Tyrion had always prided himself on his sense of humour, but as he watched Cersei scream and claw the air like a madwoman while Varys and Pycelle looked silently and politely on, his mirth deserted him completely, and in a flash, he was no longer the only Lannister in the capital who still knew how to smile. Tyrion's heart sank. The transition had been coming for a while.
In the weeks after the Red Wedding, Jaime had been as sociable as a rabid squirrel despite Tyrion's best efforts to calm him down, and though Tyrion was grateful and relieved that his brother was finally out of Cersei's clutches, he was also a little exasperated that Jaime had chosen to free himself by putting his whole heart in the hands of a child who was too young and inexperienced to know what to do with it.
If only she had been a little older, Tyrion thought, it would have been so much easier for both of them.
And then the royal wedding and all its incumbent inconveniences and humiliations had taken place, and the very thought that he had endured a ridiculous bloody farce of a wedding ceremony, seventy-seven fucking courses, twice as many glasses of wine, ten renditions of the bloody Rains of Castamere, Jaime and Uncle Kevan being as morbid as gods of death and dwarves jousting on bloody pigs only to walk out five minutes before that little shit Joffrey choked on his own sour breath, still made Tyrion grind his teeth in anger. And then Sansa – the foolish, brave, idiotic girl – had vanished and been accused, and Tyrion had spent the first night of her disappearance out of his mind with worry and blissfully unaware of the infinitely more serious worries that were to come.
Cersei, of course, had insisted on being even more dramatic and ridiculous than usual. She had lost no time in ordering that Sansa be 'hunted down like a dog,' raped, tortured and executed; and when Arya and Jaime were missed, her anger had been so acute and so frighteningly reminiscent of insanity that it had taken every inch of Tyrion's cunning to prevent an all-out declaration of war against Casterly Rock. He had then devoted most of his waking hours to pleading, rationalising, shouting and presenting countless different arguments to his sweet sister that all boiled down to the same thing: Sansa was incapable of killing anyone, and had probably chosen the day of the wedding to disappear because of the distraction it would provide; Arya had very likely gone to look for her sister because she didn't want to lose her last living sibling; Jaime had probably gone after Arya because he was in love with her, not because he had killed the king; 'and for fuck's sake,' Tyrion had eventually shouted, 'instead of ordering the decapitation of every guard who was on duty that night and wasting precious resources on tracking down two hostages to a cause that is already lost, we should be focussing on the somewhat glaring question of how they got out of the Red Keep in the first place!'
He knew that he was acting with a want of ruthlessness and political-mindedness that would have made his father turn in his grave, but he didn't particularly care. He was protective of Sansa (and of Arya too, now that Jaime had made it Tyrion's business to be), so while Cersei ordered the engagement of huge numbers of troops specifically to hunt for them, Tyrion quietly routed those orders; maintaining a large garrison at King's Landing to defend the capital and significantly reinforcing the Lannister armies still dealing with Stark loyalists in the Riverlands. When it came to the actual tracking-down of three people who could have gone anywhere, he sent a small number of soldiers with the collective intelligence of a village drunk and ensured that the orders he gave them were as vague and confusing as possible. That should make it easy for Jaime to talk his way out of any trouble they encountered, and to do so before Arya took it into her head to start cutting people.
This strategy had worked well for about a week, until it had occurred to Cersei to look into the execution of her orders instead of just giving them, and now, Tyrion sat facing her across the council table, his ears ringing as she ranted, raved and called him a variety of charming things from a traitor to a lily-livered fool.
'When I order all the troops to be engaged,' Cersei was shrieking, 'I expect all the troops to be engaged! I am the Queen Regent!'
'That is all very well, my dear sweet elder sister,' Tyrion drawled obsequiously, 'but if the capital should be attacked in the course of this heroic search, who exactly is going to defend it? I'm sure that you would look very fetching in armour, but even as formidable a woman as the Queen Regent cannot hope to take on an entire army by herself.'
Tyrion cast a sidelong glance at Varys, and saw that he was choking down laughter.
