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From Pride to Pack
He’s in the training yard, trying to expend every last bit of his energy, so he might have some chance—probably futile—at sleep tonight, when he glances up, drawn by a figure appearing above him in one of the windows overlooking the yard. There Sansa stands, her pale face framed by the window, her thick hair tumbling over one shoulder in a loose braid. Silently watching him.
Of course she’s noticed. Noticed how as her time draws near he spends less and less time inside the walls of Casterly Rock. How often he is ready to fall asleep at meals, his eyes heavy with exhaustion from over exertion. How he sleeps—or pretends to—with his back turned to her even when she awkwardly tries to fit herself to him, her fingers pressing into his hip and her breath warm against his shoulder. Not even his name on her lips can make him face her.
He’s not just fighting anymore. He’s running away like a coward. But he doesn’t know how to face Sansa when he can’t decide how to face what lies ahead.
High above him Sansa touches the tips of her fingers to the wavy glass. He sheathes his sword, legs astride with each labored exhalation making puffs of white in the cold air, and stares back up at her. Through the thick glass and at this distance it is difficult to tell, but he feels as if there is a sadness about her eyes that perhaps others would not notice but which he has come to know even when she is guarding herself. The glass must be cold to the touch, chilling her, and he’s seized by an urge to shout to her to return to the hearth, but his jaw clenches tight instead.
Sansa will be delivered of their child and the time will come for them to leave. To set off for the North and Winterfell, never to return if Sansa has her way. They will take cartloads of tools, food, and mountains of furs, and the servants, guardsmen, and builders necessary to rebuild her home. They will pack everything up into trunks and inch across the frozen ground, leaving Casterly Rock behind.
There is one thing they cannot take.
Cersei.
It occurred to him one night while he watched Sansa ply her needle by candlelight, mending a hole in his tunic.
Some girl could do that, he informed her, as he carelessly propped his feet up on the table beside her and leaned his head against the back of his chair.
I’m a girl.
A serving girl, he corrected.
She dimpled her bottom lip, biting it, as she smiled at him over her mending.
I could be that too.
He laughed, his shoulders shaking, as a grin split his face. Not so much at the notion—he well knew that high born Lady Sansa could with practice disappear into whatever role she needed to play—but at the playfulness of the offer. The teasing, the lightness, the unabashed seduction made sweet by her showing him the smallness of her stitches before pulling him to bed. Sweet in a way he had known women could be in theory but not in his experience.
Things were almost easy between them. Far away from here, it might be even easier. There would be no frequent calls to King’s Landing, no Dragon Queen, no lord husband. He might have the pleasure of watching Sansa rule the North with all the gentle authority he had seen displayed here at Casterly Rock. He could serve her, serve someone who would rule with strength, resolve, and kindness. Far away, he might even show his son how to hold a sword or balance his daughter on his knee if Sansa thought it not amiss. He could see why she wanted to leave. More than just the shimmering promise of honor made the prospect seem a good one to him too.
It was quite nearly enough to make him forget his twin. It was almost as if Sansa had forgotten as well.
Until he remembered that night, as she repaired his tunic and straddled his thighs and had him feel where the babe’s back pressed against her belly. Everything since then had been wrong, had been fractured, had been a constant battle within him.
No, Cersei couldn’t come.
What were they to do? Drag her along in the baggage cart, so that they might stash her below Winterfell amongst the broken kings of the North? Was their child to grow up alongside the woman in chains who screamed out for revenge and would spew poison at every chance?
She cannot be with them. She is the past and she has no place in his future. No place in Sansa’s.
She cannot go, and yet, he will not leave her to the dragons.
There was a time when his rage burned so fiercely that he would have gladly seen the red flames lick at her skirts, but as he looks up at Sansa from the training yard, he knows that should not be the way of things. It wouldn’t be considered justice in the North, where they shall make their future. The Starks wield the sword themselves. To leave it to others is the coward’s escape.
He spares one small nod for the sole remaining representative of House Stark, a wolf without a pack, and leaves the yard, knowing with a grave finality what he must do.
It is time to stop the war.
…
It’s been months since he descended these mildewed steps, strode these dank halls, and in that time, somehow everything has become more claustrophobic than before. It is as if the walls narrow about him as he draws closer, the iron ring of keys—charmed from a lazy guard—swinging from his hand with each step.
His twin, who with each passing year has looked less his double, scrambles from her bench as he turns the corner, no regal grace to her hurried movements.
“Jaime,” she says breathlessly, as she wraps her hands around the bars.
“Move back,” he instructs her, as he fumbles with the keys to find the one that will turn the lock.
“What are you doing?” she asks, although she follows his directions and steps back until her back presses against the wall.
