AN: This first chapter is a collection of moments from the show, and someof my own creations, seen from Myrcella's eyes. I wrote it because it helped me get in character and because it will show, after, how much she changes with time. In the begining i have made her about ten years old or so and she's about to turn sicteen by the end of this chapter. I know the timeline is muddled, but making her younger was too weird for me. Hope you like... :)

o

1. With the scent of Summer still on you...

" If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with. If you can't protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world, don't ever believe any different."

- A Clash of Kings -

She has oftentimes heard her mother lament the fact that she was born female or sometimes, when the wine was sweet or her father's hand heavier than usual that 'you were born without a cock between you legs'. Myrcella had not been quite as flabbergasted as she should have been by the bluntness of it. Her mother was blunt about everything, even her love, and Myrcella was her mother's daughter in some ways more than others. Besides, though she was the only princess and her honour and virtue were guarded as vigilantly as Joffrey's life was, that did not preclude her from the whispers of the other ladies when her mother was not about. And the ladies of court were anything but the delicate little flowers they liked to pretend to be. By the time she was eight, Myrcella knew more bawdy japes than her brother who spent his time with the likes of the Hound. The diversity of her ladies cultures left a little to be desired perhaps, but Myrcella didn't understand this until much later in life. Most of them were of the westerlands; little lions without claws her mother called them, cubs that didn't know how to roar – and she would smile when she said so, with that little twist of her lips that made her look as frigid as the long winters that Myrcella had only heard of.

Her mother was cold and hard, strong as valyrian steel, and her anger was as devastating as anything Marcella could ever dream of. Mother was sometimes more Baratheon than father, the fury was more hers than his. But unlike most… well, unlike all those around the queen, Myrcella never feared her mother's ire because it was only ever directed at other people. Even in her most furious moments, Cercei was only stern, never cruel, not with her daughter. Her cruelty sometimes was felt in the indifference that she treated Myrcella and Tommen with, but in comparison to her father's borderline ignorance of her existence, her mother's strange form of affection felt adequate enough. But then again, Myrcella had not known there were many other forms of affection between family, or other ways of families to be. Her sort of happiness was the only sort she knew and in the way of children, it was her whole world.

Or it was, until she turned ten years old and Jon Arryn, Hand of the King and kindly old man that was ever sweet to her and Tommen, died suddenly.

It was strange how some things that are so astounding in their normalcy later are revealed to have had an enormous effect on the choices that are made. Perhaps wiser people would have known when Jon Arryn drew his last breath, that something was stirring and change was coming. Doubtless, there were those that had been able to smell the blood and fire in the air and felt the beast lurking in the dark. But Myrcella was not those people. Despite the awareness she had of the stripped reality of courtly life around her (impossible not to know, she was her mother's daughter and her mother was a blunt woman), Myrcella was happy in the simple way of children. Living among liars had not robbed her of innocence. She was a child: too young to be a pawn of games worth mentioning and more importantly, she had a fierce lioness guarding her from the worst of it and perhaps that more than anything had ensured her shielding from far deeper hurts than any child should bear.

So when her father announced that they were going north, Myrcella was profoundly exited. She wanted to see the vast plains of the North, she wanted to ride through them on a fast horse. She wanted to see the Riverlands and the icy mountains behind Winterfell that were said to look like dragon's teeth from afar. She should very much like to see Winterfell itself too, she thought, the ancient seat of the Kings of Winter, older than the Red Keep ever hoped to be, and meet a family that was the stuff of legends in the North, whose lineage, some said, went back further than any other in Westeros. Myrcella had heard that the Starks had the blood of the First Men and that they kept to the old faith of faceless gods of the forest… And she knew Ned Stark (who didn't!): the King always spoke of him more fondly than he spoke of his own brothers.

It all sounded so mysterious and grand and exiting! Though Myrcella kept to herself her particular brand of excitement because she was a princess after all, and a princess never reveals anything to anyone but her own self. Her mother had taught her that.

ooo

Myrcella was a Princess of the Seven Kingdoms. She was born as such and she had lived as such. She had been taught to walk with grace since she could land her first steps, to measure her words as soon as she spoke her first one; taught of courtly manners and a lady's behaviour before she could even understand there was another way to be. She was a princess of the Iron Throne, a Baratheon of Storms end, and a Lannister of the Rock after that and in the very end, in her own chambers without any eyes about, she could be Myrcella, the girl who liked riding better than dancing, drawing better than reading and if she must read, history better than poems.

But even Myrcella of House Baratheon, Princess of the Iron Throne that had seen more grand keeps and castles than most girls her age, had to gape at the sight that Winterfell made when she first laid eyes on it. Her father had declared many times when upon the road that the first sight of Winterfell would stay with you forever, that it was something that you could not shake off from memory. When she did see it, Myrcella had to agree. Heavy walls of dark stone offset by the iron sky, the open planes around it and mountains beyond. To Myrcella, Winterfell it seemed like a curious mix of fascinating and frightening in its being so very different from everything she had ever known: different from the warmth of the Red Keep, the clear white walls of Storm's End and its elegance, or the tasteful opulence of the Rock. Winterfell was cheerless and looming; it seemed as unmovable and eternal as the mountains themselves. It was a fortress that did not pretend to be anything but that, and for the very first time Myrcella felt she understood the meaning of the words of house Stark. Winter is coming, they said. Here, it felt very true.

ooo

She steps out of the vault-carriage before her lady mother does, and instantly she feels the familiar prickling of all eyes present settling upon her. It is a thing she is used to, and it does not phase her much, because she knows it will stop the moment her queenly mother appares. When she does, the stares move away and Myrcella feels a little less constrained. She takes in the family waiting for them and they seem… so normal, just like any other family, if perhaps a little more pleasant of face than most. She almost expected them to look somewhat strange, what a silly notion! They are as alike to her as every other noblewoman ad noblemen are to each other. But there are other things to be noticed as well. Lord Stark's eyes are as grey as the sky above, just as grave and patience is the first thing she notices of him. It's so obvious even Myrcella can see it. Lady Stark looks different with her vivid red hair and summer-blue-sky eyes. She is contained and so polite… and yet for the life of her Myrcella cannot draw a comparison between her mother and this other mother; it's as if they are two different creatures altogether. But that is not unexpected: nobody is like her mother, because her mother is the queen and the queen is unlike any other woman alive… and her hardness and that dangerous glint in those green eyes is there for all to see when the King ignores her for the crypts of Winterfell.

