PROLOGUE

Props triggered the door to swing open enough to reveal to Charles a properly emotionally spent seeming Peter standing there; Makeup having rendered him properly dirty, sweaty, and a tad bloody. Charles allowed the pause from the reveal to linger a sufficient time, and then opened the dialog …

CD "Tyrion, put down the crossbow. …"

CD "Who released you? Your brother I suspect, he always had a soft spot for you. Come, we'll go and talk in my chambers. …"

CD "Is this how you wanted to speak to me, hmmm? Shaming your father has always given you pleasure. Hasn't it?"

PD "All of my life, you've wanted me dead."

CD "Yes. And you've refused to die, I respect that. Even admire it. You fight for what's yours. I'd never let them execute you, is that what you fear. I'll never let Ilyn Payne take your head. You're a Lannister. … You're my son."

PD "I loved her."

CD "Who?"

PD "Shae."

CD "Oh Tyrion, … put down that crossbow."

PD "I murdered her … with my own hands."

CD "It doesn't matter."

PD "Doesn't matter?"

CD "She was a whore."

PD "Say that word again."

CD "And what? You'll kill your own father in the privy. No, … you're my son. Now enough of this nonsense."

PD "I am your son and you sentenced me to die. … You knew I didn't poison Joffrey, but you sentenced me all the same. Why?"

CD "Enough. We'll go back to my chambers and speak with some dignity."

PD "I can't go back there. She's in there."

CD "You're afraid of a dead whore?"

Thwunk!

"Unh. Fisith," he grunted, pitching backward from the force of what would be the CGI bolt fired from the crossbow. "You shot me," he called out with proper bewilderment and then held his place, waiting for Effects to rush in to plug a realistic appearing dowel into the gap purposefully rent in his … his chest hurt. No, more than hurt. He found himself in actually agony.

Charles stared down and saw a wooden rod sticking out of his faux sleeping gown piece of wardrobe. Startled by its appearance, he grasped at it. A sticky wetness smeared red across the fingers that discovered the offending piece to be lodged firmly in his flesh. His eyes shot across the dimly lit fifteen feet to a wide-eyed, horrified looking Peter holding a now empty crossbow. "YOU SHOT ME!"

He awoke to find himself not sprawled out and bloody on a fake privy in a darkly lit set, but sitting on what felt to his bare bum and smelled acutely to his nose as an actual jake. Thankfully, he found no evidence of an arrow sticking out of him. His chest did not ache either; though he noted that his bowels did.

What's more, he was no long wearing a gown. Pants were drooped about his ankles. And he wore some sort of close fitting gold jacket over a shirt of crimson if the color of the sleeves was any indication. He prodded his upper torso in reassurance that some sort of wound was not hidden upon his body. Temporarily satisfied, he at last allowed his gaze to wander about.

The actor found himself alone in a constricted room built of cobbled stone and mortar that sported a high placed, narrow slit through which a ray of sun shone and he could faintly hear the caw of birds. A single wood door offered the only means of entrance or egress aside from wherever the pee and shit disappeared to.

He arose and adjusted his clothes to make himself presentable as he could for Heaven or Hell or the worst jape ever pulled on him. He took a steadying breath and opened the door. Nothing, just a short hallway lit by a single low flickering torch led off to both the left and to the right; faintly revealing doors at either end.

His ears revealed no clues, so he chose to go left, where more light shone beneath the bottom of the door than did under the one in the other direction. Another brief pause for courage and that door too opened to him.

A bright, luxurious study or personal library presented itself to him. A lovely, intricately carved mahogany desk dominated the space; one large arched and padded chair behind and two smaller but still padded chairs in front. A few scrolls, a book, and an inkpot and feathered quill populated it.

Charles stepped through the looking glass, the door now revealed to be in the middle of a floor to ceiling sized bookshelf holding the likes of such notable editions as "Wonders Made by Man," "Battle and Sieges of the Century of Blood," and "The Nine Voyages." All of them rather roughly bound.

The opposite wall backed a frosted glass fronted serving cabinet through which he could just discern some number of cups and bottles. Whiskey, gin, brandy, wine, even beer would do in a pinch, he suspected; judging as imminent his need for some kind of nerve tonic.

To his right, a mostly tapestry draped wall held another door; which he ignored. For to his left, behind the imposing desk, several vaulted windows offered what he hoped was a view of wherever the devil he was.

The ground and the sea met several hundred feet, or more, beneath him. What he could see of the exterior of the structure holding him suggested not a building but a pillar of granite. He spied sails fluttering in the wind on the dark waters; mostly heading either towards or away from a picturesque, medieval seeming port not far away. "Dubrovnik," the actor murmured softly in wonder; though he knew it was not that Croatian city.

'Madness,' he thought to himself, striding over for that mandatory drink.

Then he pulled up short, certain he was insane. The face staring back at him in the frosted glass was not his own. There were some similarities – height, slender of body, broad of shoulders - which the actor immediately glossed over. Instinctively, he touched the ridiculous golden coloured muttonchops that were not his close cropped more reddish beard. Then a hand swept over his shaved pate; and, not his acceptable for sixty-seven somewhat thinning hair.

Charles stepped close, leaning in to peer intently into the reflection of his eyes: green, not blue. He pursed his lips in repressed anger. "I think, therefore I am," he declared, pulling himself erect.

Upon which a polite tapping reverberated from the door through which he had not yet passed. Then, "Tywin," an unfamiliar voice called out.

"Tywin?" He glanced about the room again with a more discerning vision. How could he have missed it? Lion motifs lay everywhere: embroidered in the tapestries, carved in the desk, sewn into the padding of the chairs, sewn into his very clothes. The ring on his hand was a lion's head. The small rug he had strode across was a lion skin.

Charles sighed in resignation. What other choice had he? The proof was incontrovertible, unless he was unknowingly already dead or mad in Bedlam. He must play this part. He cleared his throat softly "Enter," commanded the Lord of Casterly Rock.

A middle-aged man, quite analogous to his new body, aside from being stockier and having hair remain on his head, came through the door.

"Kevan, where are my children?"

His "brother" looked thoughtful a moment, not revealing any surprise at the sudden question, "Most likely already at Winterfell … unless there's been trouble with the Wheelhouse. I pity Cersei and her decision to not have the children ride." Kevan then shrugged, as if to say, 'what else could one expect.'

Charles silently agreed, "What else can one expect."