Maybe I'm not so very far gone after all.
'How can you sit there smiling and joking like an idiot?' Cersei hissed, 'my son, your nephew, the King, is dead, and you would have me do nothing?'
'Of course not,' Tyrion sighed, 'but I would have you act constructively, Cersei. The boy choked, and we cannot waste good soldiers on a fruitless search that is bound to fail anyway -'
'How dare you?'
'- and that you have only ordered because you want someone to blame!'
'The search is only bound to fail,' she growled, the pallor of her face ghastly against the rich black and gold of her mourning gown, 'because you have made it so by disobeying my orders!'
'I seriously doubt it, Cersei,' Tyrion replied in as infuriating a tone as he could muster, 'wherever the Lady Sansa is, she has come to be there without the notice of our spies. And as for the Lady Arya and our brother, well – I have told you that you haven't a hope of finding them. Both are experienced in fighting, and in covering their tracks.'
Cersei slammed her fist onto the table, upsetting an inkwell into Pycelle's lap and completely ignoring his whimpers of indignation and attempts to clean himself up.
'Do not presume to tell me that that little bitch is Jaime's equal in fighting experience! The notion is absurd!'
'True. But she did train with a Faceless Man for four years. That is a unique kind of experience, wouldn't you say?'
Tyrion smiled to himself. Of course he did not know this for sure – he had only made the connection through what Jaime had told him about Arya's life – but the statement served its purpose of frightening Cersei well enough, for she promptly cleared her throat and changed the subject.
'Our spies have failed us somewhat spectacularly, Lord Varys,' Cersei seethed, her eyes bright like the wildfire still smouldering in the depths of Blackwater Bay, 'you command more spies than the rest of the world combined, can you really tell me you have no idea where any of these traitors are?'
'We are trying, Your Grace,' Varys tittered reassuringly.
'Try harder!' Cersei snapped, and Tyrion felt his stomach clench at the obvious pleasure his sister took in the way that Varys obediently inclined his head.
Pathetic.
Cersei turned her attention to Tyrion again.
'As for you, brother,' she commanded, 'you will pull troops out of the capital and the Riverlands and put them to searching for our three fugitives. We cannot allow the King to die and do nothing.'
Tyrion found himself growing angry at her stupidity; at her willingness to compromise the safety of the capital, and of their new King in the name of this…trivia. His sister's eyes were red, her face was ghastly, and he was sure that her mind was suffering from lack of sleep. Nevertheless, he found himself incapable of being gentle with her. Tommen had been crowned two days ago, and the poor, innocent lad was already an unknowing pawn in a tug-of-war between his mother and Margaery Tyrell as to which of them should exercise the most control over him. To add insult to injury, Cersei seemed determined to weaken her cause as much as possible by continually humiliating and upbraiding the boy in public, and making comparisons with Joffrey that bordered on the fantastical. At this point, the poor boy's self-esteem would be in ruins within weeks, and though Tyrion appreciated the political advantages of alienating Tommen from his mother, he did not much like the idea of mourning one child by destroying another. There were far too many people already seeking to manipulate the boy's youth and inexperience. Tommen needed a Hand who sought to protect rather than manipulate him, and Tyrion was not prepared to sacrifice that duty by leaving King's Landing undefended.
'I will send no troops, either from King's Landing or the Riverlands,' Tyrion declared, 'we cannot spare them for this nonsense.'
'I gave you an order!' Cersei half-proclaimed, half-shrieked.
'My duty is to the King above all else!' Tyrion roared, 'and the King is an eleven-year-old boy who likes to play with kittens! He needs to be protected, both by me and by you, and I will not place his safety in jeopardy simply because Jaime no longer finds that hole between your legs attractive!'
Cersei leapt to her feet.
'Out! All of you out!' she shouted, her face contorting horribly as Varys and Pycelle cleared the room with prodigious speed and left Cersei and Tyrion alone.
Cersei breathed raggedly as she bent over the table, clearly trying to maintain some vestige of self-control.
