn't it?

A few moments later, I came to the conclusion that I had no idea how to put a dress on. I mean, I already knew that but this...thing, was nothing like any dress that I was familar with. It was more like a torture device than anything and while I did manage to get my new arms into the sleeves I realized that the sleeves were so tight that I could not reach around to close the dress at the back.

Damn, why did they have to make this so complicated? It soon became clear to me that there was no chance in hell that I was going to be able to get in this dress, nor any other dress, without some help. So, with a heavy sigh, I walked over to the doors and poked my head out and asked the handmaiden, who I also noticed was looking rather uncomfortable in Kettleblack's presence, to come in and help me.

The handmaid flew to my side, shutting the door in Kettleblack's face as she did so, and began to get me sorted out. One thing that the books don't really touch on? How many layers noblewomen actually wear, I guess it was way colder back in the time period that ASOIAF was based on. The handmaiden made me step out of the dress, gwaked for a moment at the fact that I was apprently naked underneath it, and shoved a brown featureless...it was kinda like a nightdress, I guess would be the best way to describe it.

It was pretty thin, and then she made me put on two more of those nightdress things as well on top of it. Then came the first dress I tried to put on by myself going over all of them. Well, as ways to keep warm went it certainly wasn't a bad one but I hadn't been that cold to start with but whatever I wasn't about to complain about it, I just had to play along until I figured out what exactly was going on and how to get back home.

Once I was fully dressed, also apprently the shoes that noblewoman wore were basically slippers, Kettleblack lead both myself and the handmaiden out into the courtyard and over to the tower of the Hand. It really was the tallest building in the Red Keep, even Maegor's Holdfast was slightly smaller than it.

The two guards on the door bent their heads to me respectfully, of course they would do so as my Father was dead but he was not really my Father and oh god, what the actual hell was happening right now? I pushed past them without saying a word into the tower and then began to walk up the stairs, and wow there were a lot, and I mean a lot, of stairs.

Soon, we had arrived at the chambers of the Lord Hand and I didn't say anything to the guards on that door either, I simply pushed inside.

Everything seemed to be as my memory of the chapter attested to, Tywin was lying on the bed with the crossbow bolt that Tyrion had shot into him and the bundle under the blankets had to be what was left of Shae, Kevan Lannister was sitting next to his brother's bedside and Jaime Lannister was just in the middle of crawling out of the hidden passage that Tyrion had used to kill his Father. Huh, I guess my little meltdown earlier must have taken up more time than I thought.

And Pycelle must be on his way to inform the Silent Sisters of what had happened and to come and tend to the body. I have to admit, that while Cersei certainly made more than her fair shake of stupid and avoidable mistakes her anger at realising that she had been the last to be informed that her Father had been murdered was a grievance that I had always found myself to have a little sympathy with her for.

"Sister." Jaime spoke and came over to me and wrapped his arms around me, and I had to try my best not to shiver. In the end, I could not quite manage to do it but to Jaime it probably seemed like it was more out of grief for out Father rather than the actual reason, revulsion. "Are you well?"

"I'm fine." I said and then quickly pulled away from Jaime, walking past him and closer to the bed and oh that was a mistake. That was a big mistake. Reading about a dead body on a page was one thing, actually being in the room with one was quiet another. The smell was, oh god. It was awful, it was like...it was like-

Bile rushed out of my throat and landed on the floor and my legs buckled at the room span and the world turned black, I could hear someone calling for Cersei but I couldn't make out who it was.

When I came back to the world, the hopes that I would wake up back in my apartment were dashed as I took in the room and saw that I was back in the bedchamber that I started in and oh god I hated everything. I brought up my hand to rub the bridge of my nose, trying to dispell the already forming headache that I could already tell was going to be a monster.

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!

I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone shouted in my ear, at leas that was what it felt like. I glanced all around the bedchamber to see if I could find the source of it but it was no good, I was the only person in that bedchamber. Well, maybe I had only imagined it. I had clearly already gone mad at some point, what was hearing voices at this point?

ANSWER ME, YOU VILE CRETIN! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME!? I WILL HAVE YOU FLAYED ALIVE FOR THIS!

Oh no. Oh no.

She hadn't been gone, she just hadn't woken up before now.

I cleared my throat, and worked up the courage to ask the question that really, I already knew the answer to. "Who are you?"

WHO AM I!? WHO ARE YOU!? I AM CERSEI OF THE HOUSE LANNISTER, LIGHT OF THE WEST AND DAUGHTER OF LORD TYWIN LANNISTER AND YOUR QUEEN, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS YOU FOOL. ANSWER ME, I DEMAND THAT YOU FIX WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO ME. RIGHT NOW!

Oh look, the room was spinning again.

End of Prologue

Welp, this is new.

I don't think I ever written a full on comedy before so we will see how I do with it, but I hope it seems like an interesting idea and I hope you will consider giving it a follow, a favourite and a review if you enjoyed.

With a lot of love and warm regards,

DiscordantSymphony.