A Vow Without Honor

The Prisoner

Tyrion

He would have thought the sky cells at the Eyrie were the worst place he could have been, yet somehow Tyrion found the cells in the Red Keep to be worse. It wasn't the near-constant darkness nor the dampness of the particular cell they had thrown him in, no, it was simple the knowledge that he was here on his family's orders. He could blame insanity on Lysa Arryn, but what could he blame here? His father's intense hatred of him? His sister's need to put every foul thing that happened to her on his shoulders? His foolishness in believing his family would ever trust him?

Ah, yes, that one seemed to be the victor here.

He should have known, he told himself over and over again. After how his father and sister had treated him over the years, he should have known that this would be the only outcome. Yet time and time again, he convinced himself that he was proving his worth to his family, that his contributions were beginning to show his loyalty and usefulness, to them and to the rest of the world. But that wasn't true, it was never true, so why did he still believe?

Why did he keep having hope?

He'd spent much of the first evening pacing back and forth in his cell, even has his legs began to ache and then lose all feeling, he'd kept walking. The cell was small for a man, but the gaoler had joked that for a half-man, it would be a kingly space. It wasn't, of course. There were larger wardrobes in Casterly Rock.

Pacing helped him think. At first, it had been on offering a defense against the accusations, but very quickly Tyrion realized that it probably would not matter in the end. No doubt his father would preside over the hearing, and Cersei would whore her way through the witnesses; no, he did not seem to have much going for him at all.

Had Jaime not lost his hand, he'd fight for him, and everything would be fine. But that, clearly, wasn't an option either. No doubt Cersei would have chosen Gregor Clegane for her champion as well, and even in his prime, Tyrion wondered if his brother could best that beast of a man.

So, Tyrion began to think of other things. He tried to solve Joffrey's murder, but with so little evidence and his current housing predicament, he found himself grasping at ideas. Then he thought about Casterly Rock and recalled the days he was in charge of the cisterns. How unremarkable a task it had been, and how he'd striven to do his best at it nonetheless. Near the end, he was thinking of ways to throttle his sister before weariness finally claimed him and he fell asleep in a pile of hay.

No one arrived the next day, save for the guards who threw pieces of bread that they'd bitten. At some point, he was given the thinnest stew he'd ever supped on, completely convinced that someone had spit in it, but too tired to care all the same.

He'd expected Jaime to speak with him, or Cersei to gloat, but both were absent. In the silence of his cell, Tyrion began to wonder if Jaime thought it was true. That was something he could not tolerate above all. Jaime was the one who had loved him all these years, the one who refused to let him down. Him truly believing that he'd murdered his son would be a slap in the face.

By the next day, Tyrion had taken to whistling, mostly the tune of The Rains of Castamere. His father hated that song almost as much as Myra, and he delighted in the idea of the great Tywin Lannister hearing it somewhere and not being able to do a thing to stop it.

He sat on his little bed of hay and tossed pebbles at the opposite wall. Once or twice, a rat would scurry by, but they quickly found their way out through tiny holes he could hardly see. Tyrion found himself admiring them. Oh, to be so small. He was smaller than most, but it never gave him an advantage; he couldn't fit through small openings, and he couldn't reach things either. Being a dwarf only gave him his mind, and what good it did in a place like this.