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Jaime stood inside the doors of the sept, not the Sept of Bahlor, Cersei would not step foot there again, so their dead daughter had been laid instead in the smaller one within the castle walls itself. He'd come for Tommen, who was saying his goodbyes to Mrycella. The third Lannister dead in too few months. Jaime himself had said his goodbyes on the trip back to King's Landing, looking at the beautiful face of the daughter he would never get to know as the boat rocked them. But, he blocked those memories, because today he'd come for Tommen.
The young King sobbed over his sister. Jaime had sent out the septons on his entrance. None should see their king as the boy he still was. He played at games of power he may very well still lose. Jaime tried to remember again how old Tommen was, twelve, no he would have been thirteen just a month before Jaime's return to King's Landing from the north and riverlands.
Tommen finally leaned down and gave his sister one last kiss on her forehead. She stunk of death, Jaime well knew. Then the boy turned and noticed Jaime. Tommen gave no smile as he went up the steps and stood beside him. Tears still stained his bright cheeks, his nose ran and his eyes red.
“Here to say your goodbyes, Uncle Jaime?” Tommen asked. From practice Jaime kept his face still at the use of relation.
“No. I've already done so.” Jaime did not let his eyes fall to his daughter below.
“Yes, of course.” Tommen's voice trailed off. “She died in your arms.”
“Yes,” Jaime somehow managed.
Tommen stepped forward to exit the sept and Jaime barred him with his gold hand. “Stay a moment more, at least until your tears dry.”
Tommen turned to him. When did the boy grown tall enough to look him equally in the eye? “Because I should not be crying?” Tommen's lip sneered.
Jaime sighed. “No. She's your sister, and she's dead, cry all you want. Just don't let them see you.”
“I never got to say goodbye.” Tommen sniffed and wiped away the last of his tears. His face had almost returned to normal. “Did you, Uncle?”
Jaime wanted to say he barely got to say hello. Whatever the look on his face, it caused worry in Tommen's eyes.
“I'm sorry, of course you would not want to talk about it.” Tommen shook his head. “Having no children of your own, we have always been so close to you.”
Jaime wanted to scream at the top of his lungs that they were his children. Instead he calmed his blood. Tommen did not know about the knives he twisted.
“Come,” Jaime commanded and turned on his heel. Tommen followed without a word, and Jaime should have berated the boy for doing so. He feared he did not have the time to make Tommen into the king he might be before everything finished crumbling at their feet.
“Have you talked to Mother?” Tommen asked.
“Yes.” Jaime looked forward. He'd waved off Tommen's kingsguard as they re-entered the Red Keep. The King walked with the Lord Commander, his uncle, and had no need of a guard.
“She's...” The boy's voice trailed off. “Maybe you can...” His voice was deeper than Jaime remembered.
“I tried.” Jaime let out a shaky sigh.
“And?” The hope in Tommen's voice pulled Jaime's eye to him.
Cersei hated him even more now. Beaten and broken and he had to tell her about their daughter's death. Dead because Jaime was a man of action and did not see the danger of poison in a chaise kiss of supposed loyalty. His daughter dead because of his own mis-given trust. Cersei would never forgive him, most certainly not enough for him to try to piece back together what the High Sparrow had broken. But Jaime had no words to explain the depths of his emotions about is failure to his sister and lover.
Tommen had paused and studied Jaime. Finally he frowned and walked on.
“Mother has been gone and is...” Tommen sighed. “Grandfather is dead. You're the last of my uncles in Westeros now.”
Jaime stilled and cocked his head.
“Word from the North,” Tommen said. “Stannis and his army was defeated trying to take Winterfell.”
“I had no yet heard,” Jaime fumbled. Of course, Stannis and Renly were Robert's brothers. As Tommen knew no different, the boy thought them his uncles, both now dead.
“I could actually use your counsel, Uncle.” Tommen rounded the corner to the King's rooms.
As the kingsguard opened the door for them and Tommen stepped inside, Jaime commanded, “Leave us.” The guard, a younger man who Jaime did not recall a name for, still recognized Jaime and dipped his head before doing as told.
Jaime entered and locked the door behind him. “There's actually something I wanted to talk with you about, Tommen.”
“Wine, Uncle?” Tommen had crossed to the desk, the one King Robert would sit and drink himself drunk at most days. For a moment, Jaime saw an echo of the large man still seated there.
“No,” Jaime answered absently.
“Odd, I know.” Tommen thankfully moved past the desk and sat instead in a settee on the other end of the room. “This was always Father's room.”
