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Jaime tries to leave her there on the shore.
He does try: he bleeds between her clumsy, trembling fingers, hot and slick and not at all ebbing, and begs her to let him go. “I will not survive,” he says, with a certainty in his breathless and pained voice that makes her sick. There is a boat waiting for them, small and bobbing on the water when she shoves it out, water which reflects so much fire and ruination. The fleet all around them is all flame and smoke and rubble, just like everything else.
“If you die,” she says around her tears, “you will die with me. Please, Jaime. Please do not leave me. Come with me. You must. You must.”
She pulls him with her as she climbs in, faint and pleading, tripping over the skirts of her gown. He goes without protest, her good knight, his strength waning. Cersei tears strips from her gown and folds them clumsily against his wound, pressing with hands that tremble.
His eyes blink shut, half-open, shut again. His golden hand presses over hers, cold and slippery with a little blood, then the other: all warm, all flesh. Soon it might be cold too. Soon.
“I will,” he says, and everything in her shrieks with relief. “But you'll have to do most of the work, I'm afraid.”
So Cersei does. She rows until her trembling arms ache, rows even when her vision blurs with more tears and she can't see where she's going. It doesn't matter, not really. Now, anywhere is better than King's Landing. The most she can do is manage to steer it around the burning ships. “Look at me,” she says, “don't look away from me. Not ever.”
He swallows. She watches him swallow, the way his eyes flutter, the way his throat bobs. She wants to kiss him there, wants to kiss his wound, his hands, gold and otherwise, wants to kiss him, hug him again, anything. Anything at all. Instead, she rows. “I love you, Jaime,” she says then, her stomach twisting with pain. She wants to check between her thighs, just to make sure that she isn't bleeding there, but there's no time for that and the thought of actually doing it makes a new anxiety flare in her veins. She keeps rowing, until King's Landing is a speck in the distance and all the fires are the brightest thing in her vision even when compared to the sun glinting off the water, even when she tries to focus on Jaime. The smoke is starting to fade, make her eyes sting less. She can still hear the roaring. The screaming is gone, though.
She wishes it was the screaming she was still hearing.
“I love you, Cersei,” he says back, without hesitation or doubt. “I came back for you. I'll always come back for you.”
“Say it again. Say it again, Jaime. Please.”
“I love you.”
A sob wrenches her chest open, and she tastes tears spilling into her mouth when she parts her lips to breathe. She can barely breathe. She can barely do anything. “Keep talking.”
“I love you, Cersei. I love you. And I love our child. And the both of you will survive.”
“So will you,” she says, more hope than actual belief, breath caught in her throat.
Jaime smiles like he doesn't believe her. “It is a lot of blood, sister.”
“You are a lion,” she says automatically. It holds no weight. The lions are dead, her pride is lost, her home is lost. She should have killed Tyrion when she had the chance. She should have done anything when she had the chance, and now—
And now.
“Cersei.”
“What?”
“I am not sorry that I left you. I am not sorry that I returned. You shouldn't be sorry, either.” He meets her eyes for one warm, solid moment where everything falls into place. Then she hears the distant echo of another roar, and she flinches, and he blinks, and the solid moment is no longer solid, and she wants to heave over the side of the boat.
Her rowing grows weak, shaky. She wants to stop. She just wants it all to stop, so that she can stop, so that she can breathe and feel and have time. “It has always been you and me in the world, Jaime. Only you and me.”
“I know,” he says, and his eyes slip shut.
“Jaime,” Cersei says sharply, so much that it hurts her throat like a scream might. Jaime, such a scream might go: Jaime don't leave me you promised we are lions we are family we are lovers we are each other's souls you are all that I have you are all that matters or has ever mattered or will ever matter please don't leave please don't let me do this without you please don't leave Jaime Jaime Jaime JAIME.
She doesn't say any of that but just the name is enough, just her clawing desperation is enough. His eyes snap open and he sits up a little straighter, scrambling. “I was only resting my eyes, sister.” His mouth twitches faintly. “There's no need to go sounding so shrill.”
“Don't rest your eyes,” she demands, panic clutching at her, its cold claws in her hair against her skull, scraping against the bare bones, the remains of herself, “don't rest your eyes. Never.”
“Cersei—“
“Jaime.”
He sighs. It sounds heavy. And rattling. And wet. She wants to kiss him, wants to hide herself away in his lap, wants to squeeze her eyes shut and then open again to realize that this is all – not real. But she keeps rowing.
“I will keep them open, then. Madwoman.” He sounds so fond of her, soft around the edges not at all like he's dying.
“You should have been there the whole time,” she says. “You shouldn't have left.”
He doesn't say anything at all to that.
She keeps watching him, afraid to blink lest something happens. He watches her in turn, mouth quirked weakly at the corners. “You are beautiful,” he says, his blinks growing longer and longer.
I am afraid, she doesn't say. But he sees it all the same, she knows it, because he leans forward and up on his knees, shaky and sweating and bloody and pale and Jaime, and rests their foreheads together. He smells a little like he is already dead and it makes her stomach turn.
He eventually slumps back again, head tipped against the edge of the boat. “It's rather pretty,” he murmurs.
“What?”
“The sky.”
“You're mad.”
“No. I'm dying.”
Cersei wants to scream but she doesn't do that either. Instead, she tightens her grip on the oars until her whole body aches and pleads for an end, for relief, for rest. “Jaime.”
“Mm?”
“Say it one more time.”
“I love you, Cersei. My sister. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
It's always like Jaime to overdo it; instead of saying it one more time he says it a dozen more times then two dozen, his voice growing weak and stumbling and slurred.
“I love you, Jaime,” she says, and because she has to, because he is the only thing that she wants to look at ever again, keeps watching him, and keeps rowing, ignoring the way it feels to move her hands and feel her brother's blood dried and sticky on them.
He mumbles something she knows is more of the same, his eyes drifting shut.
Cersei opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. She doesn't call for him again.
Instead, she looks to the water, and keeps rowing.