That alone feels wrong. Cersei always gave directions; he followed. Whatever she was is no more. Whatever he was must be at an end as well.
The lock turns with a click, and the door opens with a creak. He closes it behind him, leaving the key in the lock, as he stands within the cell that has been her home for some time now.
If she is surprised that he has unlocked her door and come inside, she doesn’t say so. The initial frenzy she displayed as he appeared before her melts away, no doubt intended to be forgotten, and the only sign that she is not fully at ease are her hands, which dance over her thin tunic. Even that disappears as she lifts her chin.
“You’ve been away. At King’s Landing?”
“I’ve been right here.”
She frowns, as if he’s given the wrong answer. It is a face he knows well. Even locked up in this cell, Jaime continues to disappoint his sister.
“Then you have no news of the Dragon Queen?”
“No.”
His hand flexes at his side. He is tired from his time in the training yard today. His muscles tight. But how much strength will it take? She is a lion, but a caged one.
“Jaime,” she says, taking a step towards him, “you must get word to Daenerys for me.”
“Must I?”
“Yes,” she says, as she inches yet closer. “I want to tell her something.”
She has all the time in the world down here to plot and scheme, and she seems prepared for this moment. Ready to make the most of it, strangely confident in her sackcloth as she approaches him. She means to be persuasive, to use whatever appeal she might still have. That she hasn’t called him stupid already is proof enough of that.
“I’m afraid she won’t want to hear from you. You and I aren’t her favorite subjects.”
“She will gladly listen when she hears what it is I have to say,” Cersei says with firm certainty, as she finally stands toe to toe with him, her hand reaching up to stroke his arm.
The arm that ends in a stump, he notices, although her eyes—as always—do not acknowledge his golden hand. If she means to convince him of something, she might at least pretend his false hand doesn’t disgust her. But it does. Everything that makes them different repulses her. The things she loved about him were just the facets of herself that she saw reflected back. A living mirror.
“Something about Sansa, perhaps?” he asks, as he slips his unwanted golden hand over her waist, a mimicry of how they once touched, both whole and beautiful.
“And threaten your lovely little family?” she murmurs with a little shake of her head. “How could I?”
He huffs, lowering his head to press against hers, forehead to forehead. They used to lie in bed as children, heads pressed together like so, a tangle of blond curls and tanned limbs, sharing the air between them.
“You must get me out of here,” she whispers, angling her head so that he might kiss her if he so desired. “You must get word to the Dragon Queen.”
He forces his eyes shut, for the desperation he sees in hers so reminds him of what he sees every morning when he wakes and stares into the mirror that it is almost enough to seduce him into believing that there is something yet between them. Some shared bond.
But that is an illusion. A dark one.
“What would you do if you were free?” he asks with a dry swallow, distracting her with words, as his good hand stiffly gropes at his side for what he knows hangs there.
“Leave for the East, Jaime. We could go together. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? No one would know us there,” she urges as her hand slides over his arm and wraps around the back of his neck, holding him to her, her nose nudging his.
Their noses are no longer the same. His was broken and bears a bump. Hers is as straight as the day they came into this world.
His fist closes over the object as his eyes open once more.
“To leave with Tommen and Mrycella. It’s too late for them if you remember.”
Both victims of Cersei’s game in which he was a willing player for much too long. He was a man grown. A knight. The Lord Commander. And he did nothing. Saved no one. He’s as guilty as she. That much they have in common and will until they last draw breath.
She leans her weight into him as if she can barely stand and her brows draw together, making him wonder if this is the true pain of loss or something rehearsed for his benefit. She loved them. Didn’t she? Once.
Her dry, cracked lips brush his chin, as she strains, “I know, Jaime. I know.”
I never even held them, he wants to say, but his tongue feels thick in his mouth.
“Let’s leave together, Jaime. Leave tonight. We’re the same, you and me. She isn’t you. Why else would you come here, Jaime? Why would you take the key to my cell?”
“I’m conducting a survey of the castle,” he responds flatly.
Her nails are ragged and unkempt and they painfully bite into the flesh at the nape of his neck. It’s a sharp reminder: she is caged, but she is still fierce. Nothing was ever gentle with her—neither word nor touch. He was not gentle either. Didn’t imagine he could be. Biting, scratching, tugging—that is the way of a lion.
Things could have been different for his sister. If she’d had a husband that loved her, if too much power hadn’t fallen in her lap, if their father had been a different man. Jaime has to believe that. If not, there’s no hope for him either.
“Sansa Stark hates us, Jaime. She hates us both. We’re both her prisoners,” she hisses. “Don’t be a fool, while she bides her time. She’s a Stark.”
