PART ONE:

BIRTH

CHAPTER ONE: LANNISTER

JOANNA BARATHEON:

Prompts: Hope, Twins, Tears, Possessive.

Whittled down to her very core, stripped of all the gold and finery, even her prestigious Lannister name, right down to the sticky innards and stinking offal that made her, Cersei was nothing but her limitless, infinite, absolute love for her children. The love she had for her children, Cersei knew, knew no bounds. None at all. It was Cersei's one redeeming factor, and it was something no one, not her father, not Robert Baratheon, and definitely not this debauched court, could take from her.

Unfortunately, however, over the years, that very love, which was her only comfort most days, had also wrought her unspeakable grief and anguish. Joffrey and J-… Myrcella and Tommen were her very life. They were the beat to her heart, the thrum to her blood, the glint in her eye and the hop in her step. They were her children. Her life. Her reason to go on. They were the one good thing, just one, she had in this cruel, thankless world.

They were simply hers. Not Robert Baratheon's, with his gluttony and whores and degradation. The ghost of his precious Lyanna Stark could not reach her children. Not her fathers, Tywin Lannister's, with his legacy, name and reputation. They were not even Jaime's, her Jaime's, with his lopsided smirks, dark alcoves and secret hushed whispers of undying devotion uttered under velvet sheets and bled to life with sweat, pulsing heat and grasping fingertips.

They. Were. Hers.

Just as clear as the sun would rise once more, as humble as the tide lapping at the shore, as pure as snow in the North, this too was a fact of life. And, like the lioness she was, Cersei guarded her children possessively, jealously, pridefully, with sharp tooth and keener claw. In the end, they were all she had. Cersei also knew, painfully so, how easy it was to lose them, after all, Joffrey and Jo-… Myrcella and Tommen, were not her only children, were they?

Oh, her first-born son had been such a… Tiny thing. A bird without feathers. A crown of raven curls his shroud. The Maester's told her he had not taken a single breath before the stranger had taken him, still warm in her womb. They had taken his body away before Cersei could even get a good look, wrapped him up tightly and rushed from the chambers as if wildfire would swallow them all if they lingered near her for a moment longer. Robert had held her then, for the first and only time, as she fought, screamed, clawed and spat, battled to get to the wet nurses who had bundled her tiny, tiny broken son up in bloodstained sheets.

They had taken away her little boy and she never saw him again.

That was the first faithful taste of loss Cersei Lannister had discerned. Hot and heady and sour. Rancid meat dipped in tallow wax. Cersei had never, not once, managed to get that soiled taste off her tongue and forget the pain. Perhaps because, as it always does, more loss had followed. Stillbirths, premature deaths in cots and cradle, here one blink, gone the next.

In the infancy of marriage to Robert Baratheon, strong, laughing Robert, even the Mother could not deny that Cersei, for all her faults and misgivings, had tried to create a sincere family with the brute. Naively, she had thought of open parlours, the smell of warm tea hanging in the air, roast peacock on the table, a brood of raven-haired children bustling about her feet, summer nights spent in open air. Of course, none of this came to pass.

It was not meant to be.

Cersei did not know whether to be thankful for it being so, that she had failed to create such a charming scene, life from the great ballads, or lament the hurt of what could have been stinging, always stinging, at the back of her mind. Perhaps Cersei could feel both, especially when the moon was high above kings landing and, restless on her pillow, her mind, always working, always turning, always stinging, roiled and churned over the what ifs of her life.

Nevertheless, that loss, her featherless bird, a life she had dreamed of never fully hers, and all those stillborn, lives never full lived, Cersei's own life, she found, was a noxious assortment of too much and never enough, in a sick, perverted way, was better and easier to take than what followed. Those losses before were unarguable. Unchangeable. Permanent. There was a finality to them that offered little comfort, but gave ease to Cersei knowing the battle was over and there was nothing more she could fight for.

And then came the birth of Joffrey and Joa-…

There, with the birth of her firstborn, living, son, her Joffrey, Cersei discovered what it was like to mourn and still hope, and that, she swore to the Father, was worse than anything. That damnable pit of hope. In those days, with grief for her featherless bird still tight in her chest, the youthful hazy dreams of a happy marriage to Robert beginning to fray around the edges, Cersei had begun to spend more time with Jaime, reverting to old ways thought long dead.

How could anyone blame her? In this cesspool of politics, backstabbing and intrigue, Jaime was and always would be the only true face she had. The only true friend. Her twin. For a moment, a breath, in Jaime's company, she could pretend she was back on Casterly Rock, back where things were simpler and life was smooth and easy, and it was just her and him and-…

Yes, she found relief in Jaime. Great relief. And it was all too easy to lay in wait for Robert to drink himself to a stupor, pass out in their chambers, sneak off to Jaime's rooms, and, for once, know that someone, anyone, loved her for her, someone who didn't have to imagine the face of a dead fourteen year old Stark girl to make him spill. And, if by chance, if Cersei returned by sunrise to her chambers, before Robert awoke to groggy hangovers, and thought he had done his duty for the night and bedded his wife instead of passing out, who was she to dissuade him from such a notion?

Moreover, if, soon, her belly, once flat and sleek, began to swell, and it was only her and Jaime who knew exactly what was growing inside her womb, who was she to enlighten anyone else? If only for the protection of, what would be soon, her child? Yes, Cersei lied, cheated, and schemed, and yes, before her time was up and the Mother called her home, she would do much worse. However, for her children, her precious children, there were no lengths she would go to, and as her stomach grew rounder, thicker, heavy with life, Cersei thought, she really did, that this time… This time was going to be it.

