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"We've got visitors again, I whispered.
"I know", She said. "Ghosts all over the place"
-Julia Alvarez, In The Time of The Butterflies
He saw her once or twice either in his room, the gardens or the throne room. Sometimes at the staircase where she had once lived with her children. Never appearing where other people were, only with him. His ghost. His visitor.
It was usually in his room, she would look like herself, days before the attack on the Red Keep or on other days, she would look like a child, on the day he had seen her when she visited Casterly Rock.
Elia Martell waited for him when the Starks were settling into their life at the Red Keep, deep south. It was weeks now and he still had his ghost talking to him.
She was a child this time, her smile was tinted with melancholy as it was during the war when Rhaegar had run off with Lyanna Stark. She wore the pretty dress that was orange and yellow like the sun itself and a crown that marked her as a Princess of Dorne. Her hair was long as he had remembered, the curls behind her back as she looked out the window of his room.
"Doesn't it get lonely here?" She askes him, turning to meet him once he closes the door shutting the world away. "Being in here? You used to play with the children. There are children here, why not play with them?"
"I can't Elia," He says knowing it is a weak explanation. He's always been a bleeding heart in his family, more so as the years after the war. Now here he was talking one of his ghosts.
"You can't or you won't?" She gave him that same melancholy smile as she used to do when she was alive. "They are going to be eaten alive Jaime. You know it, the children will suffer for it."
He did not need to be reminded of it. He could hear Elia's screams as he cut down Aerys and could see Rhaenys' scared face as she left in Ashara's arms onto the boat.
Elia twirled around his room, the dress and its colors blurring before him. Her child-like voice continued to speak. "They mean to harm them, Jaime. No innocents should join the ghosts that already haunt this place, not the Starks least of all."
"What would you have me do Elia? Talk to Honorable Eddard Stark?" He let out a bark of laughter at the ghost. It would be highly impossible to talk to Ned Stark, let alone have him hear him out after the fight he had with Robert Baratheon. Especially now with the situation between both men growing tense. "It is exactly what I would have you do Jaime. Go, talk to him about the things you've heard. About the thing you know. Help him."
He shook his head as Elia, child Elia grew closer to him. She had no injuries surrounding her, no marks of what the Mountain did to her. Just a young girl that he remembered from her time at the Rock all those years ago. "Please." She whispered to him. "If not for me, then for Rhaenys."
Jaime closed his eyes. When he opened them, she was gone but her voice was still hanging in the air. Please.
"What would you have me do Elia?" He said out loud to her ghost. She did not answer back.
Jaime's legs took him to the Hand's tower close to nightfall. Ned Stark was probably packing as he quit as being Hand of the King. Good for him, Jaime thought. I probably would have stabbed him, as he was just an annoying asshole.
As he walked up the steps he came face to face with Jory Cassel, one of Stark's men. He seemed utterly surprised to find Jaime here ready to enter Stark's quarters. He gripped the pretty wooden Dragon in his hand tightly as he spoke to Jory.
"I need to speak with Lord Stark," He told the Northerner. "It's important, something very important that I must discuss with him at once." Jory eyed him warily but nonetheless too him to see Ned Stark.
When Cassel announced him, Stark looked surprised to see him. Jory left and that's when Jaime practically vomited everything out. Ned's eyes grew wider than Jaime thought they would pop out of his eye sockets at any given moment as he told the tale.
"She lives then?" Ned responded in a hushed tone as if spies would listen from the window. Jaime nodded. "Then why tell me?"
"Because you are in danger. I did no harm to Jon Arryn, but I believe someone closer to him might have and have been playing all of us fools. But that does not mean you can trust Cersei or Robert. He's changed, ever since he smiled at the sight of Elia and little Aegon. You know that already, don't you? You've seen him changed with that blasted crown twisting him along with the Rebellion. It changed it for the worse."
"Then I will tell you something and ask something of you if we are to trust each other for this game," Ned Stark said to him. He, in turn, told Jaime the second biggest secret that could fracture the kingdom and send Robert Baratheon on a hunt to find the bastard of Winterfell. Jaime was frozen on his feet to the ground.