The story of the King's dead beloved is so famous, even Myrcella knows it. According to the story – of which Myrcella has caught only whispers, and even those she was never meant to hear (if her mother knew, she'd cut off the lips that had spoken those whispers to her daughter) - this unknown Stark woman is the reason that the King never could love his queen. That her mother was never this woman, is the reason for the indifference and scorn and sometimes blind rage that the King shows to the queen. Many people seem to think so. What Myrcella thinks is that perhaps, since this woman seems to be the reason for so many things, she is also the reason her father is such a poor father… but she cannot be certain of that. Myrcella has never known this woman who name is never mentioned and her mother the queen always says that the faults of a an belong only to the man himself, and noon else.

Sometimes, though she is still so painfully young, Myrcella wonders if there really is such a thing as love, the way the poems and songs seem to describe it. Her ladies and her maids seem to think of nothing but love, and yet, for all the talks of it, Myrcella has never witnessed anything resembling the sentiment as it is described, not within the halls of the Red Keep at least. In life, this 'love' somehow never looked grand enough, pretty enough, or even real enough, between the couples she knew. The realest love she knew of was that which the King had borne a girl long dead – and even that was at its best, just a story, the only difference being that it happened to someone she knows. But this man that she calls father, the King… she cannot for the life of her imagine him in love with anyone – at least not the way men in love seemed to be, on the pages of dusty books. And that was how Myrcella got the idea that perhaps the songs had it wrong. Perhaps love was not the way they made it sound. It was either that, or believing that there was no real love in this world and for it to exist, men made it into poems and pretty words.

Sometimes, not even that seems true. Sometimes, like that one time in Winterfell's courtyard, when her mother was shown such casual brutality from the man that is her husband, Myrcella even thinks that she will never trust in men's love, ever, and think everyone who speaks of it liars. She longs to go and hold her mother's hand just then, kiss that soft palm, so deep was the hurt Myrcella felt in the name of the woman that she loves like no other.

This, this is love, she thinks. It's what she feels for her mother and Tommen, and sometimes, when he is not so careless, even Joffrey. It's what she feels for her uncle Jamie and her uncle Tyrion, and that's where it ends. Love is only real for family, only for your blood, just as her mother always said.

And there she is, her mother, the queen. Myrcella hurts for her, but the queen is a woman like no other: Cercei Lannister simply brushes the insult off, though her eyes scorch like fire, and greets the lady of house Stark. A queen, Myrcella thinks in awe… and admires her mother's strength fiercely. In the presence of so much unscathed dignity, her own hurt abates. Strong like my mother, she thinks, and slowly remembers how to be happy again. There are still so many things to be happy about: the North is wild and beautiful, her mother is untouchable, her uncles make her laugh, sweet Tommen holds her hand and Robb Stark is so very handsome. So many things, and that Myrcella remembers them so easily is the reason why she is still a child. She forgets all dark thoughts about love and lies and ill husbands in a matter of hours and spends the rest of the day searching for things to be happy about, finding them around every corner.

In the raucous feast that evening, she smiles freely and willingly. There is music and there is dancing and it's not so very controlled and pretty as it is in the Red Keep, which is why Myrcella likes it even better. All she has to do is look pretty, and though he doesn't look at her once, Myrcella keeps thinking that Robb Stark looks his best when he is smiling and – even better – laughing. She very much likes his laugh, she thinks. And she likes him better than any boy before him, because he is the first one that doesn't remind her of anyone at all.

ooo

Myrcella thinks she has a fair grasp of courtly life and its intrigues and has learned from a very early hour that everyone in the Red Keep lies and that is why she is so good at being a Princes, why it's so important that she be that way. 'You are above it all' her mother always said. 'You are the lion, it is for lower beasts to fear you.' But Myrcella knows she is no lion; she has no claws, no sharp teeth. At the very best, she is a little doe in the forest, she sometimes thinks - though not even the Baratheon name suits her because she has no fury which to call her own. But she has manners and politeness and the willingness to take her mother's lessons to heart, because she builds herself in layers of names and words and that is why most lies slide off her like water off a duck. And of course, she has been protected from the worst of it, which is why her innocence manages to survive.

But childhood had to end for Myrcella too, and the first blow comes when her father dies. Her brother ascends to the throne then, Lord Eddard Stark loses his head for treason and a war starts… and that is when Myrcella learns the true faces of cruelty.

Surprisingly (but not for some) it wears the face of her own brother - now the King - more often than that of the enemies in the north that the court is terrified about. She hears of the Young Wolf (Robb Stark, she still remembers his face, even the sound of his laugh) is terrorizing the armies of the crown, that he is a traitor and a monster who feasted on the flesh of the dead, who kills children and rapes women… and it all sounds horrible, as one of the ghastly stories of the Long Night she once found in a book she was not supposed to read at all. It hardly sounds real, but Myrcella knows it is. She cannot hear the clash of swords but that does not mean that it's not happening. Somewhere men and women are dying, their families are mourning them.

But then one day, Myrcella watches the smile on her handsome brother's face as Sansa (sweet, gentle Sansa) is beaten before his court and stripped and humiliated, she watches with mounting horror the pleasure he takes in it all – and Joffrey's cruelty feels more real to her than any savagery in a distant field somewhere she had never been, because his cruelty is playful, so casual it hurts and terrifies her for the first time in her life. The hand over her mouth is the only thing trapping her shriek. But the hall is so quiet, only Sansa's whimpers echo and it's a nightmare...

Joffrey had never daunted her before. He had played cruel tricks on her and Tommen but they were children and even when Joffrey was atrocious, Myrcella had never felt fear because of him. Now it's different. The shock of what she has seen stays with her and she is now so terrified of her brother's capability for violence - the King, she corrects, the King now - that she doesn't even dare speak to him anymore. His every twitch alarms her… and her mother knows, she knows and whispers to Myrcella not to be afraid, that a King must pay a heavy toll for their people's obedience, but that Joffrey would never harm a hair on her head because she is his blood and 'we do not hurt family, we are lions and we protect our own.'

