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janie_tangerine
And yet, here he is, trying to not let himself fall prey to the headache threatening to split his brain right now as he hears his sister rant and rant and rant on live TV and saying an amount of such completely idiotic things that he barely can conceive put in the same speech, and this while she keeps on making both his and Jaime’s life hell even outside politics.
He should have never accepted to go into politics.
And yet.
Rewind.
Now, Tyrion never made much of his father having been the head of the most corrupt right winged party in the entirety of the Westerlands since he understood what Tywin Lannister did for a living, and only was thankful for it because it meant that he wasn’t home that much, and when he was Tyrion only ever wished he’d go back to fucking political conventions or electoral campaigns where he showed to the world how much of a shitty person he was. At least he never was in the official pictures for gossip magazines that were taken in the house for the entirety of his life until he lived there, because of course his father didn’t want him ruining the show.
He also was fairly thankful for that, considering the number it did on Jaime who hated it.
Now, not ever being in the house, Tywin Lannister never actually understood that while he was gone Jaime and Cersei were up to things that would have certainly jeopardized any eventual victory at the elections if anyone ever found out, while Tyrion sadly was more than aware of it, and he had tried to convince Jaime that it was just bad news since he actually could, except that it had done more than a number on him, too, and he hadn’t realized that Cersei never really gave a fuck about him until Tywin decided to retire after a bad stroke and she fancied herself his successor at the helm of the party… which of course meant that she couldn’t risk having a relationship with her twin brother on the side now, didn’t it, and Tyrion is nowhere near sure that the last year of therapy has put a more than a dent in solving Jaime’s emotional baggage-related crap, but he’s going somewhere with it.
Incidentally, that was after Tywin had about kicked him out of the house post-stroke because he utterly refused to take his place — of course, no one bar Tyrion knew that Jaime never voted for his father once in his entire life and is entirely more left-leaning, not that it would have taken that much to notice, but of course they didn’t.
At that point Tyrion, who had long been disinherited because he refused to work behind the scenes for the party’s social media managing (because of course they knew he’d be good at that but he has got ethics, thank you, and he wouldn’t want to goad people into voting for anyone with those positions throwing fake news at them) and had been enjoying his tenure teaching Latin, as stated above, because he actually did like it and he was good at it and he certainly preferred Roman history drama to current times drama, had told him to just share his apartment, it was big enough for two and honestly, considering how much of a mess Jaime was at that point, he’d have felt like complete shit leaving him without anyone around. Especially considering that thanks to his sister’s manipulative and exceedingly creepy ways, he has no friends that weren’t Tyrion’s first.
And then two months later, while things were getting cautiously better and Jaime was tentatively making friends with the extremely tall neighbor next door who was always perfectly nice to Tyrion and who is everything Cersei was not, and Tyrion was absolutely encouraging it, he got the call from Stannis Baratheon, as in, the leader of the left-center party that was more or less trying to hold back the currently wave of People Voting Right Wing Because Of Fake-News Based Propaganda without much success.
“Lannister,” he had said, “you know your sister is taking your father’s place and that she wants to run for PM.”
“Yes, and how can I help you with that?”
Tyrion had thought he could hear the man’s teeth gritting through the phone. “I’ll be frank — the next election looks like a disaster. The new electoral law is terrible and considering that Cersei’s party has more or less the same priorities as Euron Greyjoy’s —”
Tyrion shuddered, thinking of the party the man is fronting — a bunch of unprepared people whose selling point is that they’re not professional politicians and so they’re not corrupt and they want to kick everyone else out of the Parliament. Which, as much as Tyrion agrees that the politicians in Westeros all need a wake-up call, isn’t exactly a remedy, since Tyrion also firmly believes that politicians should know what the fuck they’re doing, and people who don’t on top of being half anti-vaxxers and half without an opinion anything but the fact politicians suck are not the solution to anyone’s problem. Too bad that they actually do talk to people that feel ignored by both their government and the Westerosi union and no one has managed to swindle their electorate yet.
“— at this point I know that they’ll most likely make a coalition after the elections, with the numbers they have, and I need some smart people here and people who know how your sister ticks, and I know that you have said multiple times that you would vote for us even if we’re not progressive enough for you —”
Tyrion wishes he never had accepted interviews from newspapers, but… it was because he wanted to piss his father off.
“— please consider running for us. We’d pick you as a front-runner someplace you would get elected for sure, it’s five years of exceedingly good benefits and you would still have your university job at the end of it. I’m begging,” Baratheon had sighed, “we need all the help we can.”
