Lannisport smelled foreign. It lacked the stench of King's Landing, which Loren had only experienced a few times in his life, and the timeless feeling of Oldtown. But it was in the Westerlands, the lands that would one day come to be his, strange that it should seem so... alien. The imposing form of Casterly Rock was clearly visible above the city. Of all the castles in the Seven Kingdoms, only Harrenhal was bigger than the Rock. However, the Rock"s inhabitants invariably lived longer lives than those who made Harrenhal their seat. The ship, with bright red sails and the Lion of Lannister standing rampant on it, made it's way into port to dock at the harbour of Lannisport, where the rest of the Lannister Fleet lay at anchor, their sails furled away. Tyland was staring gleefully over the edge of the ship, and Loren could not fault him, the boy no doubt missed Lannisport as much as he missed the Rock. Loren tore his gaze away from the Rock, for he would be there before long, and instead turned his gaze upon the figures waiting for the ship to dock.
He recognised his father, Lord Tywin Lannister, several distant Lannister cousins, Martyn, Willem, Daven and others, and his own family. His wife, Lady Alysanne Lefford stood tall and elegant, her brown hair waving slightly in the breeze. She was just like he'd remembered, with perhaps a few extra lines around her lips and eyes. Despite being of House Lefford, today, she had donned the Lannister garb of red and gold, with an emerald necklace around her neck. Before her stood their children. He had to double check they were theirs, for unlike his wife they looked so different to how he had last seen them. Lelia was burgeoning into a woman now, but still clearly a child, and Myrielle would not be far behind her by the looks of her. Joanna still had the innocence of childhood about her and had her hands clasped properly in front of her, just as she would've been taught. Tion had shot much taller in the last three years, but was still a boy at heart. He was clearly wishing he could hold his mother's skirts and hide from him. The poor boy may not even recognise him, if only he could feel that towards his own father. But there was no mistaking him. That bald head, shaved as soon as he started moulting, the proud whiskers on his cheeks, the wiry body, still strong, and the gold-green eyes, hard and cold as the metal that made the Lannisters rich.
As the man whom everyone was waiting for, Loren disembarked first. He was wearing the trophies of his time in the east, let his father see his defiance. His scabbard was at his waist, jewels studding the length of it. His and his golden cloak flowing behind his blood red robes, and his arm rings hung on his left wrist. He approached the Lannister clan gathered there. "Father," he greeted first, with a bow of his head, any excuse not to look at the man. "My Lady," he bowed his head to his wife, and then smiled at his children. "Lelia, Myrielle, Joanna," he smiled at his girls who smiled back at him, Lelia eagerly, Myrielle nervously, and Joanna dutifully. He was reminded of what Cersei had once told him, before Tion was born. "You have no heir yet, and these girls are nothing on what I once was," his sister took any excuse to remind him of how she and Jaime had risen farther than he. "Tion," he smiled at the boy who tentatively smiled back.
But it was his father who spoke, "be done with your greetings quickly my son," he said sharply. "Then meet me back at the Rock, we have much to discuss."
Loren nodded. "Of course father," I'll spend as much time with them as I bloody well want, father. Lord Tywin, and the other, far less significant Lannister cousins, all left, leaving Loren alone with his family.
As soon as their grandfather was gone, Myrielle broke from her proper poise and raced over, hugging him around the waist tightly. She was soon joined by Joanna. "My children," he whispered, leaning down and kissing them on top of their heads. "I have missed you." He held them close, the warmth of them... a pleasure he'd forgotten. The memory resurfaced only made his anger at his father burn brighter.
He heard a sob, and it took a while before he noticed that it was Myrielle was weeping. She had always been the most emotional of his children he remembered now, quick to tears, quick to laugh, oh that laugh... "We missed you too, father," she said into his tunic.
Loren forced her to look at him. "Dry your eyes Myrielle," he said softly. "I am home now."
She nodded, "I am sorry," she said.
Loren nodded and turned to Joanna. "And you, Joanna, did you miss me?" She nodded quickly, she was the most reserved of his children, most eager to be ladylike, just like her namesake. Loren had been just nine years old when his mother had died, but he remembered her smile well. At one point, just before her death, she had asked him to sleep in the Jaime's room. Jaime had objected, but Loren did what he had to, and slept in the same bed as Jaime. Loren never understood what Jaime complained about so much, the bed was large enough that they never touched under the covers, and as soon as morning came, Loren went back to his own chambers to change and prepare for the day's events. When their mother died birthing his second brother Tyrion, Loren returned to his own chambers. His father had smiled when he heard what he'd named his daughter. He'd regretted it since, he should've picked a different name, a name that made Tywin smile was a bad name. He chided himself. He shouldn't punish Joanna or think less of her for that. She'd done nothing to deserve it. Joanna then broke down and hugged him swiftly, but moved back before it could be judged as improper.
