Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Harbinger
Cersei
Summary: The butterfly effect. A butterfly beats its wings and no one feels the flutter of air. The insect beats its wings on its erratic random path. Ripples radiate out in ever increasing circles from the beat of those wings. The forces ever building. Across the world those changes multiple and build until hurricanes and firestorms rage. These ripples also rip and tear at the fabric of what can and what should be. Westeros had its butterfly effect, an event that was foretold to occur by seers of old. The certainty of this moment did not occur. From that seeming one small event the ripples ripped and tore time apart. The fates cruelly twisted and destiny torn asunder. The great Houses did not commit regicide. Jon Snow still went to the wall but Arya was not forged in the fires of heartache and hate. The faceless god did not transform her into a weapon strong enough to bring the gods down low. And Daenerys Targaryen: The princess of fate and destiny around which all orbit. She was to be forged with slow blows of the hammer on melted Valyrian steel. Shaping and folding with slow deliberate precision. There was no slow sprinkling of magical portent into the spiritual being of the Dragon Queen. The butterfly wings tore her fate asunder and instead caste her headless into the raging forge of doom. Kingdoms and the gods themselves will tremble. Who will survive her wrath?
… prophecies are so subtle and dangerous. The inevitability of a prophecy once heard. History is full of mighty heroes, great houses, fighting to avoid their fate, and, thus, only ensuring they fulfill their prophecies of doom and destruction. Westeros had its prophecy … one of death, one of destruction; one of doom and potential victory at the birth of Spring but so much pain, so much loss … Strife and discord the crucibles of destiny; the fires that create greatness… The death of Jon Arryn was prophesied by seers of old. His death would spring forth great events and great devastation BUT eventual victory over the forces of darkness and death. The seers say that only great suffering and supreme heartache can forge the strongest human metal … … … Jon Arryn did not die … … … now the fates are in disarray! Can victory still be achieved? The price would have been great, but, would it not have been worth it to overcome the Wight King? … … I wonder … what new prophecy will arise from the ashes of what might have been … will a new Phoenix arise … one with a nobler more enlightened vision … one of Hope … one of Reclamation …
Cersei
There! Cersei spotted the black dragon flying high on the thermals as she stood on the balcony of her personal suite drinking a cup of wine. Off to the high right she spotted a green star with bronze highlights, and beside it a white gleam streaked with gold markings glinting bright in the hot sun. The dragons slowly circled back over Kings Landing. They were beautiful from a distance; like the Bird of Paradise the Summer Islanders sometimes brought to court. But these were no pretty beacons of beauty. They were angels of death.
Why has the Targaryen witch not attacked?! Cersei wondered to herself. For four months all the Targaryen bitch had done was fly her damn dragons up and down the length of Westeros. Not once had she attacked. Not once had she exacted revenge for the wrongs done her.
“What is her game?” she whispered. As a Lioness of the house Lannister, Cersei knew what the new head of the pride did when it conquered and disposed the King of Beasts. The offspring and in this case, the mate, would be killed. It was bloody, the way of nature. Cersei clenched her fist in anger. “Everyone has abandon us!” she cried out, with no one to hear her.
One by one the great houses had either pledged allegiance to House Targaryen or stayed neutral. These Houses had done so without a fight or even a whimper of protest. The house of Lannister among the first to bend the knee. Of course her father would side with the winning hand. Even the great Eddard Stark had not called his banners to Robert’s defense.
Could she blame them? Cersei’s mind became weak in a moment of doubt, her thoughts racing as she reflected on past actions. “Stop it!” she screamed to herself. She remembered the day the ravens came announcing that Daenerys Targaryen had landed and was reclaiming what was rightfully hers; that what had been taken by treachery would now be restored. That the rightful queen had returned.
Cersei mused spitefully over all the titles the bitch had used in letter. Daenerys Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, called Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons. The woman certainly had a swelled head and unfounded belief in her station.
In the letter, Daenerys promised that only the House of Baratheon would suffer justice. All others would be given amnesty if they would only bend the knee to her. She would champion the poor and lift up the downtrodden while bringing justice and equality to all. She would do all in her power to bring about reconciliation, and her fervid hope was for peace and the forgiving of past sins. She had written: … My mind cannot sleep with the endless dreams of destruction that haunt my days and nights, death and never ending strife; my body has seen too much death, heard the screams of the dying, smelled the stench of war; my soul is weary beyond measure. I want to fight no more forever … Cersei had almost believed the words when she first read them, they had been so compelling. Then she realized that this was the imp’s doing. He had written this drivel to seduce the weak minded. Cersei was not so easily fooled.