Jaime nodded, and the Mad King's before that.
“What did you want to talk about?” Tommen took a small sip of his wine and then set it on the table beside him.
Jaime crossed and leaned against the back of a chair instead of sitting. “Have you heard the rumors... about your parentage?”
Tommen waved a hand in dismissal. “Mere rumors from traitors Mother says, nothing more.”
“No.” Jaime shook his head. “They are not.” He sat in the chair and watched his youngest son. Sweet Tommen had always been the forgotten one. Kind and gentle, never trouble.
Tommen cocked his head and looked at Jaime with the bright green eyes of his mother. He leaned back and frowned, but remained silent.
Jaime sighed and shifted forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Me and your mother--”
“Your sister.”
Jaime nodded. “Yes, my twin sister. I have always loved her.”
“She's your sister.” Tommen frowned deeper.
“That's not how I love her.” Somehow Jaime's voice was steady. “On and off, for most of our lives, since we were your age, me and your mother, my sister, have been lovers.”
Jaime paused and only their breaths echoed. Tommen sat as still as stone.
“You,” Jaime continued, “Joffery and Myrcella were all fathered by me.”
Tommen reached out a shaky hand and took a long gulp of his wine, again returning the glass. Jaime could see the gears working in the boy's head. Jaime sat up and placed his hands on his knees, his left gripping the leather of his pants. He forced himself to stillness.
“Mother has never....” Tommen finally managed.
“Of course not.” Perhaps Cersei wished to never tell Tommen. Joffery knew and cared less, Myrcella accepted what they had done, but Tommen... Jaime himself was not sure the boy would understand.
“But then... King Robert was not...” Tommen glanced to the desk. He snapped his head back to Jaime. “I have no right to the throne. Neither did Joffery.”
Jaime watched as all the pieces clicked together for Tommen. The boy stood and paced the room. Even as a child he would have known of the goings on in the castle. Jaime sat and let the boy make the conclusions he needed to.
“We stole the crown,” Tommen finally said.
“As you speak to the man that killed the king, fucked his sister the new queen and put two of his bastards on the throne.”
Tommen frowned and looked with wary eyes at Jaime. Jaime raised his left hand, palm out. “I truly meant none of it as such, but...” He shrugged. “That is how some would view it.”
Tommen sat again. On the edge of his chair now, hands on his knees, and leaned across the distance between them.
“Are you certain?” he asked. “I mean Mother...”
Jaime threw his head back and laughed outright at that. “Why have I never seen it before?” Tommen cocked his head. Jaime laughed again, for Tommen was the echo of Jaime himself as a young man. “Of you all, why did I never see how much you favored me?”
“I look like mother,” Tommen said.
“Very much.” Jaime nodded. “But your uncertainty, how much you wish to please, your desire to be honorable. You're all too much like me as a boy.” Jaime dipped his head and sighed. “I should apologize about that. At least you were spared my fool recklessness.”
Tommen scrunched up his forehead. He had never known Jaime not arrogant and jaded. “And of course Myrcella, Joffery...”
“My daughter and son, both dead in my arms.” Jaime frowned. “Mine, but... never really mine, and now gone to me forever. Neither I nor your mother, who will likely counsel exactly the opposite to do so, want to see you die too.”
“I sit on the throne by treason.” Tommen frowned.
“And you will never speak of that again.” Jaime hardened his face. “If you wish to keep your pretty head on your shoulders, you will not speak such again.” It scared Jaime how much he had sounded like his own father then, like Tywin spoke through him from the grave.
Tommen nodded silently.
“The Baratheon men are all dead--”
“As is Stannis' heir,” Tommen said.
Jaime paused.
“Burned at the stake by Stannis' Red Priestess.”
Jaime let out a gasp and closed his eyes. “The poor, poor girl.”
“So you mean there's no one left in Father's family to...” Tommen stopped himself. “I mean...”
“Robert's family.” Jaime shrugged. “It's okay, you can think of him as your father. He was more so to you than I could be.” Tommen frowned again, and Jaime continued, “So there's no living Baratheon to challenge your legitimacy further. Possession is most of the game, and it's your pretty ass that sits on that horribly sharp throne.”
Tommen leaned back. “Be my Hand.”
Jaime just stared back. It was not the first time his name had ever been mentioned for the honor. He'd been proud to have always shoved it on another man. “You should have given me wine before asking such of me.” He frowned.
Tommen offered his own glass of wine, let Jaime swallow down most of it and hand it back.