Tyrion, right now, wishes that he had done the selfish thing and said no.
But he had thought of the alternative, and most of all, Cersei in a position of power with everyone on the other side not privy to exactly how bad she is, and said yes before he could think it through.
Now: he did get elected.
Cersei and Euron also won the damned elections, Euron with more votes, but Cersei got entirely too many and enough to make sure that her withdrawal from the coalition would cause a mayhem.
Which meant that he’s spent a year in the Parliament wishing he never said yes because the last year has been a constant succession of his sister being the overbearing arse she is and having done her best to make sure no one ever wants to come live in the Westerlands to work lest they’re branded illegal immigrants wanting to steal honest people’s jobs (and that was just the first item on the list), and on top of that Cersei took his running and election as a personal slight and now, each single evening, she shows up under his house — sadly she has bodyguards, he doesn’t — and keeps on pestering both him and Jaime by buzzing at their intercom until one of them answers. It’s Jaime most of the time because he is usually working until midnight at this rate, and it’s not good for him because the longer it happens the more he looks like he’ll have a mental breakdown if she doesn’t stop, and while it hasn’t been enough to deter Brienne — as in, Extremely Tall Neighbor — from being friends (they’re still dancing around each other but Tyrion can see they like each other and he lives for the moment they figure it out)… it has been enough to make him sleep like shit and get somewhat paranoid about it.
Honestly, the only good thing he’s gained out of it is that he ended up with a parliamentary assistant, Bronn, with whom first he immediately clicked out of having the exact same sense of humor and the same political stances, and now —
Well, now you can’t blame him if they’re fucking on the side, but it’s about the one thing that keeps him from losing his shit completely these days.
Anyway, it’s been a year of Cersei basically acting Prime Minister even if the PM is technically their uncle Kevan, who was picked because he was not a politician (fair, he teaches law at university, too) and who has pretty much been overshadowed by both her and Euron until now, never mind that Tyrion was sure that Cersei and Euron absolutely slept together… while she kept on showing up at his place driving Jaime insane.
Then — well.
Tyrion doesn’t know if it was the fact that she and Euron obviously stopped fucking or the fact that thanks to her sadly entirely too competent social media managing team (Tyrion really should have made sure they hired someone incapable instead of this Qyburn guy who has indeed turned it into some kind of nightmare fake-news generator machine where Cersei gains popularity every other moment posting selfies, tweeting racist bullshit, half-doxxing teenagers who criticize her positions and so on) she has gained a shitload of approval rating points in recent polls, but long story short, Cersei decided to fall into what ancient Greeks would have called a textbook showing of hubris all over the place and withdrew support from the government, hoping to make the entire circus crash so they can go to the next elections that she would most likely win, according to the polls.
Oh, and she decided to do it in the middle of August, which is why they’re all standing in collective parliamentary session, listening to her rant about how much she cares for the Westerlands’s future and she’s only doing this because she puts the people first and a whole other load of bullshit that is making Tyrion want to scream. Never mind that for this kind of hearing, she’d have at most ten minutes to talk and she’s been talking for at least twenty and even with this coming, yesterday she found the time to drop at his apartment again and Tyrion should check his phone because Brienne promised to send him updates concerning his brother’s currently not really great situation since he didn’t take this one visit well, except that he can’t because you don’t check your phone in the middle of a hearing if you’re a professional.
Seriously, ten minutes waxing poetical about I would do everything I already did all over again which is fucking ridiculous considering that among what she did was closing the borders with everyone else, prevent Northerners from coming into the country unless they had a permit and making people starve in prisons because who cares about inmates, let’s have a few budget cuts, and what the fuck does it mean that in this room there are free men and women and some others that are a little less free because they fear the judgment of the people? Who even fucking judged them at this point?
Anyway, that was just the beginning, because then she went on a rant about caring just about people who work and what’s the matter if she’s opened a government crisis in August, since people work in August and members of this House should too, and of course it’s not her who is in a hurry but it’s the people who are in a hurry… to see her elected, he supposes. According to her. Sure as hell he is in no hurry to do such a thing. Then she went into a rant about how it was unjust that she was singled among the rest when it came to being criticized, and at that point she had wildly passed her twenty minutes but kept on fucking talking the same way she ignored any rule or law in the last year, and at this point Tyrion would pay to just go back to his nice bachelor’s class and teach them Sallust, whose drama he sorely misses right now —
And then Cersei says that.