Myrcella watches Sansa stare at the horizon as they pretend to sew in her chambers, Lannister ladies busy as bees and merry around them… and she starts to doubt her mother's words, for the very first time in her life.

ooo

Her mother's infallibility came to a slow demise in the princess's eyes, and that was the first chime of the bell. The other blows come raining after, soon enough, relentless. Myrcella does not grow apart from her family, but she does grow a head of her own, because as things turn out to be, nobody can be trusted to do her thinking for her. She loves her mother, but even at one and ten Myrcella knows that sometimes the queen is wrong, that her coldness isn't always strength and that her pride is sometimes cruel, because cruelty has many faces and nobody is there to spear the princes of them anymore. There is no shelter, not from war. And war is raging.

And yet, even knowing all this, it still feels like an unbelievable dream when she is told she is to be sent to Dorne.

Dorne, whose darling princess was raped and murdered by order of her grandfather. Oh yes, she knows the story. Her mother thinks she doesn't, but she does. You can't live in the Red Keep and not know the names of all those who died there. Myrcella thinks of Sansa, of the casual evil her brother does by her just because he likes to hear her scream and she cries that night, for the first time in a long time. Cries long and heavy tears because she wants to exhaust them while she is just Myrcella in her rooms. Tomorrow in the shipyards, she will be the princess. There will be no place for tears then.

ooo

Dorne is not an easy place to live in for someone that looks like the incarnation of a Lannister icon… but it's not the hell Myrcella imagined it to be either. She almost grows used to it, the kind of distant resentment, the open-sky captivity of Sunspear. She feels the people's contempt but she knows she is lucky: there are no cruelties, no beatings, no sudden and inexplicable attacks. And there is Trystane. Sweet, patient and gentle Trystane who teaches her, plays with her, and answers every question. Who lets her send letters home, to her mother and more frequently to Tommen. She misses her little brother with an ache that makes her every happiness turn a little bit to ash in her mouth, misses his companionship and his games, his sweetness that compared to nothing else and made every place without him feel lonely… and she had never realized it until she was parted from him.

At first, Trystane was the only reason she did not cry every night. But in time, she learns to make friends and soon enough, her life finds smiles again.

As in all alcoves of power, Sunspear too plays has games of shadows, making people dance through invisible strings, but Myrcella learns not to be worried about that. When she was sent there, it was not of manipulation she feared: games she can grow to learn. Her mother had told her not to trust anyone so she doesn't. Instead she sharpens her fangs and claws on the people that presume to play her for a fool. She didn't realize it till then that her the queen's motherly advice have been lessons preparing her for exactly this.

She is quick, Myrcella comes to realize, quicker than most about her, in catching the drift of things. Her mind has run the distance when other people's has yet to turn the corner: she has to be that way, to save herself from the stinging bite of humiliation. She learns the tunes to dance to by watching those that play the game: Arianne and the Snakes, the ruling prince and his court. The realization comes quickly: it's all about knowing what people want and knowing yourself – you have to know what you want too, and how far you're prepared to go to get it. Manipulation, Tyene calls it, eyes gleaming in the dark. Myrcella doesn't like how that sounds, but cannot help it: it's the truth. Her grandfather's granite eyes come to mind and she shudders every time she thinks she might be anything like him… she can't be, she's afraid of the man. If she were anything like him she'd be afraid of herself, and she is very careful not to do anything that might bring her to that point.

But the game has its high points: knowing that she can take care of herself brings her a sort of exhilarating thrill. Knowing that she has the skill to sometimes get people to do the things she wants, that has its own appeal too, but most of the time, lying gets exhausting.

'You lack the hunger', princess Arianne tells her one night. 'You don't play for power.

But the princess cannot seem to understand that the most Myrcella wants is not to play at all. To be left alone and to live simply, not to be a pawn dragged into games that she can scarcely comprehend. That is what she fears most: being dragged into dangerous conflicts the reach of which she cannot grasp, battles in which she cannot fight back. Being used is what Myrcella fights to prevent, nothing more. Because in Sunspear Myrcella has come to a painful understanding: being born a princess meant that would will be forever part of this dark game of shadows. Her blood demanded it, and always would. Even if the kingdom fell tomorrow and her brother a was king no longer, she'd still be part of the repercussions: she was born a princess and for that she would have to die. Myrcella was born a pawn and a woman at that and finally, finally, she understand her mother's regret at the missing cock between Myrcella's legs.

But Sunspear is different in that respect. Sunspear does not see women as unfit to wield power. Dorne is the land of queen Nymeria, where women are as openly fierce as men and nobody turns their eyes at them for that. 'Woman or not, doesn't matter here. As long as you're willing, you can be queen.' Arianne is the very first to tell her that.

'Don't you want to be your own master?'

And this time Myrcella is smart enough to knew that Arianne is playing her, calling on that helplessness that Myrcella sometimes feels, that resentment for other leading her life. Arianne is too shrewd, and that is why Myrcella doesn't trust her.

But she cannot deny the seductiveness of that faraway prospect: to be in nobody's power but your own. What a thought! What a dream…

A queen, Myrcella thinks… and yet all she can conjure is her mother's resentful face. Her mother who lives off anger and bitterness and who hates her life with the exact measure that she loves the power it entails. No, Myrcella thinks, she would rather not be queen anywhere. She is not very fond of crowns anyway: they seem to do queer things to the heads beneath them1. She wants peace, something akin to happiness, something so much simple than a kingdom. She wants quiet and to live her life free of hatred and lies… and power breeds hatred and lies more than anything else it might grant - Myrcella knows that better than most. Robert Baratheon spent his whole reign telling everyone with ears it wasn't worth it and that is the one lesson that Myrcella has kept of the man she had once called father.

So she chooses to be happy with her handsome prince instead. Dorne seems so far off from the rest of Westeros that this fantasy of hers seems more real there than it would have been anywhere else. And Trystane is perhaps the one man that Myrcella can imagine herself being happy with. He is nothing like Robert Baratheon, for one, and not once does he touch her unkindly – something that Myrcella values almost above everything else. But there are other things about Trystane, more private things, things that she learns slowly and that bring them closer. He is her best friend soon enough. It's easy to love him, and Myrcella loves him sweetly, as only one of three and ten can love.

But a quiet simple life was never meant for a princess, and somewhere in her heart where her mother's whispers always rang loudest, Myrcella has always known that.

