The following few days and nights felt stretched without severing; it felt like some shattered suspense that still refused to end. It just slowly melted into a numbing, tearless grief. Sauriel was gone. And somehow, the whole world seemed unprotected now. Tyrion and Sansa were now truly and utterly alone. They seemed unable to come together in the same place, and proved woefully inadequate to comforting their traumatized children.

Ultimately, though, the time came for him to see her, together and yet alone. But something inside him felt jagged, crippling. It was something gnawing at him as he entered her chamber carefully and sensed the silence of the place, the silence of his wife, of her inner world all gone quiet, lying in the bed without words or even thoughts, it seemed. Just the shadows, and the glint of red-gold, and the flash of watery blue…

“Sansa…” He was shaking with emotion. “Do you wish me undone, woman?”

“You’d have been doubly undone…had it been Sophie taken from you,” she whispered.

“Damn you, have you no trust in me at all? After all this time gone by?”

“In this you could not have helped it,” she croaked. “It runs deeper than you know. I know that, even if you don’t…”

“You are wrong if you think the depth of me…flows anywhere…but to you,” he choked. “It always has, and I knew…our fates were tied. You are…the only thing…” he swallowed “…that could kill me…”

She started to sit up now. “Kill you…?”

“Yes. Many times now…I have known…my death is tied to you, as much as my life. Each time…I almost lose you…I die…a little more. It’s a terrible thing, Sansa, because…it’s so slow. It’s seeing the shadow behind me, in the mirror—the old curse…the one she laid on me…”

“Do not say that,” she stopped him, pressing her hand to her forehead. “Do not speak of such things…”

“Cersei seems to reach us though we would have them far away. We both know that.”

She turned. “You think I am any less tied? If you be cursed, then so am I.”

“You could not be cursed,” he murmured. “You did no wrong, nor your kin…not to bear death around you like this. Do not make pretense to take it upon yourself…”

“Kin has naught to do with it.”

“I…wonder at it.” He stared out blankly towards the window, gray with the slightest sliver of moonlight. “Perhaps some dreams filter down to us, through the glass of time…we have them in the thickness or weakness in our blood, like…like the color in hair, in eye…I wonder at it, in me…”

“No!” The intensity of her voice jolted him a little. “I know you more than anyone…I know the depths of you, and I know…” She looked at him straight. “Yes, you are a Lannister, and our children are Lannisters after you. But there is no shame in that. A name, any name, is only as good or bad as the one who carries it. Whatever traits come with it…they bend to the will of the man who bears them.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Or the woman?”

“You make pretense to assume you alone understand your child!”

This bore into him suddenly, and he bit back with anger. “Well, have you not acted that way long enough? Is that not why you went in my stead, even now? Because you feared my love for her would outweigh mine for you? Because you took it upon yourself to assure my wits would not be mangled by too-dear affection? That I should give myself up without a struggle for her?”

“I doubted not that you would struggle,” she choked, “but in the end, they found your armor’s weak point, and they could pierce it if they so chose.”

“And it was less your weakness than mine?”

She was silent for a long time, then confessed bitterly, “I am not a Lannister.”

He shuddered. “You think we are a pair, her and I, not quite to be trusted, though perhaps to be protected,” he realized lowly. “You say there is no shame in the name, Sansa, but do you not hold that shame in your heart? Do you not see it living on in us? In her, somehow more than Caitey, for all her inheritance of mine?”

She turned her head towards him. “She tasted a kill today. She…enjoyed it.”

“How can you dare to judge her so?” he spat at her. “That was less man than weasel, butcher’s meat and no more, and hell’s teeth, he tried to ride you, and I know not how far he traveled…”

“Tyrion!”

“In truth, my lady, you’ve told me naught!”

“Is it for my wellbeing that you should ask it, or for your pride that you should demand it, my lord?”

“Do not evade the question by testing my manhood!” he shouted.

“It is not your manhood I am testing,” she shot back, “but what this attachment between you and I is made of…is it love or a crutch?”

“Damn you! What more have I to prove to you?!” With that, in a burst of fury, he intentionally knocked over a vase on a stand within his reach. Glass shattered, water flowed, and the last red flowers of the autumn lay bruised upon the floor.

Sansa jerked at the suddenness of the rage, remembering the intensity of his temper that she had seen so little of for so many years. She struggled to maintain an air of calm. “Talk to your daughter,” she said with a certain quiet authority that might have been used by a queen.

“Now you send me away from you like a school boy who has misbehaved…?”

“Now I send you like a father to speak with your daughter,” she stated with an edge. “Perhaps you may yet speak with a wisdom I have not reached.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but her choice of words made him think better of it. Slowly, reluctantly, he turned and left the chamber.

