m_findlow

Title: All the time in the world
Fandom: Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire)
Characters: Tyrion
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,374 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, nothing to do but stare at the walls" at fic_promptly
Summary: Tyrion's incarceration has given him time to think things over.

Tyrion found it a shame that he couldn't enjoy the view. Few were permitted to pass through Bloody Gate into the Vale of Arryn, and fewer still made it to the very top of the Eyrie, passing through the treacherously narrow mountain passes. He'd experienced none of that himself of course. No sooner had they reached the foot of the imposing stone fortress, than Lady Catelyn had divested herself of him. He'd been given the express journey up to the Eyrie, courtesy of a basket on a rope. He might as well have been a sack of potatoes. They hauled him up inch by inch as the vale's winds buffeted him inside the basket, making it sway perilously. Had he been able to see, he might have fretted over the rope nudging up against the sharp stone rocks, wondering when it might finally become frayed enough to snap. Much like then as now, he wished he could see less so that he might have less to fear.

The prison cell was thoroughly unique in its shape, with its flat floor and curved roof that descended to become its walls. The floor although flat was angled such that the side facing in towards the main castle was higher than the side that tapered away to where the far wall should have been. In place of the far wall was nothing, just an empty openness that displayed the Vale is all its glory. How many prisoners had met their fate thanks to that narrow, sloping floor of these sky cells as they were so aptly named? One slippery moment underfoot and you would go straight out into the nothingness, wondering only how many thousand feet the fall would be before it killed you. It was definitely the most scenic way to die, if you could rationalise it that way.

Tyrion had spent many an hour in conversation with Jon Arryn over the years in King's Landing, but he could not imagine the man ever subjecting someone to being confined in this merciless cell. He was a firm man, battle hardened, but with a keen sense of justice and a patient nature. His lady wife however was best described as unhinged, particularly since her husband's untimely death. Rumours were that the sickly child she had managed to rear, after so many failed pregnancies, would perhaps be better off dead in any case. Little Robert Arryn was poorly and thin, with watery eyes and a hunched back, according to Jon's own words. His mother still let him suckle at her breast which Tyrion found not only surprising, but rather horrifying. The boy was eight years old, halfway to a man and yet he had none of the hallmarks of his father's stoicism or intellect.

Perhaps the boy wasn't his at all, Tyrion had quietly thought to himself. His own lord father Tywin had insisted on taking the boy to Casterly Rock as his ward in order to toughen him up and teach him the hard lessons that would be necessary if he was to one day rule the Vale and its people. Tyrion knew full well how that would pan out, given his father's dislike for weakness, dwarfs and broken things. Still, Jon had politely declined the offer, stating that he had already arranged for the boy to be brought to King's Landing, and then on to Dragonstone to be fostered by his King's brother, Stannis Baratheon. The Seven help the poor child. Stannis was an even harder man than Tywin Lannister. He would find no love at Dragonstone, nor a teat to suckle at. Lady Selyse was as cold and hard as her husband, however little Robert would find a friend in their only daughter, no doubt. The poor girl herself was scarred and her face maimed by greyscale. Two more sickly children there had probably never been, even in the slums of Fleabottom. Strange how it was the highest Houses of the realm that seemed to produce the weakest children. Still, Tyrion thought, not all weak children grew to be weak adults. They learned lessons of a different kind that bolstered them against the worst life could throw at them, just as he had done.

Not that any of that mattered now. All that mattered was that he did not accidentally fall asleep in his prison cell and go rolling off into the air, or that his guard, that lumphead of a man, didn't throw the door open too quickly, sending him tumbling backwards. Perhaps that was secretly the plan. Lysa Arryn would write to his lord father and tell him what a terrible accident it had been, and that she had never intended him harm. It was the Starks that wanted him dead, or at least a decent exchange for their own daughters. That's all he was worth, two little girls, and maybe not even then. They were worth more as leverage against the war Robb Stark intended bringing to King's Landing against the Lannisters, which left Tyrion as a third wheel. Only his name might save him now.

Tyrion parked himself in the corner of the cell furthest away from the edge. The view of the clouds swirling past and occasionally settling a layer of mist inside his cell had grown tiring very quickly. Clouds as it turned out, for all their beautiful fluffy qualities, were actual nothing more than an icy dampness that seeped into one's clothes and made the Night's unbearably chill. And that was on a day of no winds. Prisoners were not meant to enjoy the view. It was meant to remind them just how close to death they were. It was much better to stare at the stone walls and pretend that there was nothing at all deadly about merely occupying the small space apart from the bitter cold.

Tyrion chuckled to himself. I've stood atop the Wall and pissed off of it, my sister is the Queen, my brother killed the Mad King Aerys, and my father shits gold, yet here I am, awaiting trial for a crime I didn't commit. How ironic it was to be the only Lannister in all of history that had probably never committed a criminal act, yet be the first to suffer punishment for it.

How long would they make him wait? Would Lady Catelyn want him to die up here, or was she planning on making sure he made it back to Winterfell to face his supposed justice? If she was, she was going about it terribly. Had she even seen the cells where they were keeping him, or did she expect the guilt to eat away at him until he decided to exact his own price, throwing himself out amongst the clouds? Enough time locked in here and he expected that was what some of them did, sent mad by the ever present threat of death. It must surely be less humiliating than letting a sickly boy throw him out of that Moon Door in his throne room, watched by everyone at court.

That wasn't Tyrion, however. He had served a lifetime of injustices, starting from the very moment of his birth. Life was one thing he prized above all else, even the delights of a whore, or many whores, tucked beneath his bedsheets. When he made it out of here - and he clung to the belief that it was a matter of when and not if - he would head straight back to King's Landing and deign never to leave his bed again, lest it were for eating, drinking, or emptying his bowels. And there would be whores. Many, many whores. As many as he could afford, which was a princely number. His siblings might choose to wear their gold, but Tyrion would spend his. He'd decided he'd had quite enough of adventuring and that you made more enemies on the road than you did friends.

For now though, all he had time for was to imagine the future, to do everything he could to prevent himself from freezing to death and to ponder who the real murderer might have been that he'd been forced to stand in their place. He hoped to one day repay them for the pleasure.