They were attacked by a band of rogues, they said, just on the day when there were few guards enough for harm to be done. She had been terrified but Trystane pushed her behind himself and drew steel to fight. He was six and ten and he looked very much like a man then, when he slashes open the belly of the one that would have cut him down. It looks like it's over and Trystane is helping Myrcella up on her feet when an arrow spears through his head, splattering her with his blood. By the time he is picked up off of her, she is covered in his blood and will know the taste of it till the day she dies.

That is when the Princess first has a taste of hatred, and not before.

And that was how Myrcella of House Baratheon finally owned her fury and how she discovered the one thing nobody ever told her about hate: they say it burns, and it does, but why do they never say how it hurts? Because it did! A slow, familiar scorch that she had so steadily avoided, one that made her feel cold and small and mean and lesser. An emotional tide so foreign within her that it felt unnatural as much as it was part of her. One that Myrcella tried to control because she cannot stand the way it alienates her from what she had known of her own nature.

Ours is the fury! How very presumptuous of us…

Fury belonged to every soul who knew how to tame it. How to use it. She too had to find a way to do that, because the one thing that she had not forgotten was the King – Robert Baratheon, who was fury as unleashed as the hurricanes that battered the walls of Storm's End, without measure, without restrain - and how she had never once wanted to be anything like him.

ooo

She returns to King's Landing different, and finds a different place. She has a good foot of height more than she did when she left, a scar on her cheek that makes grown men cringe and new steel in her bones. She is not a child anymore, nor has she been for a while. Or so she thinks. She feels different, and that is a certainty. Five and ten is early to think herself a woman, but then again, perhaps not. Others were mothers are five and ten…

She enters the Keep and she sees her mother and her Kingly brother, sweet Tommen by their side, and only when she sees him and his so open smile does Myrcella feel even a small ounce of joy being brought back to this place she'd once called home. But after the curtsies are done and after she has held her little brother tightly to herself, soft hair between her fingers and smooth cheeks under her lips even though he is almost three and ten now… after that, strangely, (is it irony?) her eyes search the court for Sansa Stark too, because it's in her eyes that Myrcella wants to find a mirror.

But Sansa isn't there, Joff is even more unhinged than she remembers, and her mother's shiny eyes hurt, because her love feels different now. Myrcella was taught well, too well: to be a princes first, a Baratheon second (though that she never has been), a Lannister after that… and in the very last instance a daughter.

A bastard…

The queen is not keen on the distinction now that it's against her; she does not like the politeness of Myrcella's address, even in their chambers, the formality between strangers. It hurts Cercei perhaps, when she sees how unchanged Myrcella is with Tommen, how freely she gives her love and sweetness to the brother she'd so missed, and how stubbornly she denies it to all the rest. Myrcella does not like to hurt her mother, but with the things she had heard and what she has seen, believing that this woman is really someone who loves her well feels on the verge of the unreal. The resentment over everything she's learned is too fresh every time she looks upon that queenly face to pretend otherwise. (…and Myrcella has heard much indeed. Because it was when Trystane died that the whispers started to finally reach her. It was only then that Myrcella realized just how much the dornish prince had loved her, and how safe he had really kept her. It was then that she knew love, and her heart had broke over Trystane twice for it.)

How could Cercei Lannister love her daughter, when she made her and her brothers a bastard, the bane of an entire realm? When she cuckolded a whole kingdom and killed to keep it. When she allowed a monstrosity like Joffrey sit his puny arse on that ugly chair. And if it's true still that her queenly mother loves her, if Myrcella were to believe it, then what did that mean? What kind of person was this woman that had borne her? So strong, so hard… so foreign now, after so long without her. 'Who am I to hate her for it' Myrcella asks herself more than once. She has no answer for that either. But the truth remains that seeing who her mother has become is a blow that lands hard, and after being so long away from her own family, being privy now to the many shades of their depravity lands even harder. Is it any wonder, she thinks one night, that all the realm scorns us, that they hate us?

But Myrcella is not just a subject to her queen. She is also her mother's daughter and there are things that she wants to know, questions that she wants to ask. Questions like, 'who is my father, really', because she wants to her the truth from her own mother's lips – or perhaps because she wants to see if there will be a lie, even to her face. She could ask 'why did you do it', but Myrcella cannot resent her mother for cheating on her husband because she knows what kind of a husband Robert Baratheon was to Cercei Lannister. The next question would be 'why on the seven hells with your own brother?' but that is the one question Myrcella never considers, because never will she ever be able to understand it. She looks at Tommen, at Joffrey (gods save me!) and her whole being revolts at the idea, body and soul.

Contradictions rise and clash inside her but Myrcella doesn't speak them, she won't. Too much has passed and it's been too long since she trusted anyone. Besides, there are no answers she actually needs, not anymore.

It seems that after so long in Dorne, she really has become the girl with no father.

ooo

She knows she is being watched. She feels eyes following her everywhere she goes, and even considers playing with those little spies once or twice, just to let those who would presume to spy on her know that she is not as oblivious as she seems. But Dorne and the Sand Snakes have taught her well: you're to know your strengths and cloak yourself in your weaknesses, and never let anyone know the difference until it's too late and the blade has already slipped between their ribs, quiet as you like…

Myrcella catches herself thinking thus, and she realizes she is still operating on the mindset that she is not safe, that she is amongst enemies. And then Myrcella wonders, why should she rethink it? The Red keep was always a dangerous place. 'A pit of snakes', she had heard Doran Martell call it. Lucky for Myrcella, her time in Dorne has taught her to like snakes well enough… So instead of showing to all with eyes that she is not just a sweet little girl anymore, Myrcella invites Sansa to have tea with her in the gardens and spend as much time with her and Tommen as she can, ever so discretely dwindling the number of her ladies in waiting down to those that she can actually stand listening to. Sansa comes, and Myrcella leaves her be. They eat in silence, read in silence, sometimes play with Tommen's kittens and tell the boy stories. There are eyes on Sansa too, one pair in particular, but Myrcella thinks the other girl knows that already.

Mostly, Myrcella just spends days in the sun with her little brother. They speak incessantly, of everything they have been doing and learning. Tommen and his kittens have not changed, and Myrcella feels the familiar happiness of love whenever she is with him. The one thing of her that has not changed on bit apparently, is how much she dotes on her little brother. He is to Myrcella, now more than ever, the only ray of sunshine in that obscure place that the Red Keep has become. He is still so pure, so innocent. Myrcella loves his most for that, and she feels the burst of a protectiveness that she had never felt for anyone before. It tastes remarkably like fear, this new feeling. What would happen to her poor brother in this place, she wonders. He is still so much like a child and never more than when she is with him does Myrcella feel the weight of the last few years she has spent in Dorne, growing and learning.