Yet, as it often did, fate had the last laugh.

Labour started a whole moon too soon, despite all her precautions, and Cersei felt as if she was trapped in an awful, dreadful cycle, another stillborn to mourn, another loss to haunt her, another child to bury. She had been inconsolable during the first few hours of her labour, and only Jaime's steady presence at her side, urging her on, placating her with sweet oaths of fortitude, promising her it was all going to be well, he knew, eased her fear and tears. Still, she had expected the worst. A final push and an empty, silent room.

However, Joffrey, her Joffrey, had been born. Wailing. Strong. Loud. Pink faced and tight fisted and oh, so alive! The silent sisters around her busied with washing him in the golden basin, and as he was laid upon her quaking chest, screaming his little lungs dry, thin wisps of golden hair puffed at the crown of his head, green of eye, dark green, like her own, Cersei had thought she had never seen something so beautiful.

Jaime had given her the one thing Robert never could, a child, alive and fit and stout, and for that, and that alone, Jaime would always hold her heart. Nonetheless, fates laugh echoed out, history repeated itself, and when contractions struck up once more, contorting her stomach with unbearable pain baring down upon her pelvis, tearing her in two, with a bewildered Jaime beside her, Cersei Lannister discovered what her mother, Joanna Lannister, had felt all those years ago as she birthed her and Jaime.

Joanna Baratheon, Jaime's choice of name, was born an hour later. She didn't wail like her brother, nothing but a short, angry burst of a squawk erupting from her little throat, a war cry more than anything, as she fell into the Septa's arms, heralded her coming. When she was laid upon Cersei's chest, beside a still crying and snuffling Joffrey, who promptly stopped crying as he blindly wiggled and squirmed closer to his smaller twin, Cersei… Cried.

Joanna's hair was fuller than her brothers, curlier too, more Jaime wild corkscrew than Cersei's wave, a golden blonde a shade just lighter than Joffrey's, and she was more delicate too, glass boned and thin skinned, pale, so pale, but sturdy and alive, and right there, as she wiggled closer to Joffrey, staring up and out, right at Cersei, Cersei's hand, which she had not known had been moving, settled on her small, soft, rounded face in a shaking caress.

They stared at each other then, for a long while, Cersei remembered. Not like other gawking, not the kind where you take in the physical being before you, but the kind of staring that made Cersei think she could see the babe's soul, and perhaps, the babe could see hers. She could see strength in her pupils, unbound and willful. She could see cunning and pragmatism in the slant of her eyelid, long and slick. She could see fire in her iris, wildfire and passion and everything extreme. Cersei remembered her mother's eyes, Lannister green, but with such vivacity that they were a type all on their own. So bright, so alive, so fierce. It had become a saying in her family, a colour no one could replicate, that Joanna green.

The babe had Joanna's eyes.

Cersei wept then. She wept and she sobbed, and she smiled through her tears as she pulled her babes, her children close, as close as she could, to her frantically beating heart. Jaime too, when he saw those long-lost eyes, wiped something, a tear Cersei was sure, from his own eye. Nothing had mattered to Cersei then. They were hers. Her children. She had held her children all night, right at her chest, and she had watched and smiled and cooed back. In truth, that night, bed-ridden, tired, aching, bloody, but with her children with her, right in her arms, was the best night of her entire life.

Yet, misery had the last laugh.

Three moons after her birth, Joanna was taken from her bed chamber in the cusp of night, the only warning being Joffrey's incessant cries and wailing that alerted the guards stationed by the door. There had been no lead up to it, no threatening letters, no war declared from rival houses, no slights politely looked over in court, no murmur of Targaryen retaliation, nothing at all, and perhaps, Cersei thought, that was the worst of it. The abruptness. There one second, gone the next.

The only hope there had been was the absence of blood. Not a single drop spilled in the chamber. The only clue was the guards blubbering confession of hearing what sounded like a crack of lightning twice that night, in the span of minutes, when the skies had been clear. With just those tiny seeds of hope, Cersei held dear that her daughter, her Joanna, was still out there, alive, well, and one day, one day soon…

She would come home.

WHICH HOUSE DO YOU WANT TO SEE NEXT?

ABOUT THIS FIC: This fic will be a little series of short shots detailing the lives of a Fem!Harry if she was born into different Westerosi houses. These Houses are: Targaryen, Stark, Lannister, Arryn, Tully, Greyjoy, Baratheon, Tyrell, Martell, Dayne, and finally Bolton.

All shorts falling under house Arryn, for example, will be linked, with the same Fem!Harry as the protagonist, but unlinked from other shorts, where the Fem!Harry will be born to other houses such as Lannister, Stark, Baratheon ect.

I will be going in cycles too, in over arching themes. The first theme, as you can see, is BIRTH, so I will be going through each house in little shorts introducing the other Fem!Harry's, and once that cycle is done, the theme will change, as in from Birth to, let's say, first kiss or broken foot or, even, first kill and abduction, so on and so forth. I'm also capping myself in each short to 2,000 words. (Extremely short for me lol) As a little bit of a challenge.

I hope any of that made a lick of sense, I'm absolutely terrible at explaining things lmao, but I hope, even if It doesn't, you'll see what I mean in a chapter or two. All that being said, I hope you enjoyed this little taster, will like what's to come, and, if you could let me know what House you wish to see next!

And for those up to if, if you have a prompt or two you wish to see, hopefully relating to Birth as this is the theme for the current set of shorts coming, please send them in!