When he made his way towards her room, he saw Caitey sitting on the small bench in the hall. His daughter had never looked so tiny to him before, all alone, sitting outside her sister’s room in the dark. It cut him, reminding him too much of himself at that age, desperate for affection so much that when deprived of it, he turned in on himself and took shelter in the security of a lonely little world.

Build up armor, that had been his answer, his only chance, so the sting would not register. But it always did, anyway. His mother’s blood in him, he surmised. Cynicism was the easier route, but one he could not strictly keep to, work his woe. Being a would-be cynic with a romantic’s heart was a blessing and a curse. It was a barb stuck deep beneath the skin, and a wound that would never disappear.

Yet sometimes it gave him strange flashbacks to the feel of his mother’s old nightgown he had found in a dark chamber when a little child, and foolishly brought it to his own nursery, and curled up with it, and drew pictures of dragons on old scrap parchment and felt very happy…until his father found out, and called him a little beast, and tore up his pictures, and took away the nightgown, never to be seen again, and locked him up alone in the tower in the dark. And here now was his own child alone, in the dark…

“Caitey,” he rasped, “what are you doing?”

She looked at him blankly. “I am thinking…if I should go in…to see Sophie…” She blinked. “But I don’t think she would like that…no one wants to talk to me now, not even Mama…and Sauriel is gone…” She bit her lip and looked down, almost too interiorly numb to give way to those tears that might bring relief.

Tyrion swallowed, suddenly wondering which daughter he had been sent to see. “I want to talk to you, Caitey,” he stated softly.

“No, you don’t,” she said back to him, and it cut him to the core. “You never…want to talk to me…because…” Now tears did start to come to her eyes.

“What…?” he questioned, almost directing it at himself in self-accusation.

“I’m…I’m too small…”

He shut his eyes tight, tight, and clenched his fist in the dark. “I am small,” he choked, “not you, lovely, not you…”

The next moment they were clinging onto each other and silently crying, and Tyrion realized how much she seemed to relish the physical contact, and realized how little of it he had given her in the past, as if afraid some more of his disease might rub off on her. And he vowed inside himself to do better.

“I’ll talk to you, Caitey, I’ll talk to you whenever you want…” he struggled not to sob. “I’ll stay with you now if you want…”

Then with a maturity beyond her years, she pulled back and said, “No, Papa, Sophie needs you. She’s too quiet. Better talk to her, hmm?”

Tyrion nodded and squeezed her a final time before parting.

Finally making his way to the end of the hall, he went on to his other daughter’s room, and found Sophie lying in her bed, her face turned to the wall, the candle on the table still burning. He heard her breathing, and knew she had been crying. He felt himself a very poor parent for not having come sooner. He walked closer to the bed, and knew she could hear him, would know who it was by the distinct sound of his uneven steps. But still she hesitated from turning, from making contact.

He was right next to the bed now. “Sophie?” He reached out and touched her hair.

She turned to him slowly, and he saw the tears down her face. “Yes, Papa?”

Tyrion swallowed hard, and pathetically slipped to old silly things, desperate desires to be forgiven for neglecting his own child. “Still…still want a sword? I would get you one, if you wanted it.”

Sophie shut her eyes tight. “I…don’t know, I…” Suddenly she sat up and flung her arms around her father’s neck. “Oh, Papa…”

Tyrion squeezed her tight as she started to sob. “Oh, Sophie…it’s alright, it will be alright…”

“No, I killed him, I did…” She clenched her fists. “And I thought…I thought I quite liked it, when I was doing it…I was proud of it…”

Tyrion suppressed a feeling of strange dread. “He was an evil man,” he assured her. “You did it to protect your mother…”

“I did it…because…I could!” She clutched tighter. “I wanted…to prove it…”

He paused, wondering at her Lannister blood, through him, wondering at what was going through her mind now, wondering…if Cersei lived on through her…or perhaps himself…yes, it was himself he most feared…

“So…have you proved it now?” he rasped.

She was quiet. “I think…I killed Sauriel, didn’t I?”

“No, no,” he assured her brokenly. “No, she…she did that of her own accord. That was just the way she was. She was a light to us, and the light has gone back behind the mountains now, like at sunset, though it’s still burning, deep down inside. Some rays of her sun are in us now, and we must live to bring them to life. You are that light, dear. She did it to save you for us…”

“She did it…to show me.”

“Show you what, Sophie?”

She leaned back from him. “Show me…what it is. It’s not so fine a thing as I thought. It’s…it’s horrible.”

“Oh…” His breath caught with some sort of relief.

“And I did it…I killed…”

“Sophie, listened to me,” he rasped. “Now, hear me out…you did what had to be done, no matter what you may have been thinking, or what you were feeling…”

“But it was the thinking, the feeling…that’s…that’s, I mean to say…that I killed. And I can’t…get away from it…I…I dream about it, and I’m afraid…”

“Shh, Sophie…” he quieted her, gathering her into his arms again. “There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore…”

“But I am afraid…of me!”