But Tommen pushes the darkness away with just a smile and Myrcella finds herself telling him of Sunspear and the Watergardens, of Hellhold and the Stony Shore and the Red Waste. Her brother listens like she is telling fantastic tales, and Myrcella kisses his round cheek for it, even when he squirms. He asks her one day, so softly, about her scar… and Myrcella tells him that she will tell him one day, when he is older, because out of all her stories that one is the one that would give her brother nightmares for sure.

Myrcella does not miss the way Joffrey watches them over supper, or the looks he gives Tommen, and she quivers inside, though whether its fear of anger or both, she really cannot tell. She would beg her mother to send him away from the Red Keep, if only there were any places safer for her brother to be. But there are not, and Myrcella knows her mother would never consider it. She can still hear Cercei whispering 'everyone who isn't us is the enemy'.

She follows Joffrey's eyes on her little brother, and tells herself not to be so angry, it was not the first time her mother had been wrong.

ooo

When her mother snaps at her one night, patience running as thin as ever, Myrcella is the one to stay composed and unperturbed. The queen herself had told her this a long time ago: 'never show your fear. If your enemy smells your weakness, you have already lost'. Her mother is not the enemy, but Myrcella is weary of everyone in this castle.

"You look at me, and you don't like what you see." She said slowly, wiping the corners of her mouth delicately as ever. "I am sorry for that lady mother, but this is the price of belonging to you."

Myrcella spoke honestly, without intent to harm. She spoke a truth that she had discovered in the sands of Dorne: we all pay a price for the blood that flows in our veins, even if our only fault is being born. The price is paid in pieces of your soul.

To Myrcella that simply spoke of growing up in a world that was as awful as you fear it to be, and where the worst that could happen usually happened, unless you found a way to make it otherwise. That was why it had been her choice to grow claws in the heat of the desert. She'd chosen to do so, before the choice had been made for her. She had chosen herself the pieces of her soul that were to be gifted to the wind, sacrificed for eyes that saw the world more clearly. 'The sands of Dorne are full of secrets', Obara had said to her once. They would keep Myrcella's secrets as well as they had kept others for thousands of years. So Myrcella had chosen pieces of childhood and sweetness and innocence, left them scattered in the sand… gone, but not forgotten. Because Myrcella did not want to be like Cercei Lannister even in the places where the mirror didn't show.

Her mother stares at her over their dinner, the words Myrcella just spoke hanging over them like a stench. The queen's expression is unreadable but even so Myrcella knows she is not hated. She knows that in all likehood nobody ever did love her with Cercei's fierceness, but Myrcella still feels the need to leave the room. There are many ways to love, and Cercei's love is barbed; one cannot stand it for long and remain whole.

'May I be excused' she asks, and Cercei denies her, but her grandfather sends her of off with a wave of his hand. She leaves… and fills her days with books and quiet corners, and Sansa Stark's sad and silent presence, because it's safe to say that both girls know neither will disturb the other and it's the closest to peace they are likely to find, so they are both content in that.

ooo

She knows when the war starts turning for the worst. Uncle Jamie was captured by the wolves, she is told (she'd never even seen him, not in years… and to her rue, she'd missed him) and suddenly her mother's fierce moods make more sense. The riverlands are free, the Wesfold is falling. The Tyrell's are at court – have been since uncle Renly died - and Sansa has been put aside for wily lady Margery. The two richest houses of Westeros united; nothing could possibly stand long against them, they say. Everything is made to look as if they are winning, but Myrcella knows they are not. Uncle Stannis has never been stronger than now – the Stormlods are finally his and Myrcella is not as stupid as most seem to think her: the only possible direction uncle Stannis will take is King's Landing. She would know that even if she didn't know that her grandfather and Uncle Tyrion are preparing the city for a siege.

And what was most curious, there is a reason apparently that she was spirited out of Dorne in the middle of the night so suddenly and the reason is simple, though only her uncle Tyrion bothered to explain it all to her: had she stayed she would have been traded to the Northern forces as a hostage and then Robb Stark would have himself a Princess too, as well as Tywin Lannister's heir, since Dorne had aligned with the North (or rather, against the crown) and they were proving much more overwhelming than anyone had ever thought, for a reason no one had dared predict: where Dorne had always lacked for men, now it did no longer: sellswords of Essos had swelled their numbers and bore the speared sun of Dorne on their chests as well as their own symbols, fighting for Oberyn Martell alongside the Young Wolf. Myrcella remembered when the rumours had reached Dorne that he had been dead at one point, that he'd been betrayed somewhere, by someone. Greatly exaggerated rumours, apparently, since Robb Stark was very much alive and while the Blackfish defended the Riverlands and half the northern army was in the process of fighting off the Second Ironborn Rebellion, the King of Winter and Oberyn Martell were steadily advancing for the westerlands, plundering and killing as they went, scorching earth and rock alike. At some point it was believed that Kevan Lannister, her granduncle and grandfather's most trusted general, had been taken captive – though that turned out to be a lie (not the part about him being soundly defeated at the Crag though).

How on the seven hells had Robb Stark convinced the dornish prince to fight for him nobody seemed to be sure of, and to Myrcella that seemed intolerably stupid; as if Prince Oberyn needed to be told twice when it came to killing Lannisters! But her grandfather Tywin had been counting on Myrcella's worth as a hostage, on Doran Martell's cautious and opportunistic nature. He had made the mistake of underestimating the festering hatred that all of Dorne bore the Lannisters for killing their princess so savagely. Myrcella had felt that hatred on her skin, she was not so quick to dismiss it.

Though she was no general, even Myrcella knew that between the prospect of Stannis attacking and Robb Stark marching for the Rock, the choice was not an easy one. The Iron Throne, or the Lannister ancestral seat, the worth of which was the bones upon which the kingdom was run? If her grandfather didn't make a decision soon, he would soon find himself without a home, because after the devastation that the Mountain had left behind in the Riverlands, everyone expected the Young Wolf to dispense savage retaliation in turn.