She is. She might not look it—she favors her mother—but she is without question a Stark. She’s brave. Much braver than anyone would have ever given her credit for when she was just a pretty little bird at court, buffeted about by the forces around her. The steel, that strength that lies beneath the surface is what makes her a Stark as much as the blood that flows in her veins, and although Littlefinger tried to twist her into a creature of his own fashioning, that stubborn steel refused to break. She only had to be reminded of who she was.
“There’s no point in hating the Starks,” he says calmly, as if he might convince her of this fact, so that she might end her hopeless raging.
It does no good. He knew it wouldn’t, but he had to try, so she might have a moment of peace, free of hate and venom before the end.
The heft of it feels heavy in his hand.
Her voice rises, as she is contradicted, “The Starks are our enemies. She will never forget what we did to them.”
Cersei’s eyes go wide, as the blade of the dagger slips between her ribs. He didn’t need to look to know where to place it. He has lost his right hand, but the knowledge of killing will never leave him. There’s the same resistance, the familiar feel of the blade cutting through skin, muscle, and tissue. The same flood of warmth as blood spills out over the handle of the dagger, coating his hand in a slick stream.
“I can’t ever forget either, sweet sister,” he says, as he presses a kiss to her brow.
He allows her to slump into his shoulder, her hands clinging at his tunic as she feebly attempts to remain upright. He won’t let her fall, he will hold her until it’s over, he thinks, as his hand, free from the dagger lodged in her side, finds her once long hair and threads his fingers through what is left.
She laughs, a rattling, choking sound, as blood bubbles from her mouth to stain his tunic red.
Cersei used to say they would leave this world just as they came into it—together. She is slipping away, her heart thudding against his chest, relentlessly pumping blood out of her gaping wound, but she is not leaving this world alone: her other half is going with her. The Lannister twins, alike in splendor and cruelty, die here beneath Casterly Rock.
She speaks only one word: “Valonqar.”
He shushes her softly. It won’t be long.
…
He finds Sansa alone, and as he enters the room where she sits, her eyes flit to him and her mouth opens just a space. He must be a sight: he is covered in blood and so weary in spirit and body that his shoulders slump and his head is bowed.
“Jaime!” she says, finding her feet, the roundness of her body clearly evident beneath her skirts as she hurries forward several paces.
There are things he means to say, something other than your prisoner is dead, which is what he had barked at the guard, as he tossed the keys back at the dumbstruck man. No words come to mind, although he frowns to think that no one had seized him, seeing him wild and covered with blood and advancing on their lady’s chambers. He’ll advise her to have them all replaced.
In place of words, he holds the dagger out before her like an offering, the blood already drying darkly on the blade.
“Gods, Jaime, are you hurt?” she asks, her hands mapping his torso, as if searching for wounds.
She has not seen him this bloodied since the Vale, and her reception of him now is rather different than it was then.
Her panic forces him to speak, “I’ve carried out the sentence myself, as the Starks would have it done.”
“The sentence?” Sansa repeats back, as her hands tighten about his waist.
“Justice,” he says, as the dagger clatters to the ground, dropped from his hand, which suddenly can no longer make a fist. “Cersei Lannister.”
Once his sister, his twin. Now no longer.
Sansa wavers. Her body sways, and he only just gets his arms around her as her knees give way. He tries with everything in him, but there is not enough strength left in his arms to hold her up, and they both sink to the ground, her blue skirts crumpling around them. Her fingers twine in his bloodied tunic, clutching him close as her body shakes and a strangled sob breaks loose.
Cersei was given to Sansa by the Dragon Queen to do with as she pleased in return for Sansa and the North’s submission. He didn’t know what to expect in reaction to his rash actions, but if he thought she would be angry that he had usurped her privilege to keep his twin alive and confined or that she might cruelly smile in victory, he was clearly wrong.
“I thought you would never…” she tries to say twice, each time her purpose dissolving in sobs, before he presses his hand over her middle, trying to soothe her and remind her of the babe inside.
She looks up, her pale face blotchy and her eyes swimming in tears. She releases her grip on his tunic to touch his cheeks. She pulls back her hands and he sees what it is that drew her touch: tears. There are tears wetting his cheeks and now her soft hands. Tears and blood and a rivulet of snot that she wipes away with her long sleeve.
“She couldn’t come with us,” he says simply.
Sansa nods and wraps her arms around his neck, and he pulls her into him as close as he can with her belly between them.
“I thought you would never let go,” she manages around hiccups, and it is enough.
He understands.
Relieved. Sansa is relieved.
He had thought it would feel as if his heart had been carved out of his chest, but he was wrong—he is always wrong—for he is relieved as well.
“It’s over,” he whispers to her, stroking her thick hair. “It’s over.”
THE END