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A fresh crop of heads garnishes the battlements of the Red Keep. Men and women, high-born and low-born, merchants and lords, septas and bawds, all wear the same expression of shocked disbelief and terror, brothers and sisters in death, as they never were in life. You look, always, though they have always been strangers. Except for the first time, you remind yourself. Bronn’s face, fixed in a snarl, reminded you so forcefully of all the promises you made him and never kept.
“Everyone who isn’t us is an enemy,” Cersei says, holding tight to your arm. She makes you walk here with her every evening at sunset.
And I? You look down at her lovely face, set as hard and cold as the stone walls of the Keep. Am I your enemy? You are not a part of “us” any more, if you ever were. All the lies you told yourself for so long - one soul, two bodies; my other half; if I were a woman, I’d be Cersei - are gone, as broken as the Great Sept of Baelor. The smell of roasting flesh and singed hair still wafts from the rubble and reminds you of your skin, crisping in the flames as Locke’s men seared your stump so you would not bleed to death. You would have died anyway, if Brienne had not recalled you to life. In the limpid sky above, you see her eyes, filled with gentle reproach at your inaction.
I am not the man you think I am, you tell her.
Who are you then? Who were you meant to be?
***
You were a knight of the Kingsguard. You are the Kingslayer.
You dreamed of honor, all those long years while you tossed and turned in your narrow bed in the White Sword Tower, trying not to imagine Robert Baratheon’s heavy body, his back furred with fine dark hair, pinning Cersei to her bed, thrusting into her, as she clenched her teeth and endured. I think of you, she always told you, and you pitied her and burned with anger.
When you slept at last, you dreamed of Rhaegar changing his mind, taking you to fight beside him, and leaving Ser Barristan to guard the Mad King, and keep his secrets. If you had gone with the Prince of Dragonstone, Elia Martell and her children would never have met the Mountain. You might have saved Rhaegar from Robert’s war hammer, or perhaps the White Book would have listed your gallant death, fighting for your prince, protecting him from a traitor. In the grey hours before dawn, sometimes that imagined fate seemed kinder than the real one: your name a curse, your life a lie.
Kingslayer. Oathbreaker. Man without honor.
Jaime, you whisper to Brienne. My name is Jaime.
***
You are a Lannister.
You will always be a Lannister, a lion of the Rock, the eldest son of the mighty Tywin, who died in the midst of a nighttime shit. You may be the Lord of Casterly Rock, though not a whisper of that has passed Cersei's lips; you think she means to keep that title for herself, and you do not much care, for that is the least of her sins. In your heart, you know that neither of you will leave King's Landing alive.
You no longer sleep in the White Sword Tower, for you no longer wear the white cloak. Cersei has you in a chamber in the Tower of the Hand, high above the sea, from which no succor will come. The room is hung with scarlet and gold, and there are lions everywhere, for you are a Lannister. Always.
You dream you are whole. When you look down, your hand is there, long and browned by the sun, with the small white scars you earned long ago in the training yard at Crakehall. You can feel the calluses, rough on your fingers and your palm, and the weight of your sword. You dream that you fought for Tyrion, and won, and soothed Cersei’s anger by proving that your brother did not kill your son. You dream that your father yet lives, and loves all his children, and even in your dreams you know this last is impossible. You wake to the dull throbbing of of your stump, and curl your ghostly fingers into a fist.
Don’t ask me to betray my own house, you begged Brienne at Riverrun. But your house is doomed, betrayed by the cruelty and folly of its children. By you, and by Cersei, and by Tyrion, and most of all, by your father.
If Brienne asked you now, you would leave the lions, and the gold, and the Rock. But she is far away, with the wolves in the North.
She would never ask.
***
You are Cersei's brother. You were her lover, and the father of her children.
Your children are all dead, your sweet daughter, your weak, well-meaning son, and your monstrous first-born, all dead because your father and your sister wanted Lannister blood on the throne.
Cersei has what she has always wanted: to be a Queen without a King. She has not asked you back to her bed since you returned from Riverrun. Power excites her far more than you ever did, and for that you are grateful to all the ruined gods who once stood in Baelor’s Sept.
It is Brienne you dream of now, the supple lines of her, golden in the light as she rose from the bath at Harrenhal, so angered by your cruel words that she forgot she was naked. Her small breasts were so pale you could see the faint blue veins etched under her skin, and her nipples were rosy pink, hardening in the cool air. In your dream, you take them in your mouth, lick and suck until she moans for you, and your cock hardens. When she wraps her long legs around you, you spill against the silken sheets, and wake to the smell of sweat and sex, and the memory of joy.
***
You are Cersei’s prisoner.
You wear no chains; no iron collar chafes your neck, but you are her prisoner nonetheless. A knight of the Kingsguard stands outside your door, day and night, and follows you wherever you go in the Red Keep. For your protection, sweet brother, Cersei told you. At least your guards are human, though you do not know these men. The monster who was once Gregor Clegane is never far from his mistress, rotting flesh clad in gold and snowy white.