The truth of it was that they were walking the knife's blade and one wrong move and they would fall on it. The knowledge of it beat in Myrcella's breast like a second heart, because everyone knows what happens to princesses of the losing side. Nobody spoke of it, but the truth was in the queen's penchant for drink at the dinner table, as it was in Joffrey newfound brand of cruelty.

Apparently, for some reason privy to Joff alone, four years and some months in Dorne made her dornish, so he started taking his frustration out on her more often than not – especially when there was nobody around to stay his hand, like the queen, her grandfather the Hand, or even her uncle. For the most part Myrcella bore it with the dignity instilled in her from her very first breath and exercised much needed restrain when he ridiculed her in front of all the high nobility of King's Landing: 'show us your ear Myrcella, I want to see it. It's not every day we get mutilated freak for a princess'. There was no other way. Joffrey may be vicious, but he was also the King, much to the eternal woe of all seven Kingdoms, and so he was to be borne by all, his sister included.

But it's not until Joffrey takes it a step too far that Myrcella makes him bleed, when his hand made its way to places a brother's hand should never find itself. She was caught in a panic that made her act before she knew what was in charge of her own limb… and its then that he has her beaten. Not himself, obviously. And not in public as with his former lady love of the North. There was no humiliation there, only rage of a boy spurned. Myrcella thinks of Ser Arys who had died for her in the desert. She thought about the knights and smallfolk that she had seen on the road to the capital, mutilated and left for the crows. When a blow catches her on the lips and breaks skin formidably, its Trystane's blood she still tastes in her mouth. She doesn't cry, she doesn't plead for him to stop. She knows by now that it will only amuse him, just as Sansa's tears did, and push him to hurt her more.

It's almost hilarious, later, seeing her mother's horrified face when the queen sees her back and blue. There is nothing amusing about it, but if she can't raise a hand to her monster brother, is it not fair that she at least taunt the creature who made him? Does Cercei Lannister not deserve every bit of cruelty on this earth for whelping out that creature she calls son? For daring to love him despite his nature? If Joffrey had been her spawn, Myrcella was sure she would have smothered him in his bed with her own hands by now. But Cercei has ever loved two entities in her life: her self and her children, and her love is as fierce as it is terrible.

In the days of the aftermath, when Myrcella can get move without wincing, she sits with Sansa and her own ladies, refuses her mother's invite for super because she is angry at her still and accepts lady Olena's call for tea because it's a challenge. She fell, she says with a smile as frosty as a winter morning, fell right on the fists and backhands of two full armours guards. Lady Olena scoffs, sweet manipulative Margery sips her tea silently. The only one that dares not look at her in the eye is Sansa Stark, the traitors daughter that knows exactly how it feels. She can't afford to trust a Lannister, and Myrcella can't afford to trust Sansa either. Its only in silence that their companionship is possible. If they fall into words they betray themselves.

In the end it doesn't matter. Because strangely enough, it's in her mother that the greater part of Myrcella's anger calcifies. She is the only one that seems to want to earn Myrcella's contempt – and it's not an easy thing to do, because every drip of it makes her feel as if her insides are being torn. And maybe it's twisted, but Myrcella feels strangely free to scorn her mother precisely because that scorn is not without its price, precisely because she is still capable of hurting over it. Had she not been, it would have meant she is someone she did not want to be, and that would have been frightening indeed.

"You should have been born barren." Myrcella says one night, in a peculiarly fit of rage that came from nowhere. The queen had been speaking of something or other and it was the look on her face at the mention of Joffrey's name that set Myrcella off. But she spoke with such calm fury that it startles even her always impassive uncle, and his usually so mocking gaze slips into completive for a single moment before the slap makes Myrcella's eyes sting a little. It doesn't even hurt, though her cheek is still tinted with purple where the last remnants of violence have not yet ebbed away.

Myrcella's indifference at the violence is perhaps a greater punishment for Cercei than any other reaction her daughter might have had... but Tyron does not say that out loud while the girl is there, because he still holds to what he told Cercei almost five years before: he does not blame Myrcella for her mother at all.

oOo

Ever before dinner starts, the queen is half in her cups and Joffrey is angrier than Myrcella has ever seen him. It's funny really and had it not been tantamount to forfeiting her life, she would have laughed soundly at how his face was so red like a horseradish and at how he kept scowling like one of the jackals that princess Arianne used to keep chained to one wall in her gardens. It's only grandfather's presence that keeps him in check, because in life the only thing monsters fear are even bigger monsters – and Myrcella finds a cold solace in that, because at least Tywin was not a vicious idiot like her most noble, kingly brother. When Sansa enters the room however, Myrcella is stunned. Something is afoot she thinks, and before Joffrey can so much as open his mouth, she stand and goes towards the girl, taking her hands and kissing her cheeks as if they had not seen each other in days when in fact they were together just yesterday afternoon.

"Sansa, darling, how have you been?"

"I'm well, thank you, your grace." Sansa responded politely.

"Come sit by me, I've missed you." and it's not a suggestion as Myrcella walks towards her own seat, the one as far away from Joffrey as possible without actually being in the other room. In another life, it would have been ridiculous how, though she feels so close to the Stark girl, they only ever share words when her family is around. But in this one, it makes perfect sense. Words are lies, Myrcella thinks, words are wind. But sometimes they are needed.

"Why are you so familiar?" Joffrey snaps, his irritation feeling more hot than usual. "She is a traitors daughter, she should be flogged every day not greeted by a princess – even one as ugly as you, sister."

Myrcella didn't even blink. "I have not forgotten who the girl is, brother. But I have grown a certain fascination for pretty things lately and Sansa does not mind indulging me."

"Ever since you lost your own face, you mean?" Joffrey sneered, but the queen threw him a hard glare and he stilled, even if a little, just as Myrcella sat down and proceeded to make idiotic small talk with the wolf among the hungry lions. At the same time her mind was working furiously. What was going on? Her grandfather illuminated them the moment the servants let the room.

"Lady Sansa." His voice is enough to stop all conversation. "You are to be returned to your brother in a fortnight in exchange for my son. It is his only term for peace between our Kingdoms and so it shall be."