Lelia only hugged him a little but did kiss his cheek in greeting, she was tamer than she was when he had left. At least she seemed to be. But she still had a grin on her face. "I missed you as well," she said, not waiting for him to ask. "I'm glad you're back, father."
"It's good to be back," he lied. "I'm sorry my letters never reached you."
"What do you mean father?" Lelia asked, confused. "We got your letters. We loved them, hearing of your adventures, listening to your advice."
"You-" Father! He must have resealed the letters and given them to Kevan.
She kissed his other cheek, "thank you, father. For coming home, now you can tell us about them in person."
So innocent at heart, whatever her adventurous side. He'd never had such a luxury. He'd let her have it as long as he could. "I'll tell you all about them," he said.
Then, when Lelia pulled back, he turned to Tion. The boy had been staying with his mother, but at a gentle nudge, he padded forwards. "Father," he said bowing his head, just as he'd done to his father, "it's good to see you."
"And you, my son," Loren replied. He placed his hand atop Tion's head, he had risen to his navel, he'd not been at his waist when he left. "You've grown."
Tion smiled. "I know," he replied. "Soon I will be as tall as you, Uncle Kevan says."
Loren's mouth tightened. "Maybe not for a while yet," he commented, "but Uncle Kevan says that you have been improving your swordsmanship," he said.
Tion nodded eagerly, "and Ser Addam says my lance is better than ever."
Loren laughed, "I look forward to seeing it." If Ser Addam was his tutor in arms, his son was in good hands. They should have been mine.
At that point, Lady Alysanne approached. "Come now children," she said, "I need a few words with your father, go and prepare to go back to the Rock." They left obediently, Lelia leading the way for the others, though they all glanced back several times. "My lord husband," she said, curtsying.
"My Lady," he replied, bowing, "what is the matter?"
"It's about the Golden Tooth," she replied.
Loren raised an eyebrow, "your uncle's seat?"
She nodded, "his third wife has died in the birthing bed, their child stillborn."
Loren tried to think back, it had been too long since he was here. Then he remembered. "So you are once more the heir to the Golden Tooth." How stupid of him. That was why his father had arranged the marriage after all.
She nodded once more and then approached far closer than was proper, placing her hand on his chest softly. "My lord," she whispered into his ear, "your father intends to send me to the Tooth, now that you're back."
Loren kissed his wife lightly. "I will not let that happen." His father will not take his wife from him. She was his! "Come, let us go back... home." The word stuck in his throat like a dry biscuit. He needed a drink.
Despite the years he could still trace his way through the Rock, and by the time he made it to his chambers he was feeling more at home than he had when he first arrived. His father had gone to his chambers, at the top of the castle. It had always been a trek to reach him, but his Lord father would observe the lands he ruled, and those who wished to see him would make the journey or it wouldn't be worth it. As it happened, Loren had no desire to see his father. By the time his possessions were stored in his room, it was dark. His armour was on it's stand by his bed, his sword on the wall, the jewels reflecting the light of the fire, glittering alluringly, his clothes in his wardrobe and everything else in it's proper place as well. But there was somewhere else to be tonight.
He slipped out of the room, locking the door behind him and slipping the key around his neck. The castle was silent as stone, no guardsmen walked the halls, and only the flickering lights of the torches kept him company as he softly walked along the corridors, tracing his fingers along stone and engraving. Then he found the door and tried the handle. It turned easily and he pushed it open.
His wife was before her vanity with her handmaiden behind her, her dress and make up gone, in it's place a soft white night gown. They both turned to him. "My Lord," she said, getting to her feet.
He nodded at her. "Wife," he looked at her handmaiden. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to have some time with my wife."
The handmaiden, a new one he didn't recognise, probably one of his cousins going by the hair, looked at Aly. His wife looked at him. "Will you be leaving this night, my lord?"
He shook his head. "No."
"Then please leave us," she said calmly to her handmaiden who bowed to them both and left the room.
He stepped up to her and brushed a lock of hair from her face. "You look well."
"I am, considering," she replied. "Though it was difficult with you gone for so long."
"You know why I left," he replied, sitting down on the bed.
She joined him, placing a hand tentatively on his thigh. "I remember," she replied in a soft whisper. "You couldn't breathe here, not with your father everywhere. But they didn't, my lord. Tion, Joanna, Myrielle, Lelia, none of them knew why you decided to leave without them. You know we had to hold Lelia back to prevent her from trying to swim after your ship?"
"Where I was going," he said. "It was no place for children."
"There were other places to go," she insisted, her nails digging into his leg. He took her wrist tightly to get her to slacken her grip. "Your father's shadow doesn't cover all of Westeros."
He looked into her pained eyes. "That's where you're wrong, wife," he said. "I was still the son of Tywin Lannister. Where I went... I didn't completely escape him, but at least I wasn't made by it. I wasn't that other son of Tywin Lannister. I was me, and I made myself there."