When next you dream of Brienne, she wears the armor you gave her, dented now, but still as blue as her eyes. Dark blue, you told Tobho Mott who made it, as blue as sapphires, as hard as diamonds.
I know there is honor in you, she says. I’ve seen it myself.
I am alone, you tell her. One man with one hand. They’ve even taken my sword away, not that I could use it.
You can find a way to do what you were meant to do, Brienne replies. At Harrenhal, you saved me from the bear. You took Riverrun without bloodshed to keep me from harm.
Is there honor in killing my sister?
Her lips quiver, but she is silent.
No matter, for you know the answer. Cersei has done what Aerys only planned to do; a thousand men, women, and children died in the Great Sept, and others die every day she sits upon the Iron Throne, for speaking their minds, for whispering their secrets, for having thoughts at all.
Is any other king different? Robert came to power on the bones of good men, and Aegon’s dragons burned thousands on a field of fire. I did not know Cersei was capable of such cruelty; I did not want to know. Now that you do, you must stop her.
The price is little enough: three men's lives and one woman's, to dam a river of blood.
***
You will be Tywin’s son in this, defend your weaknesses, find your strengths. You cannot fight the Mountain-That-Was, and with him by her side, Cersei is untouchable. It is another lash on your soul to think that you never protested when she put him on the Kingsguard. I was weak, and foolish, you think. And Tommen, and and Lancel, and my uncle, and the Tyrells, and the Seven Kingdoms all paid the price.
So you must play this game of cyvasse as well as any master, every move planned a dozen steps ahead, every countermove foreseen. Your sister considers you no more capable of plotting than the jester who capers in his motley; she must continue to believe you blind, and fondly compliant.
First, you will lead a life of such unimpeachable meekness that your guard will think you tamed into impotence. Your golden hand is no match for a sword, but you can knock an unsuspecting man unconscious with it, and once a man is down, it is easy to slit his throat.
After you take your guard’s armor and sword and cloak, you will find Qyburn and force him to tell you what can kill the dead; then you will kill the unchained Maester so he cannot raise another monster or put another mad Queen on the throne.
Last of all, you will cast off your borrowed white cloak, and go dressed in red and gold to your sister in the great throne room, which you have avoided all these weeks. You will go down on your knees before her, kiss her hand with all the humility you can muster, bow your head, and mouth her empty titles. Then you will ask her to walk with you, to examine the heads of your most recent enemies, and take pleasure in their downfall. This she will do without question, for it is a pastime dear to her.
When you reach the farthest edge of the battlements, you will bring her with you down to the waters of the bay. It will be a long fall into the shadows, longer than the boy's, at Winterfell. At its end, you and Cersei will meet the Stranger. Together.
Rejoice, you tell that shrouded god. I will cheat you no longer.
***
The night before, you dream again of Brienne.
Wait, she whispers. Wait for me.
***
You rise when it is still dark, and sit at the long window to watch the waters of the Bay brighten on the dawn of your last day.
As the sun rises, you see instead, spread out on the carpet of blue-green water, white sails clustered in their hundreds. Banners whip in the wind: the sun and spear of Dorne, the roses of Highgarden, the krakens of the Iron Islands; the largest banner is night-black, with a three-headed red dragon at its center. It has not flown in Westeros since the day your golden sword was crimsoned with Aerys Targaryen's blood. But that is not what makes your breath come short and your heart stutter in your chest.
Above the ships, three dragons - emerald, cream, and sable - swoop and dive and roll, glittering in the first rays of the rising sun. For a moment, you marvel at their beauty, their power, and their grace, and then you tremble, for you have remembered: there is still wildfire all over the city, left by Aerys, augmented by Tyrion and Cersei, and now there are dragons come with tongues of flame. Fire and blood. The city will burn, along with all those who live within its walls, the guilty alongside the innocent.
Burn them all, you remember. Daenerys will rule over bone and ash unless you act swiftly. A few changes to the plans you have carefully laid should suffice. You will kill your guard, and Qyburn, so his plausible lies do not convince another ruler. But you will leave the thing that was Gregor Clegane to the cleansing fire of Daenerys's dragons, for Tyrion once told you that dragonfire will kill anything.
And you will not go to Cersei in the Throne Room; instead, you will open the gates of King’s Landing and the Red Keep to the Dragon Queen, and thus, you will save the city and its inhabitants for a second time. Brienne would approve, though most likely she will never know.
It will cost your life, for Targaryens have never been quick to forgive, any more than Lannisters. That does not matter. It will cost Cersei’s crown, and her life as well, though you know it is the crown she clings to more fiercely than to life or love. That pains you no more. Your children, whose presence might have weakened your resolve, are long past the vengeance of any mortal. That is a wound that will not heal, but you will not bear it much longer.
I wish I could have seen you again, you tell Brienne, before you square your shoulders and call for your guard, and walk out to meet your fate.
You are Jaime Lannister, and you know at last what you were meant to do.