“You do know the last three Hands have been killed,” Jaime said.
“Jon Arryn--”
“Died of poison from your dear mother,” Jaime finished. “Ned Stark had his head chopped off despite bending the knee to your mad brother. And my own brother, after I freed him from his cell, killed my father. Why would you give me a job no one lives long at? Send me to the North to fight whatever wakes in the cold. I'd live longer.”
Tommen frowned and shook his head. “I didn't mean you any disrespect...”
“Jaime, you can address me as just Jaime.” No uncle before it and it was the best he could ever hope for. In his mind Mrycella's voice calling him father echoed, yet he had told his only living child to never utter that to him. He would have to live with his son calling him merely Jaime.
“I'm a man of action, or was.” Jaime looked at his gold hand resting in his lap. “The plots and the schemes and games, the wits to keep it all straight and remember all the details, to judge people truly and find out what they want so they do as you command.” Jaime sighed. “Tywin was the master of that, and sadly,” he frowned, “he gifted none of it to me.”
“Who else should I trust then, Jaime?” Tommen sat up and looked like the great King he might yet be.
“Trust no one.” Jaime wanted to add, your mother least of all, but did not. It was true Cersei would never make a decision that she thought would actually harm her only child. However, she'd proven her judgment was flawed.
“Then, who should I choose?” Tommen didn't miss a beat in changing the wording. There might be hope still Jaime could make him man enough to survive.
Jaime leaned back and cocked his head. He could think of no one he'd trust advisingTommen truthfully of the kingdoms and the city. He had known the second Tommen asked him that Jaime would not be able to say no.
“Would you not do right by me?” Tommen asked.
“I would do what I thought at the time was right.” Jaime shook his head. “They are not always the same.” If only he had his brother's wits and counsel to help. Although that only reminded him how much he wanted to strangle his dear brother for the murder of their father. He suddenly felt old and tired and terribly alone. Jaime looked into Tommen's green eyes and thought perhaps his bastard son might be the only Lannister he still liked.
“Did grandfather know?” Tommen cocked his head. “About...”
“That I was the father of his daughter's children?” Jaime finished. “We never spoke of it.” Besides that once when he was not much older than Tommen and Father had caught him and Cersei together. His counsel had been limited: end it because his sister had another to marry, and whatever you do do not get her with a child by incest, ever.
“Tywin would never have spoken about it to anyone, but,” Jaime nodded, “he knew.” That Jaime had foolishly given his heirs away as bastards because of love for his sister ired Tywin to no end, but they had left it all unspoken. Perhaps Tywin's hope Jaime still had time to make rightful heirs still stood.
“So will you be my Hand, Jaime?”
Jaime leaned forward and ran his hand through his hair. He gave a deep sigh and frowned. “Yes.” What other answer could he have given? He trusted the boy with no one else. Not that he was certain he trusted Tommen with his own judgment.
He expected to see a smile on Tommen's handsome features when he looked again. Instead his son's face was hard and set. Tommen nodded his approval.
“I don't really know you,” Jaime said. “It seems just yesterday your mother placed you swaddled in my arms.” He looked at his right arm, the one that had held his youngest son that was not his by name. “Even if you are only mine in secret and by horrible rumors, I'd like to try and do right by you. Suppose I owe you that much.”
“Maybe we can get to know each other better.” Tommen smiled and it lit up his face in an unguarded innocence.
Jaime nodded and rose. “I hope that we will.”
“My Queen, Jaime --”
Jaime held up his hand to stop Tommen. “I'm aware.” The boy had someone to aid him again and he latched on.
“I love her.” Tommen frowned
“I'm sure you do.” Though Jaime doubted Margeary felt the same. “I've just laid my guts out for you boy, and promised to do one of two things I've never wished in this damned place. Give me some time to think a way out of the quagmire your mother has given us.”
Tommen nodded with a frown. “Very well.”
“I will rescue your beloved queen, and hopefully still in one piece, but let me think on what weapons I have under my control to do so.”
Jaime made to exit the room.
“Jaime, what is the other job you would not wish to have?” Tommen asked clearly.
Jaime should have lied, but he'd been too truthful already and saw no reason not to continue. He turned back to his son and said, “To be the King.” He saw Tommen's features fall at his answer. Jaime turned on his heel and left. He could have apologized that by making Tommen his bastard by way of his sister Queen, Jaime had cursed his sweet son with the last thing he himself ever wanted. But he didn't have it in him to apologize today for one more of his sins.