'I allow you to impose your vulgarities on me in private for the sake of the mother that bore us,' she spat, 'but if you ever speak to me in such a way before the council again, I'll have your tongue cut out.'
Tyrion folded his arms and glared at her, unimpressed and unafraid.
'Forgive me, sweet sister,' he said simply, 'I become so very vulgar when I'm telling the truth.'
Tyrion studied Cersei as she slumped back into her chair, grief and betrayal and desperation branding her face like fire. The transition from Joffrey's reign to Tommen's had been astoundingly smooth. At the funeral, there had been no outpouring of grief beyond the traditional courtesies. Even Joffrey's siblings had been hauntingly quiet; Tommen visibly trying to choke down his tears and not disappoint his mother; Myrcella staring straight ahead of her and snapping at anyone that spoke to her, her jaw tightening just as Jaime's did each time he was overcome with emotion. But apart from that, there had been no sign that anyone mourned the little shit at all.
Tyrion could not imagine the loneliness and isolation that Cersei must feel: to have lost her son; to have lost someone that meant everything to her and to have the rest of the world delighted by, or worse, indifferent to, her loss. The anguish of it must be crippling. And yet he could not pity her. He was past that.
He could tell by the look on her face that his insults had made her think of Jaime. Her expression always bore a certain contentment or reassurance whenever her twin was in her thoughts, even if she was angry with him. He remembered how close his siblings had been as children; and how estranged they were now, but he could not pity her that loss either. It had all been her own doing.
Cersei was smirking dreamily into the distance, and her face was triumphant.
'I cannot believe that I once loved that wretch,' she said, in a tone of detached wonder.
Tyrion snorted contemptuously.
'Oh be serious, Cersei. You did a great many things to Jaime across a great number of years, but loving him was not one of them.'
Cersei glared ferociously at him, and Tyrion almost laughed aloud at her presumption. She still couldn't admit it. Not even to herself.
'Have you suffered a loss of memory at some point in your life, sweet sister?' Tyrion demanded coldly, 'have you forgotten the tedious games that you would play with your silly little friends; all the squabbling they would do about 'I'm going to marry Jaime! No, me!', as though he were a horse at auction, while you'd sit there dreaming so very vocally about Rhaegar Targaryen and how beautiful your children would be; lion and dragon, silver and gold, united forever?'
'I'm sure you'll make your point eventually,' Cersei snapped.
'You always had other options and possibilities in your pretty little head,' Tyrion snarled, enunciating every syllable in as cruel as manner as he could, 'but Jaime never did. He wanted nothing but you. He couldn't countenance being with anyone but you. And you loved that, of course. But don't you insult both him and me by telling me that you loved him. You loved having a killing machine that you could send off to murder whoever you wanted dead, you loved fucking him because it was the closest thing to fucking yourself that existed, and you loved fucking Robert over every time Jaime looked at you, because it reminded you that all your children were his. And then when our brother needed you the most; when his entire life was destroyed in one night; you cast him off like some filthy dog for doing nothing more terrible than changing; nothing more awful than having the audacity to want to make his own decisions. So don't you dare tell me that you loved him. You've never loved anyone but yourself.'
Cersei's eyes were tightly closed; two semi-circles of red in a ghastly, icy-white face; and her fingers were gripping the table hard as her nails dug into the wood. She looked broken and half-alive; the loss of Joffrey howling out of every pore in her skin; and for just a moment, Tyrion saw a mother desolately mourning her child rather than a woman he had hated for most of his life. He felt that he ought to say something to comfort or calm her, if only in the interests of minimising her interference in state affairs (nothing else), but when he opened his mouth and spoke her name, her eyes flickered open and their vivid emerald green was brimming over with hate.
'Get…out,' she rasped.
Tyrion slid off his chair and approached the double doors, pausing as a strangled sob tore out of his sister's chest and into the silence. Despite his better judgment, he turned once again to face her; to say something, anything; but her voice cracked sharply like a horse whip and the hatred in it was like poison.
'Get…out.'