And just like that, Sansa's fork dropped on her plate and she turned as white as a chalk, eyes brimming with tears. Myrcella was rendered speechless (Joffrey less so). Sansa herself could do nothing but stare at her plate and try to breathe. Myrcella on the other hand, was calculating the odds. So, Robb Stark had overrun the westerlands then? She wondered if maybe he even had breached Casterly Rock. That was the only reason she could think of that would make grandfather so willing to allow the break of a piece of the seven Kingdoms. Had the Young Wolf burned everything? Or was that the sword he was holding over Tywin Lannister's head? Myrcella couldn't help but want to smirk though there was precious little to be amused in this, not from her side. But from a generic point of view, she could appreciate the simplicity of it, as well as the brilliance: the Young Wolf had found the one thing that mattered to her grandfather more than his pride, and that was his Lannister pride. He wouldn't leave much to his heirs if the Rock was but a burned ruin, now would he…

"Are you listening girl?"

Both she and Sansa looked up at the same time, Sansa perhaps a little more startled than Myrcella's face demonstrated, but both mirroring the same expression. It was in Myrcella's eyes that her grandfather was looking however.

"As part of the arrangement, you are to marry Robb Stark to ensure the continuation of peace between our realms, along with several other marriages between his close kin and ours. But that does not concern you."

And finally, the glass smashing against the wall drew everyone's attention. To Myrcella it felt very adequate: her own mind had just broken apart in quite a similar fashion, only hers was done more quietly.

But Cercei had never been the quiet type.

"I will not let this happen to my daughter again!"

Myrcella looked at her mother and she knew that her eyes were pleading with her. She felt like a girl again, Cercei's ferocity trying to protect her just like it did when she was a child.

Her grandfather did not seem impressed.

"Control yourself." was all he said, and said it with such distain that it was a wonder her mother did not shrink a couple of inches. But Myrcella was only vaguely aware of it at that point, listening as if from another room. Her mind was struggling to piece itself back together and form some sort of sensible response to all this… this…

This could not happen. She would not be another Elia of Dorne, another Sansa of the Red Keep. He could not mean it, not even Tywin was that… oh, oh but he was. He most certainly was. Another man, perhaps not, but Tywin Lannister was precisely that sort of man! Myrcella felt the knowledge still in her mind and take root, even though part of her felt completely aghast at the idea. The other part, the part that had grown in her after the Darkstar slashed her open, resolved to do anything but plead and rage like a wounded animal. Instead she needed to think of a solution. Nobody would save her here. She had to save herself.

She should have expected it, she tells herself. In a way she really had known: out of the two attacking armies they faced, only one was prepared to discuss peace and that was Robb Stark, because he, unlike uncle Stanis, did not want anything to do with the south at all. He only wanted his sister. Myrcella had known that. What she had forgotten had been herself: her blood and her worth as a Princess: her womb.

"I will not let you sell her to a bunch of savages that are as likely to rip her limb from limb as they are to keep her as queen! I'd rather see her dead, here and now!"

Myrcella felt shivers run up and down her spine. She had not even noticed that Sansa had been holding her hand under the table.

"Cercei..." Uncle Tyrion tried, but her mother was snarling at him now, and he was not grandfather which meant she did not contain herself with him: her expression became downright poisonous.

"This is your doing! I know it is." she hissed between clenched teeth, lips pulled back like a snarling lioness. "Why does she even have to go? What assurance do we have that he will even wed her? He could kill her the second he has his sister!"

"He won't." Her grandfather said and there was such assurance in his tone that Myrcella found herself frowning… because for once her mother was very much right: he really didn't have any assuredness that Robb Stark would honour his word. Even if the King in the North was the most honourable man alive, her grandfather didn't believe in such frivolities as words of honour. There simply had to be something more. Something that Tywin Lannister was still holding over the Winter King's neck. Something, Myrcella quickly reasoned, that would explain how on earth had he managed to convince Robb Stark of wedding the enemy when the war was all but in his favour. She had no idea what it was of course – except for Sansa, they really had nothing that Robb Stark wanted – or so she'd thought. What kind of devilry had Tywin Lannister concocted this time to have his way?

"You don't know that!" Cercei insisted, almost screaming this time. "Just give that stupid girl back to them and let them freeze off on their northern barrenness. It's no concern of ours!"

"Enough!" Grandfather's voice is like a whiplash. "It's done and it's final. Now sit down and stop making a fool of yourself."

He is so imperious, Myrcella thinks. Why do we always do what he says? What is this power he holds over our heads? What would happen if she got up right now, looked at him dead in the eye and said 'I won't' same as she had seen Arianne de half a hundred times with her own father. Uncle Jamie had been able to do it too, he had stood up in front of Tywin Lannister the Immortal and said no! If he could do it, why not his the girl that came from his seed!

Myrcella sighed and looked at her plate. Why not indeed.

…the reason was simple: Jamie Lannister was Tywin's son and heir, the most fearsome swordsman in the seven Kingdoms. Nobody could actually make him do anything. Fail all else, he could just run away and live by his sword anywhere in the world, because anywhere in the world people would kill each other and there was no shortage of work for a warrior. Myrcella on the other hand, had no such valuable attributes. She was just a girl with good breeding and a once pretty face who yielded no power but her wit. A single knight could knock her out and the next day she would be exactly where her grandfather told her to be.

"I heard Robb Stark was married to a Frey girl." Myrcella said with numb lips.

"She died of fever shortly after the birth and the child was a girl so he still needs an heir. You have bled, have you not?"

Myrcella bristled. Her mother's hiss of contained rage was loud in her ears as were her brother's eyes on her face.

"I have." Myrcella said and this time her voice was steadier.

"And you are a maid still, I should hope."

Myrcella's eyes snapped at her grandfather, nothing but contempt rolling in her gut. Instead she smiled at him, with just a little twist at one corner of her lips, and she knew whom she resembled right then.

"Does it matter?"

Her grandfather's eyebrow twitched at her impertinence but he gave no other reaction.

"I suppose it doesn't. Though you might be the worse for it, since northerners have a keen sense of honour, I am told."

Myrcella scoffed and reached for her glass, sipping the clear water as if it her wine in a manner that would really have made her mother proud if she were not so busy scowling at uncle Tyrion.

"He will have to swallow is honour long enough to wed Cercei Lannister's daughter. My not bleeding in the sheets for him will be the least of his issues."

Her grandfather's hand landing hard against the wood of the table drew the attention of all those in the room. Even Joffrey looked startled. Myrcella startled, but did not turn away from her plate though she knew it was at her that Tywin was directing his anger.

