Prince of the Stags

Summary: Cersei Lannister was only young when she gave birth to her first son, a boy with coal-black hair and emerald eyes. But try as she might, she could not forget the horrors through which he had been born, so she had the boy switched with a dying orphan and never laid eyes on him again. Little did she know, the boy would become an apprentice on the Street of Steel, his only possession a bull's head helmet. AU, inspired by a plotline from the show.

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, as per usual.

Chapter One

The excruciating pain of the labour had died away to a dull ache, but the agony in her heart had remained untouched by the hours that had passed. Ever since the babe had come forth into the world, she had known.

He lay peaceful enough now, slumbering soundly in his cot, no inkling of the turmoil his birth had caused his mother. The celebration bells pealed all across King's Landing, but luckily the lad showed no sign of waking. Cersei was glad; she did not want to see his eyes.

Scarcely a year had passed since she had stood up in the Great Sept of Baelor and been declared the wife of King Robert Baratheon, the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. It had all seemed a dream then, the golden sunlight glinting off her hair, and the fresh-forged crown that rested atop it. The people had waved flags and cheered, their joy as much for the end of the war as it was for the young royal couple. Cersei had waved from the balcony, Robert by her side as the applause washed over her like a wave.

And then the doors of the Red Keep were closed, and she was alone.

Cersei had never liked to be alone, she was unused to it. Even in the womb, she had had Jaime for company. But Jaime spent his days patrolling the corridors and standing watch at her husband's door. She did not know what Robert did to occupy himself, though she could hazard a guess that was most like to be the truth. It was not his days that were of concern to her. The nights, on the other hand…

The young queen shook her head, as if that alone would be enough to clear the awful images from her mind. It was a fruitless gesture, she knew that well enough, for she had tried the same each time she felt the babe move inside her, a constant reminder of how the child had come to be.

She had thought, naively, that it would all end once the babe was in her arms, that all the horrors and the bloodshed would be put to rest, and she would become a loving mother. It was what her aunt Genna had told her, on one of the many occasions she had escaped The Twins: once that babe is in the world, they will become the world to you.

But that was not what had happened. Instead, a squalling bundle of red skin and coal-black hair had been placed in her arms, wrapped in a blanket of black and gold, and she had wanted nothing more than to have the nursemaid take him away again. The woman had refused, her eyes warily flitting toward the door, as if she feared the queen might pounce even from the birthing bed, and so the babe lay just an arm's length from her. There were none who would take him away, none who would care for her enough to save her.

A knock sounded at the door, stronger than the nursemaids and more patient than Robert. The babe stirred in its cradle, mewling at the sudden harshness of the noise, but Cersei paid no heed. It would not matter soon.

The sight of Jaime was enough to calm her racing heart, as it so often proved to be. Her dear brother, the only constant in this ever-shifting world, the only one she could be certain would value her above the babe in the cradle.

The young man stepped further into the room, watching the restless child as if it were a lion cub. "Has the king seen the babe yet?"

"I doubt he's even returned from his hunt." Cersei answered. Her teeth gritted at the thought of her royal husband, covered in blood and sweat and stinking, hulking over her prone frame on the bed.

"Then what do you want of me?" Almost instinctively, the knight crossed to the door, shutting it tight and turning the key in the lock. If even the walls of the Red Keep heard their words, they both would be dead.

"Jaime, I cannot look at him." His royal sister sounded little more than a child, broken and beaten down by the vicious world, and he knew that she spoke not of her royal husband. "The thought of swaddling him, seeing him run and play in the gardens… it makes me sick. Even when he sleeps in the cradle beside me, my skin will crawl, itching like a disease. I cannot bear it, Jaime."

Seeing the tears spring from her eyes, Jaime rushed to the side of the bed, but Cersei had already wiped the water away, her movements as brutal as the lioness laying prone inside her heart. She sat tall amongst her pillows, her head turned away from him, and from the babe in the cradle.

"Tell what I can do." the young knight pleaded. Somehow, his sister's statuesque indifference was a hundred times more frightening than her tears. "I'll do anything."

"You know what to do." The queen's voice was low, but steady. Her eyes were fixed on the wall. "You have to be quick, before Robert returns from the hunt. Trust no one with the truth, there are spies all around the city. We are the only ones who will ever know what became of him."

Jaime nodded stiffly and turned his attention to the cradle once more. The babe was squirming, clutching at the Baratheon quilt wrapped round it, as if the child knew his birthright would be stolen away. The young man wondered for a moment if the babe would remember his mother, loathe the coldness of her heart or miss the warmth of her arms. Of course, he knew that could never be, but even as he snuck the child away, huddled beneath the dark brown cloak he had traded for his white silk, he could not help but wonder.

The task had not been as difficult as he had imagined. The septons preached to them that children were a blessing from the Gods, but this was not true of the slums of King's Landing. At the lower reaches of the city, babes were bartered, sold and slain with each rise and fall of the sun. Too many mouths to feed, too much money to be made, too much disdain for the world they were born into. Flea Bottom was a desperate place, and a gold coin glinting in the moonlight was enough to buy a life.

The first thing Jaime noticed in the orphanage was the stench, each foul smell imaginable seeming to meld into one powerful enough to make him gag. The woman who ran the place did not seem to notice it, her eyes flitting to the Kingsguard every few moments, as if she feared he would run away and take his gold coin with him. Oh, how the man wished he could.

In a tiny room barely the size of a privy, row upon row of wooden crates rested on the floor, each crate containing a squalling child. The din was enough that Jaime wondered how they could not hear it from the palace; mayhaps they had never cared to listen.

"They cry all night, if the older ones leave them be." the woman explained, with a blatant shrug of her shoulders. "Half the time, I wonder why I don't slit their throats in the night. No one would ever miss them. At least that mite seems to hold his tongue."

Then she left him be, just a minute or two, to do the unimaginable. He untucked the babe from his cloak, stunned into quiet by the cold, and lifted another babe from a crate near the door, a puny-looking thing with curls of dark hair. It was not the coal black of the Baratheons, merely a dirty mop the colour of wet mud, but judging by the weak squall of the poor child, there would be little time for anyone to make a comparison.

With a movement as simple as that one, it was done. The sick babe was tucked away in his cloak, the space still warm from where his sister's child had lain, and the woman sat in awe of her golden coin. There had been no true dragons seen for hundreds of years, but the gold ones were a sight just as rare in the slums.

With a nod of thanks to the woman, Jaime turned to the doorway, but something called him back. A small cry, barely audible above the other babes, but he heard it nonetheless. The young man turned back to the crate where his nephew lay and saw the child looking up at him. For years afterwards, he wished he had simply walked away, to not have that sight haunting his dreams. The babe had been the image of its father, coal black hair and cheeks already beginning to fill with fat. But he had looked up at Jaime Lannister with Cersei's eyes.

A/N: I've had this idea in my head for a while, and I'm kind of obsessed with the theory that Gendry could be Cersei's son. So I've got a motor on with this story, before the show spoils the ending and proves me wrong! Hope you guys enjoy this one! Please review!