A flash of white and gold caught her eye, as suddenly the dragon was plummeting towards the city. On the roof tops she could see that children were cheering as it dove. Cheering! The queen fumed. The dragon pulled up just over the rooftops and flew by at a dizzying speed just to disappear over the roof of her abode, the buffeting wind swirling her golden locks. The low borne citizens continued cheering for the dragon queen and her dragons, leaving Cersei to shake with ire at her subjects’ treachery.
The dragons had first appeared for today well over two hours ago. They had come in riding up high on invisible thermals. They flew so high. They were hard to even see against the sun and pale thin clouds. Then they would slowly drop lower to buzz the city roof tops one at a time before rising up to disappear in the sun and high thin clouds.
Several times she had been scared witless when she had been gazing on the green or white dragon and the black behemoth had shot by her balcony the force of the wind slamming into her shocking her with shockwaves of buffeting air that filled her with terror.
Twice the fucking bitch had done this to her on purpose she was sure. She knew this was her domicile and was mocking her. Bitch!
She felt so alone.
Even though she had known the usurper was coming, the letter by raven had been like a reverberating strike on the drum of doom. Robert, the great drunken lout, disappeared into his private retreat in the Kings Wood that very night. Also, on that same night, Joffrey suddenly started to recover from his wasting illness. He told his mother that he must go on a quest to find the lost Valyerian blade of House Lannister, his voice quaking with fear like a child. She had wanted to slap him.
Tommen merely read quietly in the library. “I will meet my doom with quite resolve,” he said, looking up at her with his soft intelligent eyes. “I do not fear death …it is life’s victim I do not wish to become.” He had told her when she asked if he was afraid that night.
She had fled from the room.
Jamie had left her two and half years ago with that damn, fucking cow. How could he have left her? and now with twins besides?
In Daenerys’ letter she had found out that Tyrion was now the Targaryen’s Hand. Of course he was. The coward had quickly left his family to join what he believed to be the winning side.
I wonder if she will kill us quickly or make us suffer? Cersei mused softly to herself as she refilled her wine glass and went back out to the balcony to watch her destiny fly above her.
As if Daenerys’ letter wasn’t enough to deal with, she had also received an accompanying letter from Myrcella. Cersei had been shocked as she read about her daughter’s time in Dorne. She had hoped at first that it was a forgery, but there was no doubt that the insolent child had wrote the letter in her own hand. Myrcella had proudly proclaimed that she was not marrying Trystane Martell but had already married his sister Arianne, and that she was also married to the bastard daughters of Oberyn, Dorea, and Loreza. She could only stare at the parchment with her mouth agape, wondering if her daughter had gone insane. This was both unnatural and obscene! Myrcella had ended the script with the passage “I am following the Targaryen way, and I will marry who I want! In Dorne I have the freedom to follow my heart!”
Cersei cursed her daughter that night.
The freedom to follow one’s heart, Cersei mused as she drank her wine, swirling the dregs in her cup. What a novel concept. She stared down at her now empty wine cup, pondering. The freedom to follow my heart. The thought pained her for some reason. If only she had been born a man Cersei thought bitterly. She had always been trapped, despite being the equal of any man.
Cersei walked back into her room to refill her wine cup, reaching for the decanter as the door boomed open. She whirled around to bark at the intruder, then froze, her mouth agape.
Robert stood in the doorway.
“What are you looking at woman?!” he boomed to his wife as he walked into the room.
“Robert?” Cersei asked softly confused.
“Who else would it be?” the six-foot eight man answered his slender wife, taking the wine cup from Cersei’s hands. “I think that is quite enough, Cersei,” he told her gently.
“What the hell happened to you?” Cersei spoke up to the man before her, shocked.
This was not the man that had disappeared four months ago into the King’s Wood with his tail between his fat ass cheeks. That man had been a drunken, obese, unkempt buffoon. The Robert before her now had dropped at least five stones in weight. His greying, unkempt beard that had made him look so old and slovenly had been shaved off. His eyes were clear and his back straight. His body was hard again, and his mailed top was filled out with muscle.
Robert chuckled down at his wife. “Close your mouth or you’ll let flies in woman!” he laughed. He took her hand and led her back out to the balcony. “I am about to die and I wanted … no I needed to meet it as a man. The man I used to be.” He said softly, looking up at the dragons that were circling lower.
They stood together, watching the dragons perform aerial tricks and making complicated patterns in the sky, doing fierce rolls and sharp ascents before dropping again.
“Why hasn’t the fucking cunt attacked?!” Cersei asked her husband with a tone of exasperation and a child’s need to understand.
Robert looked down at her and then laughed loudly. “Isn’t it obvious woman?”