His anger…

She had made her grandfather angry. That was more of a accomplishment that many more capable men could boast.

Small victories, she thought snidely.

"Has the sun of Dorne softened your brain? You are a Princess of the Iron Throne." her grandfather's voice, that quiet vibrating rage in it, was the most dangerous sound she had heard in a while, and it made her shiver a little, but not much. There was nothing more to take. What could he possibly do to her that had not been done before?

"Am I? Many have wondered."

"Who has wondered? I want their names! I'll cut out their tongues!" Joffrey started, immediately on his feet, (keeping from rolling her eyes was all Myrcella could do at his outburst. Gods, he's dull…) but from the corner of her eyes, she saw her grandfather lift his hand and Joffrey fell silent.

Neat trick, she thought to herself, oddly dethatched. She knew she was pushing it, and the flash of warning in her uncle's eyes told her so, as did her mother's sudden flash of anger in her direction.

"Listen well, girl." her grandfather said flatly, much too controlled and subdued to be natural. "I have no patience for fools. You will do as you're bid."

"Of course I will." And she said it without even the barest hint of resentment of even irony. It was a fact. "I am a princess of the Iron Throne."

There was nothing in her tone that hinted at ridicule, but the truth was a silent mammoth in the room with them, and that very simple truth that they all knew – that Myrcella was as much a Baratheon as she was a Targaryen – was what turned her words into such an effective mockery. The silence that reigned was harsh enough to scrap at one's eardrums, but Myrcella didn't feel it. Inside her head, all was roaring, like an ocean in a storm.

And then it occurred to her…

"Have you told him that I am disfigured? Or am I going to have to suffer the humiliation of going to him and being rejected? " because being ridiculed was a given, that she did not even need to ask. When no answer came, she tried a different angle. "He may take it as a slight you know, that you are offering him a mutilated girl for a bride. That is not bound to go well."

She was discussing this with the incredible calm of the shell-shocked and she could tell that her cool head was almost in the verge of impressing upon her grandfather the fact of her existence - something that he had never seemed to take notice of before, other than obviously being aware of the fact that she had a cunt she could put to use.

"Your mark does not make you any less beautiful, Myrcella." uncle Tyrion said softly and Myrcella found herself looking at him before fixing her eyes on her grandfather.

"Kind of you to say so uncle." even though her voice was so utterly flat. "Regardless, has he been told or not?" she asked steadily, stubbornness showing in the edge of her voice. Her grandfather fixed steady eyes on her, cold, so cold, more so than any wolf's she so feared.

"He has." Tywin Lannister said, purpose behind is eyes. "He has made no objection on the matter."

"He's a wolf, what does he care what your face looks like? He'll fuck you like a dog his bitch and be done with you." Joffre's sneer was cold and cruel. "I'll ask him to bring me your head after you've whelped him an heir. I'm sure he'll have no qualms about it."

Myrcella had not even graced Joffrey with a look, let alone a response. She was still looking at her grandfather.

And what of the fact that I'm a bastard born of incest? Does that not bother him either? Or am I just going to my death pretending to be a bride?

How she wanted to ask him that, how she wanted to say it to their faces, just once, aloud. But she was smarter than that, and more than anything else, she was a survivor… and that was the first moment since this dinner started that she remembered that her uncle (or was it father?) was still in captivity somewhere out there, in Robb Stark's encampment.

"May I be excused?" Myrcella said to nobody in particular. Both her mother and her brother said a sound 'no', but it was her grandfather's wave of dismissal that she followed.

"You may."

"Sansa, care to join me for a walk? I feel some fresh air might do me good."

It was only when they were in Myrcella's chambers that she finally spoke. The question she asked however was silly. How would Sansa feel? The tears that ran over ivory cheeks were answer enough. And enough distraction too. Because Myrcella did not even want to think about the fate that awaited her. A captive yet again, no matter how much her mother raged or Joffrey screamed. She would be exchanged for peace and that was all good and well, but she would be hated and she would be hurt, there was no doubt about that in her mind. She even wondered if she should protest a little more, if she should raise a fuss. It was all going to amount to nothing more than strangled nerves on her part and irritation on her grandfather's, who would as always get his way. And she did not want to draw even more attention to herself than she already had. If there was one lesson on survival she had learned was that you live longer if you don't get seen.

ooo

In the depth of night, Myrcella expected the pressure in her chest to melt down to tears, same as it had when she had left for Dorne, but it did not. She felt strangely resigned to her fate. Perhaps it was because Sansa had been sleeping there, (and with good reason too - Joffrey had gone on a rampage after dinner, and looked for her everywhere. Stupid boy.) it was when she sighed for the uptenth time that she felt Sansa's light touch on her forearm and the redhead spoke for the first time since they had reached Myrcella's quarters hours ago.

"I know what you're thinking. But you don't have to worry about Robb hurting you." Sansa finally said, a soft whisper in the night that barely disturbed the silence, and though Myrcella could not see her face, the girl's eyes gleamed in the semidarkness, much like the wolf that was her house's sigil. It made Myrcella uneasy, her heart beating faster.

You're being silly, Myr…

"He is not that kind of man, your grace, he never has been."

Myrcella sighed heavily in the dark. "You know, before I saw it with my own eyes, I could have sworn the same thing about Joffrey." A cold sneer twisted her lips, and Myrcella knew who she looked like in that moment. "Sounds so silly now, doesn't it, but it's true. I could have said with a light heart that he had a temper and a vindictive streak in him, but that he would never take such insipid pleasure in cruelty as he does." And it was the truth, she would have. She had been stupid child, blind. (never had it crossed her mind that maybe she simply had not been afraid of her brother then, not even when he tried to frighten her.)

"Brothers are strange creatures Sansa. And you haven't seen yours in years."

And to that Sansa didn't reply. Because she knew as well as Myrcella did that Robb Stark had spent a god part of those years butchering men in battle. Who knew what kind of tastes he had acquired since his sweet sister last saw him. Myrcella shivered at the thought. Sansa didn't move her hand from her forearm though, despite the silence, and the gesture was meant to be comforting, but Myrcella didn't feel it. She was grateful, but it did not ease her. She did not sleep a wink that night.

o

TBC:::

1 Game of Thrones reference.