"You want me to take your girls and go where?" He asked the older man. Ned did not miss a beat. "To Dragonstone, go there. Keep them and Robert Baratheon's bastard safe. However, you can, keep them alive and then deliver them to my wife."
"What of the boy?"
"What of the girl?" He countered back to Jaime.
"They will need to be told the truth and then raised to be put on the throne," Jaime said. "I will get them out. I will keep them alive, you have my word Stark."
"And you have mine Lannister."
That would be the last time Jaime saw Ned Stark.
"Jaime," Elia said but her smiled seemed to tease him as he walked away from the tower. He had Podrick Payne, a boy of merely ten who was brought here to squire for some Lannister knight, to go find Gendry Waters and meet him outside in the Kingsroad. Jaime promised the boy to let him be his squire and he nodded. "I promise Ser!" Then he dashed out of the room. He would go undetected along with Gendry.
It would be Sansa and Arya Stark that would need to go undetected with a few tricks.
Elia was now a woman grown. The same age she had been days before the massacre, days before her death and before he killed Aerys. She gave him a smile as she held something out for him. He did not have his armor, just the sword Ice on his back and a cloak hiding the valerian sword. Ned told him to bring the sword to his family, it belongs to them, not here in the Red Keep. He said that he would hand it over to his wife and eldest son. He was now waiting for Ned to bring down his girls along with Jory Cassel and two of his men who would ride out to Lady Stark and tell her of what had happened.
No doubt Stark was writing a letter detailing the secrets that both men kept. She would need to know in order to stay alive.
"Jaime," Elia spoke again and he noticed that she was dancing along the halls as he silently waited. Rhaenys used to ask him to dance when she was a little girl, her laughter brought the Keep alive. He could feel the cold metal of a necklace on his neck and wondered how Elia's brothers would feel about him having one of the last pieces of Elia with him. Not happy would be one thing that came to mind but he had kept it, in order to return it to Rhaenys when he found her one day. Give her the necklace her mother so often wore before she died.
The gold was just a pendant in the form of a circle held on by soft leather. Black and gold contrasting one another.
Elia just danced, twirling herself from one part to another in front of him. She started to hum Jenny's song, that haunting melody that everyone knew. Jaime continued to hum as Elia stopped, her melancholy smile still on her face and will be till the end of her days.
"Jaime," She repeated. "You are leaving?" Jaime merely nodded and she reached out as if to touch him but stopped. He wished he could hug her at this moment, realizing how much he missed his old friend.
"Elia," His voice cracked but she held up her hand to stop him. She did the exact same thing when she had told him all about her crazy plan to get Rhaenys out of King's Landing and away from Aerys to Ashara. He had called her a lunatic but she called herself a genius.
"Do not weigh yourself down with us Jaime," She told him gently but firmly like the Princess that she was. "Do not weigh yourself down with ghosts."
Jaime wanted to laugh and tell her-How can I? How can I stop the weight of all of you?
Unbowed, unbent, unbroken. Those were her words.
"Protect the children," Elia told him. "Like you did with Rhaenys." He shook his head and countered with the dead Princess. "That was your idea, not mine Elia. You saved your daughter."
"Yes, but who took her to Ashara?" He gave her a waning smile and she returned it with her sad one. Her brown eyes twinkled with mirth but never light. That had died with her. "You can protect them, keep them alive. When you see Rhaenys, give her the necklace. It is her's. This is her's." She indicated to the Red Keep and to the Kingdom down below it.
"So are the ghosts," Jaime replied.
Elia nodded her head. "She share's them with a few people. As do you."
Jaime could hear Arya Stark's loud voice and Sansa's pleading one. It was almost time to leave as darkness covered the sky. He looked at Elia who was staring wistfully out the window. He wondered if she ever went to go visit her brothers in this ethereal version of herself. Maybe she even danced with Jenny of Oldstones in the ruins of Summerhall?
Her melancholy smile was still there gracing her lips as it always did till the end of her days as she told him, "Do you think they would ever let me rest in peace?"
He did not respond. As he turned away and then back to where the ghost once stood, nothing was there anymore. Her ghost was gone but the answer was still hung in the air and Jaime knew it on the tip of his tongue as he answered the question to the air.
"I do not think so." He whispered it and then snapped into the present.