“I wouldn’t be asking if I knew Robert!” the queen fumed up to her husband.
“Cersei, think about it,” he told her looking in her eyes. When she merely stared up at him blankly he sighed. “Cersei, with her dragons flying the breadth of Westeros she has conquered the land without firing an arrow or a stroke of the sword. Between her restraint and her letter she has won.” Robert looked back up at the black dragon. “If only I had ruled with half as much wisdom …” the tall Baratheon softly spoke more to himself than her.
Cersei looked up and remembered the incident six weeks ago, when the black dragon had suddenly appeared above the temple of the Seven Gods. The Targaryen had unsheathed her Valyrian sword from the scabbard on her back. Cersei remembered how the sword glowed a strange blue. She had seen Valyerian blades and none had glowed bright blue like the Targaryen’s blade did. The woman had hacked off the tops of the spires as she had her dragon hop lightly from spire to spire, his talons barely scratching the shimmering crystal. She had only been able to stare.
There was a shocking audacity to the act. Cersei had found herself awed to see the woman so expertly using a sword - the way Daenerys had leaned so far out from her dragon to lop the spires off. The woman had an obvious strength. Cersei had seen many a tournament, and the woman knew how to use that sword. It both frightened and titillated her. She had also found herself envious. She had wanted to take up the sword when she was a girl.
The House of Highgarden had declared their allegiance to the rightful ruler of Westeros the very next day.
“They are beautiful” Robert spoke again, low voice still soft. “I can see the queen on Drogon … so beautiful.” He looked up as the black dragon slowly flew past the window, the queen tilting her head to the throngs that had gathered on the rooftops, wildly cheering for her. Her long silver blond hair was whipped proudly in the dragon’s slip stream. A chiming followed in her wake.
Robert sighed, and Cersei felt her old jealousy flare. Some things never changed.
Cersei spat at Robert as she looked at the people cheering the usurper. “They need to be punished … they are traitors!”
“Oh shut up Cersei!” Robert barked with a slight laugh. “It’s a little late for that. We deserve what happens to us.”
“WE?!” Cersei screamed at her husband.
Robert looked down at his beautiful wife. “Yes, we, Cersei. I have done a lot of thinking while I was away training. We both could have done so much more, and with so much less.” He sighed with a soft, sad timbre.
“I have done nothing wrong!” Cersei roared at Robert. She cursed him silently, her eyes green pools of anger and hatred. “I saw you looking at the Targaryen slut! You never could keep your dick in your trousers!” she yelled at Robert.
Robert only sighed again.
Suddenly, the king and his wife were buffeted as the immense black dragon flew by the window from the side again, mere feet from the railing. His mighty body tilted so that he was flying perpendicular to the ground, his wings pumping hard enough to send a small hurricane of wind across the balcony as he picked up speed. Cersei stumbled into Robert, clinging to him to both maintain her balance and calm her own fear. Her green eyes grew wide.
They watched as the dragon shot straight up into the air, traveling through hundreds of feet within only seconds. Then, instead of leveling out, the dragon pivoted on a wing over, and rocketed back down. Only at the last moment did the behemoth pump its wings to break its descent.
Dust flew wildly all about as the dragon landed with grace. The queen’s long white hair flew in all directions from the wild winds. In from the right came her white and gold dragon landing as adroitly as her black beast, followed by the green dragon landing on the other side of the mighty black behemoth. The black dragon stretched up its long neck to stare about. Some of the children that had been cheering had hidden away now, but those who were brave enough remained stared from the rooftops in wonder, their eyes just visible above the ledges they crouched behind.
Suddenly, the dragons began to trumpet loudly again and again, shocking the air with their mighty roars. Cersei cupped her ears, finding no quiet as the dragons paused just long enough to take deep breaths to continue roaring mightily, their ringing peels ricocheting off the walls.
Then, as suddenly as at roars started, they ceased. A shocked silence followed.
Cersei watched the silver haired usurper slide gracefully down off the black dragon’s high, broad back and land with surprising ease onto her feet, dropping the last distance with bent knees. She stood up and looked around with proud eyes and a regal bearing as she stepped away from her dragon to stand in the open. It was only then that Cersei noticed the spear in the white haired woman’s right hand. Cersei also at that moment noticed a multitude of silver bells in Targaryen’s hair. From the spear tip there flew a long, white ribbon that fluttered in the breeze. The Targaryen stepped closer to look up at the balcony with her violet eyes boring up at the two Baratheons.
The Targaryen clearly felt no fear. The woman roared up to the King and Queen with supreme confidence and haughty voice "I wish to Parley!"