The Lannister sigil is a golden lion on a crimson field.

In the times of the true monarchy, when the name Targaryen had meant something, millions of men had worn and carried him into battle with them, to live, to die, to live on in the songs even if they did die.

There would be no songs for her little lion. He had found his crimson field, but his gold had never glimmered. At best, it was invisible.

"I wish you wouldn't do this."

Ebony curls whip like the tails of a tawse at alabaster flesh as she turns to face him. "What?"

He says nothing, only looks her up and down and makes a hand gesture. Her eyes meet the vanity mirror to the side of them. He gleams next to her, gold and sea glass, like the selfsame house sigil. She is a ghost, bone and kohl. They are the Warrior and the Stranger, both rushing into battle to take life, but only one to give it. She is an anathema, a parasite, leeching from his light just to survive.

"You don't think I'm beautiful this way?"

That idea stings. Robert himself had immediately commented that the hair color did not suit her, made her look dead, like our son, shirking the thought of what an effort, a concession, it was in the first place. He never stops flapping his wine-stained lips about how much he hates her family with their pretentious golden hair.

He scorns her now that she could not bare him a stag, let alone a wolf pup. The last bit is unspoken, if obvious. The snow of her skin will never be enough to satisfy his thirst for the chill of the North.

"You are beautiful," he disagrees into her neck, wrapping his fingers around it, "but you are not you."

His teeth seem to tear the breath from her windpipe. She stays quiet, enraptured.

"I don't care what he prefers, and I don't care what he calls you. You're better than any of it." His maw kneads her skin, reddening the flesh, pouring blush and breath back into her. "We are." The vibrations of his voice travel to places that she has not let his hands grace since she bled out their cub. "Together." She fears the pain of losing another, that the Seven might take every babe he gets on her, before they draw breath or otherwise. I'm not sure which would be worse.

She knows that he is right. Hates, relishes, loves, reviles it; she wishes that the rest of the world might agree.

"It doesn't matter what you do, love," he is murmuring now. "It doesn't matter how hard you try. It doesn't matter if you change, if you're faithful to him. He will not return these courtesies to you." The words have been reverent, almost seductive, up to this point, but she can feel ardor and ache behind them now. "He doesn't deserve you. Sometimes, I don't even think I do." Fingers weave between inky strands, crowning the golden roots adorning her head with adoration. "But this is what we are." The words are punctuated with a harsh tug and a soothing stroke of the hair, only the bits of molten gold that pour from the crown of her head, shattering the illusion of darkness in waves of sporadic depth. "This is what I love." His thumb traces the greatest prominence of her throat, lavishing it even against the silence. "This is you, Cersei."

Sound does leave her lips at that. It's almost a laugh.

"Cersei," he adulates, a kiss, a lick, a nip, heat and slickness and pain penetrating her skin, and then the word comes, a sigh, a breath, a little laugh, once, twice, ten times, again and again and again. "Cersei." Fingers slide ever lower as sweet lips enthrone the name like an exaltation into her skin. "My Cersei." They meet with collarbones and the expanse of skin below, breasts still tender and engorged with milk that should be sating the babe it is, was, meant for. "My beautiful Cersei. My sweet sister." Hands cup a flattening belly bare of the marks that should silver and jolt the surface. It should be swelling, burgeoning, living, but there is only skin. The cells live in their own way, thrive and drink and slough and die, but this is not that.

"I will say it a thousand times until you know that it is a more beautiful name than hers."

She does not stop him this time. She lets him love her as she should have weeks ago, and nine months later, a little lion cub comes forth, shining bright with pride atop the field of blood and pain this time.

The burden of death is stripped away, and the pride find their sun once again.