“And concerning sovereignty and freedom, as Cicero said: freedom doesn’t mean having a just master, but it means having no master at all, and I don’t want us to be anyone’s slaves, I don’t want a long chain like dogs do, I don’t want chains at all —"
What the fuck.
How is wanting the Westerlands to be in the goddamned Union a bad thing, for fuck’s sake? And what does poor Cicero have to do with being quoted like that when it makes no sense whatsoever?
Gods, Tyrion should just — keep his mouth shut. But —
But that’s his damned livelihood and he can’t stand for such a slander, never mind that he’s fucking done with Cersei trying to pass herself as a poor victim of the circumstances when she’s honestly the worst thing that’s ever happened to him and to the damned country, for that matter, and for a moment he thinks about the last text he read from Brienne before he walked inside the hearing —
Ah, fuck this.
He lowers his mike and clears his throat, and figures that if he gets a fine for this it’s going to be worth it, and patience if he’s on live television.
“Quo usque tandem abutere, Cersei, patientia nostra?” He interrupts, and at that she does shut up. Oh, finally. He could stop there, but —
Nah.
At this point he’ll just go for it.
“Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? Nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati, nihil urbis vigiliae, nihil timor populi, nihil concursus bonorum omnium, nihil hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil horum ora voltusque moverunt? Patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides?”
“What are you even saying?”
He smirks.
“That’s Cicero for you,” Tyrion replies, “but you wouldn’t know that now. I mean, if your speech writers took care to at least explain you what you’re quoting now it would look a tad more dignified, wouldn’t it?”
Honestly, if he has to pay a fine for this, it’s so going to be worth it, considering how much she’s seething.
“Anyway, you were thirty minutes into your supposed ten minutes long speech and I really don’t have that much to say, so since I’m here, apologies to the President of this chamber, but I’ll just… say my piece and be done. First, if that wasn’t clear, I was asking you how much longer are you planning to abuse everyone’s patience with your nonsensical speeches and frankly laughable populist rhetoric, because you haven’t said anything until now that couldn’t be summed up in ‘I know I have enough numbers to maybe win the elections and so I’m overthrowing the government because I want to be PM and I’ll try to make it pass as a feminist achievement while I’m at it’ when last I checked it was Mr. Sparrow in your party proposing to outlaw abortion, which I am sure is not on any feminist agenda last I checked.”
“It wasn’t your turn —”
“Cersei, you stole at least three turns and I’m almost done. So, the summary of your speech is that you want to go vote even if we still have four years until we should and you put the entire country on hold because of that, and you can fake-news your way out of it as much as you like but at some point people will notice because they’re not idiots, so for the love of everything please stop abusing everyone’s patience and remember that no one says we have to go voting if your former… co-runner Mr. Greyjoy decides to ally with someone else, because he still has more votes than you, and please check what you’re quoting next time because that line was about living under a monarchy, not about being a republican state in an union with other republican states for their mutual benefit. I’m done. Now, are you?” He smiles brightly as he delivers the last question.
Whatever happens now, at least he has that out of his chest.
And man, hadn’t he wanted to tell Cersei that since forever.
— —
“You,” Bronn tells him later, when they’re out of the parliamentary room and trying to avoid journalists, “are either a genius or the dumbest cunt in existence and I still don’t fucking know what’s the answer, but at least Stannis doesn’t want your head.”
“He doesn’t?”
“Nah,” Bronn goes on, ushering him inside a car, heading out from the back, “he thinks you could have waited until she was finished but she deserves it and moreover, your approval rating in the polls has skyrocketed and your party’s along with it because apparently people also were getting tired of your sister’s antics, so there’s absolutely some way to spin this positively. For us at least. Meanwhile, it’s been what, two hours, and there’s already a remix of your speech.”
“What?”
“A moment,” Bronn says, telling the driver Tyrion’s address and to please leave them at the back entrance of the building, then takes out his phone and —
Holy shit, Tyrion says as Bronn starts the video. Someone really put his Latin speech and turned it into… a… remix with some music in the background that sounds like what people listen to in discos. Tyrion hasn’t ever been in one and sure as hell he won’t ever set a foot in one ever, but it’s just… weird.
“I guess that’s good advertising?”
“That’s excellent advertising,” Bronn says. “Oh, and tomorrow President Mormont wants to meet you and Stannis and Greyjoy.”
