Chapter Text
Ellaria’s screams served as notice to Cersei, who wasted no time in coming to gloat. The queen enjoyed her victory, positively glowing despite her morbid black attire.
At the outset, Ellaria spewed expletives through the gag. None were intelligible, but she needed somewhere to direct her rage, and there was no one in the world with whom she’d rather share it. Cersei only laughed, of course, responding with taunts and cruelty. Ellaria did not absorb much of what she said, drowning as she was in a typhoon of anger and loss.
She pictured the Mountain crushing Cersei’s skull as he had Oberyn’s; envisioned the dark queen shrieking as her eyes burst from their sockets to land in a puddle of blood and brain matter.
She recalled the memory of Cersei mourning Joffrey’s death; fantasized that Tommen was still alive, so that she could take him from the bitch, too.
Images of Cersei suffering helped to tune out the mocking words, though Ellaria couldn’t evade the fury that overcame her when the queen used her foot to nudge at Tyene’s lifeless body. Cersei was enjoying herself immensely; that much was clear. Even so, there was only so much entertainment a dead girl and a gagged woman could provide, and the queen eventually left her alone with her rage and grief.
*****
Though Ellaria had no means apart from the intervals between meals of discerning day and night, she could sense that several days passed before Tyene’s corpse began to visibly change. Upon the commencement of that transformation, her poor girl swelled to a shocking size, putrid liquid leaking from her eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Her skin turned horrifying shades of green and gray, leaving her utterly unrecognizable. Blisters formed all over her body, only to burst several days later. The fluid stank abominably, and it became clear that Tyene – though she was not really Tyene any longer – was starting to deflate. The smell was simply horrid, and it became even more so as the body continued to degrade. More than once Ellaria vomited up the food brought to her, permanently nauseous from the intolerable stench of death.
She couldn’t bear to look at her daughter’s body, though Cersei regularly forced her to do so during her frequent visits. Flies constantly swarmed about the cadaver, the interminable hum nearly driving Ellaria insane on several occasions. Despair worked away at her soul one day at a time, and it became harder, each time the queen appeared, to hold onto the anger that sustained her. A display of anger was preferable to grief, because grief amounted to weakness, which was exactly what Cersei wanted. The only thing Ellaria had left was the ability to deny the Lannister whore her satisfaction, but right now even that seemed to linger beyond her reach.
“She really looks terrible, doesn’t she?” Cersei remarked one day (or perhaps night; Ellaria knew not which). “All bloated and discolored… I never had to see Myrcella like that. My daughter looked peaceful when we buried her… though by all rights she should be alive and full of energy even now,” she spat, glaring with burning eyes at Ellaria, who managed to mirror her expression. “No, I never saw my daughter like this, but it doesn’t matter. I want you to suffer one hundred times more than I did. No amount of punishment is too great for the likes of you.”
Cersei slowly paced the length of the cell, her hands clasped in front of her.
“I know that you try to disguise your pain,” she said bluntly, “but you hide nothing from me. I have seen you unraveling day by day. I can perceive exactly what you feel as you watch this monstrous corpse destroy itself. Personally, I think she looks rather like Ser Gregor. Would you agree?” Cersei asked, turning toward Ellaria with a smirk.
She did look somewhat like Ser Gregor, Ellaria realized, at least in coloring. The thought made her throw up right then and there, which was unpleasant but at least provided the opportunity to spew vomit in Cersei’s direction.
The queen looked down at her soiled skirt with distaste. “I’ll interpret that as agreement,” she said, turning to leave. “Although,” she added, “Ser Gregor is at least alive.”
Ellaria couldn’t help but let out a moan, which prompted a smile to spread across Cersei’s face, her appetite for vengeance sated for the time being. Perhaps the gods took mercy on the poor prisoner, though, for she did not see the queen’s cruel expression. Her enemy’s words had crushed her soul, and her head was bowed in defeat and anguish.