"You don't... plan to return do you?"
He shook his head. "It's too late for that now. I'm back, and it seems I'm here to stay."
"They'll be glad to hear it," she told him.
"And what about you? Are you glad that I'm back?"
"I am," she replied at once, not as dutifully as before, but with a hint of relief. "Without you... I feared being expelled from the Rock."
"That won't happen," he told her, standing up and pulling her to her feet.
"My l-" He pressed his lips to hers, running his hands along her shoulder to make her nightgown slide off her shoulder. It slithered to the floor, exposing his wife's body to him. He undid his belt and pulled his clothes off before pushing her to the bed.
He crawled up her body, lifting her legs around his body. "Don't worry about my father. Don't even think of him, not here, not with me."
It had been too long since he had woken up with a woman's body in his arms. He pulled her closer to him, the soft warm a gentle caress on his soldier's body. He pressed his face between her shoulder blades, pressing kisses to the soft skin, feeling her hair tickling his features. He felt something swirling over his fingers and was confused, before he realised his wife was tracing her fingers over his hand. She always used to wake up before him whenever he came to her bed, he remembered, but unless there was a need, she never woke him, leaving him to stay in the land of dreams, free of the shadow of his father.
"Is it time," he murmured into her back.
Her caresses stopped and she instead patted his arm gently. "It is getting late to be in bed, my lord," she told him in a whisper. "But if you wish to stay..."
He did. Here with his lady wife, the comfort and heat of her body in his arms. But he couldn't put off meeting father forever, and the longer he did the worse the meeting was likely to be. "I do," he said, pushing himself onto his elbow and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "But first, I would break my fast with you, and the children."
The children were called to them for a light breakfast, taken in their solar. Lelia was the first to arrive, her hair done and in a neat blue and silver dress. She smiled widely, hurrying over and hugging him tightly. He wrapped his arm around her middle. "Good morning, little one," he said.
"I"m not so little any more, father," she replied, mockingly wounded.
He raised an eyebrow and got to his feet. Lelia didn't even reach his midriff. "Truly?" He asked her, looking around. "Then why can't I see you?"
"Father!"
He chuckled and sat back down. "You still have some growing to do, Lelia," he confirmed. "But I will admit, you are taller than when I left, and more beautiful too. One day, my sister will pass the crown of most beautiful woman in Westeros to you."
She giggled. "Thank you, father." She sat down beside him, shuffling her chair a little closer and resting her head on his shoulder.
"So," he asked his eldest child as they waited patiently for the others to arrive. "Are you still swimming like you used to?"
She smiled sheepishly, and nodded. "Despite being told repeatedly not to," Aly chastised her.
He nodded. "Are you getting better at it?"
"I am," she replied proudly. "Grandfather doesn't like it. He once sent me into a lake to swim for a whole day. He had a boat following me to pick me up, but I didn't need it. I kept swimming for hours. When they finally pulled me out I was wrinkly as old Lilly Lace!"
His eyebrow shot into his head. "Is that old windbag still alive?"
"My Lord!" Aly chastised him now, but Lelia laughed. "She told us all about you as a child."
"She was wrinkly then as well," he muttered, not wanting to know what stories she'd made up about him, his childhood was far too dull to recount to children. "And what did grandfather think when you finally got pulled out of the lake?"
"He was not happy with me." He put his arm around his daughter and squeezed her shoulder tightly.
"You shouldn't encourage her my lord," Aly reminded him in a similar tone to the one he'd used on her.
He kissed the top of Lelia's head. "My Lady I left for three years unannounced and without telling any of my children. I can hardly come back here and chastise them compared to that."
Myrielle and Joanna came in next, hair done just as Lelia's was, but their dresses were red and gold, ever the Lannister colours. Lelia was growing into a woman, you could see it, but Myrielle and Joanna still had the look of children about them. They looked so similar it was disturbing, almost like Jaime and Cersei had, though none of their arrogance. Two things could truly tell them apart, Myrielle was ever so slightly taller, and Joanna's eyes were more than green, like his own father, they were flecked with gold. But none of the coldness of his father was there, only purity and innocence and he would be damned before he let his father take that away. They curtsied dutifully. He smiled back. "Come, children, sit," he said, indicating the seats opposite. They slid into them, Myrielle averting her eyes. "Is something wrong, Miri?"
"N-no," she sniffed. She was clearly still emotional, ever the child. He reached over and took her thin, pale hand in his own. "I'm here now," he said gently, smiling at her. "You don't need to cry anymore."
She looked at him with wet eyes that threatened to spill diamonds down her alabaster cheeks, and nodded. "I'm sorry father," she said. Her fingers were twitching, eager to be doing something, eating perhaps, they only waited on one more.