“Wait, what, Jeor Mormont wants to meet me now? For what?”
“Well, apparently, according to his staff of course, in extreme confidentiality, he also thought Cersei was abusing the shit out of his patience, therefore he wants you there too for eventual negotiations for a new majority. Ah, and you’ll have to pay a fine for having interrupted her.”
“Don’t care. Whatever, I can afford it. Wait, what, he also thought — I mean, that was obvious but —”
“Tyrion, you apparently channeled each single person in Westeros who hasn’t voted for her during that speech, so I would highly recommend you to sleep on it and think very clearly about how you’re going to spin this from tomorrow because this could actually make your damned career in this field.”
“I want to teach Latin, fuck’s sake,” Tyrion groans.
“You’d give up all that money for Latin?”
“What,” Tyrion grins, “are you saying that you’re unaware of all the sweet things I could tell you in that valiant language if you just let me?”
“Oh, so now you’re going to use Latin pickup lines on me? And since when do you say sweet things?”
“To you I don’t because it’s not your thing, but you know what’s my plan for tonight since I finally told my sister off and I have to celebrate?”
“Do tell,” Bronn grins, and —
“Pedicavo ego te et irrumabo,” he says, and Bronn leans closer, making sure the driver can’t see what they’re up to.
“That,” he says, “didn’t sound very sweet, but it sounded hot as hell, so just repeat it to me in the language for us poor ignorants. What’s the plan for tonight?”
“Oh, just that I’m going to stick my dick in your ass and your mouth,” Tyrion whispers, and Bronn grins harder.
“Then I can’t wait,” he says, before going back to check the constant stream of notifications on his phone.
Tyrion honestly can’t fucking wait to get home.
And he can take the chance to send Jaime to sleep at Brienne’s once and for all. Maybe they will get their heads out of their asses.
A month later
“Come on,” Brienne urges him from the sofa, “your brother is about to speak!”
“Coming!” Jaime finishes putting their take-out on the tray he had prepared in her kitchen before grabbing it and going to the living room where she’s sitting on the sofa, obviously waiting for him while there are still commercials on, but they should be done soon. “It’s not started yet?”
She shakes her head. “No, but it’s not going to be long left. Are you all right?”
Jaime is not going to blurt that he’s moved she asks that each single time they watch some talk show where his sister is mentioned, never mind present, but then again, they did get their shit together and kissed for the first time that evening when Tyrion shut her up during her stupid hearing and Jaime had spent the entire day beside himself because when she had showed up the previous evening he had taken it pretty damn fucking badly, so — it’s sweet that she doesn’t take for granted that he’s over it.
Shit, he’s thankful she doesn’t take that for granted at all, but he’ll talk to her about it at some point. Not now. Never mind that he’s done way better since he went to her place that evening so Tyrion and Bronn could fuck in peace without him hearing and he kind of never went back to Tyrion’s apartment, so — yeah. He’s fine. He is.
“I am,” he says, leaning in to kiss her, “I really am. Come on, put the audio back on, I can’t wait to see what he’s cooked up this time.”
Brienne nods and does as they lay back against the cushions, Jaime’s head falling on her shoulder as he reaches down to grasp a piece of fried chicken from his take-out box. The commercials finish and the camera pans to the studio from where Petyr Baelish’s shitty talk show has been airing for the last… thirty years or so, and Jaime wouldn’t usually be caught dead watching it but they wanted Tyrion to comment on the fact that thanks to his intervention, there is a new majority in Parliament, that his uncle is proving himself a halfway competent PM and that Cersei is spending her days telling everyone who’ll hear her that he’s the literal worst thing happened to Westeros and that it’s ridiculous that people would like him and give him such a high approval rating — must be because of the pity card.
Jaime thinks pity cards are the last thing his brother would play, but never mind that. Baelish does all the usual introductions and then sums up Cersei’s last interview on one of those newspaper their father funds, and Tyrion laughs at the last assumption.
“Mr. Baelish,” he says, “I got to the point where I am without playing the pity card and my sister knows it. But honestly, there is just one thing I have to say in the face of that and the fact that she says she’s working restlessly for the community and then spent the last week-end getting drunk at her favorite beach disco.”
“Oh,” Baelish replies, “and what would that be now?”
Tyrion says nothing for one moment, and then he smiles and Jaime recognizes that look, and he’s not surprised when the answer is —
“O tempora, o mores!”
End.