*****
More time elapsed, and maggots were everywhere. As the malodorous fluids leaked from Tyene’s rotting figure, so did the larvae appear. At first there were only a handful of them, but now there were dozens wriggling from every orifice, consuming the darkened flesh. The body had long since ceased to look like Tyene, yet Ellaria couldn’t help but feel that her daughter was still in the process of disappearing before her very eyes. The girl had now been dead a long while, but before the maggots Ellaria could at least pretend she was still present. Now that possibility disappeared hour by hour, consumed by creatures barely the length of a fingernail.
The smell no longer affected Ellaria. She supposed it was still there, but she had grown desensitized to it. So many days and nights had passed that oblivion had set in, numbing her to her surroundings. She did not feel the cold, nor taste the food, nor dream of lying upon a soft bed rather than sitting on a hard stone floor with her arms forcibly outstretched. She could only watch in numb horror as more and more of her daughter vanished over time.
Cersei was well aware of her despondency and responded with glee, seeming more energetic each time she entered the cell. Once she remarked that the missing flesh reminded her of her husband’s body after the boar had bested him. It seemed to irritate her when Ellaria did not visibly respond.
A boar may not have destroyed Tyene, Ellaria thought after Cersei had left. But a lion did.
*****
Life for Ellaria was a never-ending nightmare. She had no reason and no desire to live, yet Cersei Lannister left her no choice but to keep living, no matter how many years passed. And surely it had been years… Ellaria had no way of knowing; had never attempted to keep a calendar or otherwise track the time, but surely it had been years. It must have been, based on the state of the carcass in the room…
She alternated between lying on the floor facing Tyene’s remains and lying on the floor facing the stone wall to which she was chained. Though her hands remained manacled, she was now shackled to the wall only by one wrist rather than two, which enabled her to lie flat on the floor. This change had not been an act of mercy on Cersei’s part; the queen took pleasure in seeing Ellaria lying on the floor at her feet, wholly defeated. And besides, the chain still did not allow the prisoner to reach her daughter. Despite the stench of the decaying body, Ellaria never stopped longing to get closer to it. The distance between herself and the corpse was a constant reminder that she had not been able to hold Tyene as she died, that she had failed to protect her daughter from harm or at least to comfort her in her final moments. It was a fact of which Cersei frequently reminded her. The knowledge of her failure as a mother hurt Ellaria almost as much as the loss itself.
Pain was a constant presence in her miserable existence; not even sleep brought relief from the torment. Ellaria did sleep – quite a lot actually, as there was little else to do in her wretched cell – but her dreams were plagued by unwanted memories of those she had lost. Even if the memory was a sweet one, such as a passionate night with Oberyn, she did not welcome such recollections, because it only made her loss that much more poignant when she awoke.
The only nights that brought temporary relief were the ones during which she dreamed of revenge. Sometimes these dreams centered on The Mountain, who had killed her dear Oberyn. Other times they centered on Euron Greyjoy, who had delivered her and her daughter to King’s Landing. But, though these vengeful dreams occurred far too seldom, the most common theme was the death of Cersei. In her sleep, Ellaria had murdered her in every way imaginable. She had bashed the queen’s head repeatedly against the dungeon floor until her brain matter littered the ground, as Oberyn’s had. She had stabbed Cersei hundreds of times, until her body was no longer recognizable as human, let alone as Cersei Lannister. Ellaria had delivered violent deaths and cunning deaths, quick deaths and slow deaths. She had acted crazed on some occasions and calm on others. She had killed Cersei both in her private bedchamber and in the presence of all her subjects. There was no death that Ellaria had not inflicted on the woman who took from her everything and everyone she ever loved.
But no matter how many times she murdered the queen, Ellaria always reawakened. The image of Cersei’s corpse would fade from sight, and she would find herself once again shivering in her cell, tattered clothes hanging in filthy strips from her wasted frame. She would remember that Cersei Lannister was alive and well several stories above her, drinking wine and fucking her brother whenever she pleased. That Cersei possessed the power to get what she wanted and the power to destroy those who offended her. That the queen lived in victory, day and night.
Each time this reality washed over the sorry shell of Ellaria Sand, any pain deferred by the dream would come alive with a renewed vigor, stabbing Cersei Lannister’s prisoner in her broken heart.
And with her soul in agony, Ellaria would fix her eyes upon the skeleton before her, its bare white bones gleaming in the torch light.