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Yet still a soul could hear
Regrets. Jaime is no stranger to them. For the love of the Seven, he could bloody well write an entire treaty on them. They come back to haunt him, his mistakes, in his sleepless nights and his feverish dreams. They have the faces of his brothers - white cloaks and maimed bodies - and they have the purple eyes and blond hair of his king - the one he should have died for.
Yet his greatest sin, Jaime doesn’t regret. Broken honour, broken vows - none of it truly matters in warmth of the sun shining on King’s Landing. Of that day, the one that shan’t be named, he regrets one thing only.
If he had thought about it, he would have gone. If he had known what kind of man his father was, he would have gone. He would have died for Elia Martell and for her children. Just like he would have died for Rhaegar had the world been different.
So he is not surprised that now he is on the floor, sword on the ground as he bleeds out for having saved the last of his king’s children. It’s not just his blood, not on the ground, not on his sword. Or maybe it is. Cersei’s eyes stare at him, wide and unseeing. Her pupils are blown wide, blood slowly draining from her body, spilling out of the corners of her mouth. He can see the red staining her teeth, her lips curled back in a snarl.
Traitor.
Murderer.
Lover.
Brother.
It doesn’t matter now - he feels nothing. Not numb, not shocked, just nothing. Not even the roar of the dragon, not even the promise of fire and blood, of the city finally burning can shake him. Something in Jaime has broken, snapped and shattered beyond repair. It feels like a long time coming, maybe it is. It doesn’t matter now - there is nothing left in Jaime’s world but the slow dripping of his blood on the stone floor, like sand draining in an hourglass, and one last, desperate deathwish.
Jaime Lannister has never been afraid of dying - so off he goes to his execution, heart empty, mind blank and a trail of bloody footprints behind him.
-
Even amidst the chaos that follows Cersei’s death, finding Jaime is easy. Bloody Lannister is the kind of person who turns heads in a crowd even without the help of a golden hand and a red cloak. If Bronn has developed a sixth sense for it because losing sight of the man for a second means he’ll be off charging a fucking dragon...well, it’s no one’s gods damn business.
Right now though, Bronn does not need to do much more than follow the trail of bloody footprints, step after step.
King’s Landing is in chaos. Fire rains from the sky. People run, people scream. Bronn dodges and hides, pressing himself against the walls. Where the fucking hell is that man going? Down it seems, away from the part of King's Landing Bronn knows best. Still leading him on a merry chase, uh? Still dangling the prize right in front of his fucking nose. Lannisters.
The house he steps in is abandoned and not newly so. Ruin has had time to set in, chipping away at the bricks and covering the floors in dust and weeds. Slowly, Bronn crosses the small cloister and reaches for one of the side doors, the only one left slightly ajar. It's just another empty room, a hall or a library once. It would be utterly uninteresting if not for the torn down tapestry on the furthest wall. Behind it is a tunnel carved in the rock. It's fairly big, big enough that Bronn just has to duck his head a bit to get through. He stops at the entrance, sword raised in one hand. If it's a trap, it would be a poorly planned one. Jaime is smarter than that. You are missing something - Bronn's instincts murmur but they stay otherwise quiet. With a sigh, he goes in.
He follows the tunnel into the cliff, guided by the sound of water. The room that greets him at its end is big - bigger than he expected at least. It’s completely carved into the yellow rock beneath the Keep and there is light enough from an opening that gives directly on the sea. Water pours down from the ceiling in a system of rivulets, pooling in a basin at the centre of the room before running through the opening and plummeting down a good 20 yards into the ocean.
Jaime is there,sitting on the floor, leaning against the fountain’s rocky edge.
“They called this place Stone Garden.” - he says after giving Bronn a moment - “It belonged to one of the seven temples, I think. Rhaegar used to come down here when he wanted some quiet.”
It’s odd information to volunteer. Odder even for a man like Jaime who has always played his most important cards close to his chest. Everyone else, Bronn would say they were stalling.
Except this is Jaime and Jaime has a reason for doing this. Those instincts at the back of his skull are starting to whisper something else, something about coincidences and poetic justice. For the time being, Bronn is set on ignoring their truth.
“A charming place indeed. Any reasons in particular you decided to crawl down here?”
Jaime grimaces. There is blood at his lips and he is pressing the stump uselessly against his chest.
“It’s the only place I could think of that might be dark enough.”
Dark...enough?
Thankfully, Bronn does not need to ask because Jaime goes on.
“You’ll have them, you know. A lordship, a castle and a highborn beauty.”
He says it between ragged breaths, his eyes leaving Bronn to look up at the water. He smiles. “Everything my father took from you, Lord Reyne.”