He entered at that moment. The little boy Tion was in Red and Blue, a quartered tunic of the base colours of Lefford and Lannister. He bowed. "Mother, Father, sisters." His child's legs carried him around to the other side of him, Aly's left hand side and the furthest seat from him at the table.
He would have to spend time with the boy, get to know him again. He could hardly be surprised that Tion was avoiding him, he'd barely had the time to know him before he'd left. He likely hadn't remembered him well. "Well then, shall we eat?"
They tucked into the breakfast of ham and eggs, with some bread to go with it and some porridge to start, with a bowl of grapes in the middle for them to pick at. Miri's fingers twitched with the cutlery whenever she wasn't using it on her food. "Myrielle," her mother said. "You're twitching your fingers again, it's unseemly at the breakfast table."
She nearly dropped the fork she was holding and looked at her hand, she clearly hadn't been aware. "Forgive me, mother," she replied with a bow, her lip trembling. It's just... I've been working on an embroidery lately and..."
"And you can get back to it when we are finished."
"You're doing an embroidery?" He asked her.
She nodded. "Yes, father, of... of..." She clearly didn't want to say.
"It's okay," he said, hurriedly. "I look forward to the surprise of seeing it."
She nodded, relieved, as they switched to other topics of conversation.
As Tion was telling them of his first hit on the quintain, the door opened and his uncle entered. "Nephew," he said, looking at him. "Your father wants to see you."
He slowly slid the spoon of porridge out of his mouth. "Uncle," he said slowly, sweetly. "You may not have noticed, but I am in the middle of eating."
"And you were meant to go to Lord Tywin last night, yet you didn't," his uncle replied in the usual scornful tone he had come to expect from his father's ventriloquist puppet.
He put the spoon back in the bowl. "Can it not wait a little?" Kevan shook his head.
He bit back a retort that should be kept from the ears of children. "Very well," he said. "I will go to him." He wiped his mouth and stood up.
"And your children are also to-"
White hot anger burned in him as he interrupted his uncle. "Finish their breakfast," he said flatly and firmly. He turned to his children. "A good breakfast is everything. I found in the east that I could last a whole day on a good breakfast, it's a good habit. Finish up here, when you're mother says you can go, you may go," he told them firmly."
Aly bowed her head. "Of course, my lord."
He plucked a grape from the bowl and popped it in his mouth. "Shall we, uncle?"
He stared into Kevan's eyes, daring him to try and order his children differently. "Of course," he said.
He closed the door behind them as they left his children in the solar. Kevan led him down a familiar path to the Western Tower, the tallest tower in the Rock which led up to where father spent his time. Many of the servants whispered as they passed, but he paid them no heed. Instead casting his gaze around the fortress that had been his home. The corridors were hard and strong, flat as a shield and hung with thick tapestries and ornaments. They passed windows which looked out over the sea, no arrow slits here, the castle was too high up for an arrow to be accurately used against a fleet in the harbour, but further down there were many machicolations next to barracks in which there were rack after rack of crossbows and arrows, ready to repel an invading fleet.
"You lied to me," he said to Kevan, looking at him as they slipped through the Golden Hall, where many of the greatest treasures of the Lannisters were on display. "You told me father didn't let them see my letters."
"I said no such thing," Kevan pointed out calmly. "I simply showed you the letters, and you assumed they had never been opened. One look at the seals would have told you otherwise. You let your anger towards your father blind you to that. You assumed the worst of him."
He dug his nails into his palm so hard he drew blood. "Of course I did." He replied through gritted teeth. He'd learnt long ago to suspect the worst of Lord Tywin. It was the best way of avoiding surprise. Of course he'd been the fool though. He was like a dog, one simple tune and he'd come barking back home. Damn you father.
At the base of the tower were two men at arms, lions sewn on their breasts and swords at their hips. They eyed him warily, but seeing that he was with Kevan, they let him pass. "Uncle," he said, turning to Kevan. "I'm sure father has other responsibilities for you, I'm sure I can manage a staircase alone."
Kevan paused, looking at him like he was trying to see if Loren meant to run off as soon as he was gone. How petty and childish does he think I am? Not totally, it seemed, for he let Loren go with a nod and a good day. Good, he didn't want to look at the man who had lied about his children to get him to come home.
Loren turned and made the ascent. The lions hung at regular intervals, whenever one snapped past your head as you ascended the spiral staircase there was another in perfect view and a third coming down the spiral at you. The lions stood rampant and tall as the cloth hung flaccid and feeble. The show of being a lion, but if my father and a lion were put into the same room, I'd bet my lordship that the lion wins. After all, if father survives, he would hardly let me inherit anyway. The door at the top was strong oak banded with iron. He closed his eye, raised his fist and hammered on the door four times.
"Enter."
He turned the handle and entered.
"Hello, father, you called for me?"
