The Kings Will
After fifteen years, the king was finally dying, and the queen could not even enjoy the sight.
It was not that she was repulsed by the scene. The boar had opened Robert from the groin to the chest and the wound was festering. The stench was overpowering. Easily worse than even Flea Bottom or the sludge flowing down the Blackwater. It was turning her stomach, but at the same time, she had to be there. She needed to be here. To witness it. To behold the results of her work with her own eyes and nose, in all it's horrible details.
It was not the onlookers either. They did not pay her any attention anyway. Eddard Stark was conversing with the dying lout, Pycelle was measuring out medications and Renly Baratheon seemed engrossed in his own thoughts. Nobody would have seen it if she grinned. They likely would not even have noticed if she openly gloated. Nobody paid attention to the queen when the king was commanding their attention. Part of her was sorely tempted to just yell 'I killed him' into the room and see who was the first to call her hysterical and usher her out with a bottle of poppy milk to calm her dainty nerves.
No. The bitter truth was that she just felt nothing. Weeks ago, when Robert finally admitted that he never cared for her, she told him it meant nothing to her. It was supposed to be a lie. She just said it to deny him the satisfaction of having any power over her feelings. But the more she thought about it, the more she realised that it was the truth. Instead, she lied to herself. Tried to convince herself that it would be a grand day when she finally killed him. That it would feel good to see the source of her torments suffer and die, never to trouble her again.
And now there was nothing. No elation. No grief, thankfully. He had loomed so large. Always loud. Always overshadowing everything. But now he was just a tiny pile of pain and sweat. He was just a man. All the indignities big and small. All the times the drunken monster forced himself on her. All the welts and bruises his meaty fists left on her. All the years lost to him. Nothing would undo it. When he finally breathed his last, all of it would still have happened. There would be nothing more added to the mountain of her pain, but nothing taken away either. It was an ashen victory.
Though it was a victory at least, even if Cersei could not muster to wring even a shred of joy from it. Maybe that was the most fitting epitaph for this marriage. Here dies Robert Baratheon, denying his wife her happiness one last time.
She was so deep in her ruminations that Cersei nearly missed that the temperamental idiot was throwing everyone out of the room. Nearly everyone, that was. Stark was staying with him for yet another of their conspiratory discussions. Only when she was already outside and the door firmly closed did she realise what they might be talking about. Eddard knew about her children. He had promised not to reveal it to anyone, out of fear of what Robert would do to them and her, but what could he do now? He could barely lift his arms and would anyone obey a dying king ordering to snuff out his heirs?
Fear was creeping into the emptiness in her heart nonetheless. A nameless dread that something would happen. She nearly rushed away, looking for something to do about it as was her first impulse, or maybe just to share her fears with Jaime. Her sweet brother could be such a fool, but in his arms, she could at least shove away the worries for a moment. Longer if they found a quiet spot.
"Something the matter?" Renly was suddenly beside her before she could act on her fears or her lust. "I would have not expected you to be so concerned about my brothers health."
"Nothing that concerns you." She spat the last word almost and some confidence crept back into her spine as she saw him recoil ever so slightly. "There is nothing for you to pick from your brothers corpse, so why are you even here? Go and hide with Loras in the godswood as usual and leave the queen alone with her grief."
Something passed over his face, stuck between grief and anger at her words, but he did not rise to Cersei's bait. "Perhaps, you are right for once. I should probably leave."
And then he did, just like that, leaving her to stare at his back and wonder if she had missed something. This left only her and Pycelle to stand outside the chamber. The latter was carefully pretending to be part of the tapestry behind him to avoid becoming the next targets of Cersei's ire. This, of course, had quite the opposite effect, though she had no time to either act on it or go back to her worrying.
The door to the chamber they were letting Robert die in opened and Stark called them back into a document he had laid out on the small table. "A testament," he quietly said while heating some seal wax. His voice was weak and halting as he continued. "For when the king passes to the Strangers care. So that everything is in order."
She nearly balked at the implication, but bit her tongue and read it first. "You make yourself regent," she then balked anyway.
"No," came a cough from the cot. "I did. I ain't dead yet, woman. And I'm still king."
"You are giving this man the throne," she spat back. "Over your own flesh and blood."
"Only until Joffrey comes of age. The boy isn't ready." He tried to muster up the strength to yell at her, perhaps for the last time, but just trailed off in a defeated tone.
Cersei did not care though. She quickly read the document again. "It says 'his heir' here. Not Joffrey."
"That's..." He coughed once, twice, then choked up some blood prompting Pycelle to rush to his side. Robert just waved him away though, not that the Grand Maester was stopping to wipe the blood from his chin. "That's the same bloody thing woman."
She was not watching him though, Pycelle's ministrations byplay. She watched Eddard Stark, who was staring back with a firm gaze and curtly nodded. It was not the same. They both knew that. And Lord Paramount Stark, soon Protector of the Realm and honourable fool through and through, would soon make sure all of Westeros would know. "We will find an arrangement," he told her while rolling up the parchment. "All I ask you is to verify that this is Roberts will and to seal it, so that it can be read to court when the time comes."
There was nothing that she could do, except mutely watch as Stark sealed the message, shortly after followed by Pycelle, the bloodless toady. "I will give it to Varys for safe-keeping," Stark absently said while dripping a third blotch of wax onto the document. "We all should prepare for the day it is unsealed again."
He had told her that he knew. He told her to run. Take Jaime and their three children and flee to the Westerlands. Maybe to Essos, where no one would be overly concerned over their love. The honourable fool through and through. Cersei looked straight into his eyes as she pressed the seal of house Lannister into the wax, nodding ever so slightly to confirm the deal being struck. A promise she had no intention to follow through on. Her son Joffrey would sit on the Iron Throne and she would bury anyone who stood in the way of that.
King Robert is dying and Eddard Stark will soon make it public that his heir is a bastard. That can't be allowed.
[] Speak to Varys. Talk him into altering the will. That should be trivial for a spymaster of his calibre and Pycelle will not contest the changed document.
[] Speak to the High Septon. The fat priest is pliable and with some pressure, he can object to the will in the name of the faith on some pretext.
[] Speak to Jaime. Maybe he has an idea how to resolve this.
AN: Been a while since I did anything Game of Thrones related and over the last weeks, the mood took me. There are some subtle and some not so subtle differences between this world and canon, so canon knowledge is not always accurate. I also have some players lose in the world that will spice things up, so this will not be the stations of canon for very long.
With that said, have fun with playing Westeros least liked queen everyone.