_
Bronn freezes. He stares, for once at a loss of words. Jaime... knew . Jaime fucking knew .
“How?”
“I have my ways and my whisperers. You clearly planned a long game. Unlike what you and my brother seem to believe, I can be patient too sometimes.”
There it is, that pretentious, full-of-himself tone. Fucking hells, even here and now Lannisters will be smug bastards.
“Can you now? - Bronn sneers. He gestures wide with the sword - “And this is it? The great plan you put together with all your patience? To die like a drowned rat out of some kind of honour? Because if you think you are getting out of here alive, princess, let me tell you you are very fucking delusional on top of...”
“It's what you asked for” - Jaime stops him - “ You got my father's gold, my brother will give you your castle and my sister is dead, not that you cared any for her beyond her name. And me...out of all the things you could have asked me, you said…”
Listen to me, you cunt. ‘Till I get what I am owed, a dragon doesn’t get to kill you.
You don’t get to kill you.
Only I get to kill you.
Bronn sees red. “Kill you, yes. Not watch you die. might as well have left you to the fucking dragon for that.”
“I slept with Brianne.” - Jaime whispers, like it's some kind of secret that is supposed to somehow make this madness of his have sense. It fucking doesn't.
“I hate to break it to you, princess, but we were never exclusive. I hardly care who you…”
“I slept with her because I wanted to forget Cersei. Or I thought I wanted to forget Cersei. But it was not her...Bronn, it was not…”
It was you.
Bronn had thought Jaime was either reckless or suicidal a number of times. Dorne. Cersei. The dragon. But nothing reaches what he’s seeing now. Jaime is scraping his bones bare here, fingers digging into his soul and tearing it apart. He is digging his fingers into his wounds and tearing them open willingly, blood pouring out, chunks of soul left to be washed away along with it.
“You said it.” - Jaime breathes out slowly - “You don't care who I sleep with, Lord Reyne. But I...Cersei is dead, Brianne is not what...who I need. She is not who I want. And what you want...even if I managed to get out alive, what do I have left to live for?”
Now, that some honestly pessimist bullshit. Or honest pessimist bullshit. Jaime is an idiot and a fool but he is not a liar. He believes every single word and he doesn't expect anything else but death to come out of this. The water in the fountain is rushing, Jaime’s head is a breath away from it. He expects Bronn to just push him in.
With a scream, Bron grabs him and pulls him up. Jaime stumbles, eyes wide. Bronn just pushes him, cornering him until they are both in the stream. The water barely reaches up their calves and Bronn grabs Jaime again, shakes him because what the fuck, that's what he expected? For Bronn to hold him down, press his pretty golden head in and keep him there, in water so shallow a rat wouldn’t drown in and feel his breath slowly drain away?
Fuck being suicidal that is just plain old stupid. Jaime is stupid, that’s what he is. A stupid, reckless, golden-hearted fool, with his head full of air and rose-tinted fucking notions of honour. A bloody fool who…who actually fucking means it. That. It. Dying.
It shouldn’t be this surprising because this is what Bronn wants, what he has been planning for years.
But Jaime is here, balancing at the edge of the cliff, holding onto his last breaths just so that Bronn can kill him and it’s somehow so, so much what Bronn does not want.
Fuck.
Bronn lunges forward.
Jaime yelps and slips, his only hand coming up to grasp at Bronn’s shoulder, his stump flailing uselessly. Bronn holds him there, bending him backwards on the edge of the precipice. The sea roars down on the rocks and the rush of water is all around them, covering their breaths.
“You dumb cunt, I should know what I want! I should let you fall. I fucking should."
Bronn presses their foreheads together and he can feel Jaime shiver. He holds him closer. He never meant for this. All the times his treacherous mind had come up with dreams of embracing Jaime it had been to do much more sinful, pleasurable things. Things that might make even Tyrion blush. The one time he did manage to embrace the man he had ended up doing none of that, all slow kisses and exploring hands. Not this.
“I tried to kill your brother and I almost regretted it.” - he admits - “I’d miss the little fucker: nobody better to drink and banter with. But you...you really are something else.
“I promised you.” - Jaime rasps - “What you are owed. A Lannister always pays his debts.”
“Those are not your fucking words. They are your father’s, may he suffer through all of the seven hells. What you need is not whatever twisted idea is going on in your head. You need a fucking maester, that’s what you need.”
Jaime shakes his head. “Bronn, you’ve spent years…”
“Aye, I’ve spent years. And I’ve got more to spend with you. I don’t need revenge.” Bronn pauses, grips Jaime tighter.“I could go for a drink though. And a castle. Definitely a castle.”
Fuck him but Jaime’s wet, startled laugh is worth more than all their families fucking gold.