He began to understand on a much deeper level now. Yes, that sounded very much like something Sauriel might say….something she’d say about his own struggle with his demons.

“So you killed in your thoughts,” he whispered, “and so have I, many times. Oh, child, you and I are much the same. But it’s not…something that controls you, no…you are not a slave to thoughts, but master of how you use them. When they take you to that place, you tell them…tell them, not today. And that’s how we’ll heal ourselves from it, and never go back to that place again…”

He sensed someone watching them, and turned to see Sansa at the door. The look in her eyes already told him she had heard everything she needed to, and there were tears in her eyes. The next thing he knew his wife had flown over, and soon she was hugging her crying daughter fiercely, petting her hair, and telling her it would all be alright.

Then Tyrion saw Caitey standing in the doorway looking on. He took a step back as he nudged her towards the bed. “Go on, little one,” he whispered. “Go to your sister.”

The last thing he saw as he backed out into the hallway was Sansa helping Caitey up onto the bed, and Sophie crushing her into a sobbing embrace.

When Sansa returned to their chamber shortly after, Tyrion was lying on the chaise. It was something so strangely reminiscent, both of them just stared at each other for a very long time.

“My lord,” she chided him. “You’ll break your back over there. Will you never accept that you have a bed all your own?”

“Not all my own,” he noted carefully.

She looked down, and her half-playful tone became solemn. “Are you that loathe to share it with one nearly defiled?”

His eyes flashed at her, but then seeing the look of genuine pain on her face, softened.

She went on, “Or is it that I gave into doubts more than trust over the child of my own womb, and required the wisdom of another to see my own error?”

Then a silence reigned between them, watching each other. At last she turned with a sigh and slipped back into bed.

Very gingerly, he got up and went to her and lay down alongside her, at a distance. The time passed, though neither one slept, trying to very quiet, as if to fool the other. Oh, yes, he tried so very hard to be quiet, motionless, breathless, until he felt her touch. He let his eyes drift to her hand, lily-white, and up her arm, up to her bare shoulder.

“Do you know,” she started tremulously, “I would rather take a knife to myself…than to go on without you, either through death or…the breaking of a bond…”

“Sansa…”

“Had he taken me fully, that’s what I would have done …I would not have let myself live to shame you…”

“Say no more of such things…”

“I would have put the blade through my own belly…my own breast…”

“Stop, stop,” he murmured, and tried to turn away, for the tears were coming up in his eyes. “What do you think I am made of…?”

Her hand moved to his face, his scar, and felt the saltwater running along the dent. “Flesh and blood…like me…”

“And what does mortal flesh and blood seek but to find love, and…give it back? Where’s the place for pride in that? Where’s the place for anything else at all…?”

She leaned up, and let her light gown slip further down, below her breasts. Then she turned, to let him reach, and at his caress, she melted into him. Lips and tongues on each other’s skin, and the rushing of the blood beneath it, and the mouths, hot, breathing hard into each other. It was intense, and grasping, and holding, and a fight to be part of each other again in defiance of almost being torn apart forever. They had not made love with the same level of passion for years, and in some ways it felt like a second consummation.

When it was done, she lay her head against his chest, nuzzled under his chin. “What…if they come back for us…?”

His breath was heavy with quiet crying. “I do not know…but they must take our lives together…or not at all…they might cut body from soul, but not…soul from soul…”

“If they were to take me first,” she whispered, “I would wait for you to come for me, without food or drink…I would keep death’s vigil…before they could make use of me.” She closed her eyes. “And…you?”

His hand squeezed on her shoulder, and she could feel his own thoughts pricked painfully, and then running numb. “They’d have killed the last Lannister then…for nothing of me left in this world could truly bear the name.”

“And…our children?”

Tyrion swallowed. Oh, gods, were they being selfish, talking on like this, as if they were the only two in the world, that everything depended upon them? He closed his eyes, and knew too keenly what would happen to them if they were ever taken alive, taken by his sister. She would relish turning Sophie into a monster, and making Caitey suffer everything Tyrion had, and more. And he found himself praying they be killed instead of captured, and then felt himself overwhelmed by guilt for the prayer.

But he would not tell his wife any of it. No, never that. Even if she could read his mind, he would never speak such a thing with his tongue.

No, he just turned, and kissed her again, and said, “All will be well with them.”

And she did not protest against it. It was a dream they had to cling to, that something pouring out of their love would pass into the future untarnished and unscathed.

And he knew as the window glinted, he would rather live a lifetime of this pain, this unknowing cloud, this drowning in love to the point of death, than any security he might ask for, or any power, or any point of pride. He would rather take the risk, the cruel risk of gushing himself out into others, and letting himself be mortally wounded through it, yes, through his love her. For theirs was the love of two eyes, and one could not see in wholeness without the other.