He's pulling out his sword, his foot on the corpse when the doors suddenly slam open. Grimacing, Jaime frees his longsword with a mighty heave, pivoting to meet the new enemy. But instead of Targaryen loyalists, he finds himself looking down at his father's bannermen.
"The castle is ours, ser, and the city." Lord Roland Crakehall respectfully avoids looking directly at the bloody sight crumpled at Jaime's feet. He is a sensible man. No surprise - in his boyhood, Jaime had squired for Roland's father, the late Lord Sumner Crakehall.
"Tell them the Mad King is dead," Jaime orders. Ignoring the corpse sprawled haplessly on the steps, he descends from the Iron Throne. Each step an exercise in keeping his composure. He's incredulous himself at how steady his voice sounds to his ears. "Spare all those who yield and hold them captive." His father's men hasten to obey his commands.
"Shall I proclaim a new king as well?" There's a hopeful look in the eyes of the Westerland men. Would they see their liege lord finally seated on the Iron Throne?
But his father could never be king. Not when House Lannister had stood alone in the war. And Jaime would never declare for Robert Baratheon. Nor for Viserys Targaryen or even Aegon Targaryen - they were both borne from the same bad seed.
"Proclaim who you bloody well like." Shrouding his true ambivalence with scorn, Jaime strides out of the throne room, never looking back. He had not expected his father's men to enter the Red Keep so swiftly. Has Maegor's Holdfast already been breached?
His question is answered when he catches sight of armoured soldiers scaling the towers. Gritting his teeth, Jaime clears his way through the moat - unopposed by the Targaryen loyalists and Lannister forces alike in his golden armour and white cloak.
Princess Elia is standing alone in the nursery, her infant son in her arms and her back to him when he enters. She's staring at the window, looking much like a young child, straining to listen but too frightened to check for the monster.
When steel gauntlets appear on the window sill, gripping the ledge with huge fingers, Elia screams. "Jaime!" She couldn't have known that he is behind her; she is only screaming the name of the last Kingsguard in the city.
"Where is Princess Rhaenys?" Jaime sweeps into the room, sword still drawn. The guards posted at Elia's door are gone. He could only presumed they had died earlier in the fighting.
There's no time for relief. Elia swallows, staring at him with wide, black eyes. "Your father's men are plundering the city." Her eyes flicker back to the window, clutching her son tighter.
Jaime seizes her hand, and they run out of the room together. "And I've commanded them to show mercy," he grounds out impatiently. His heart is beating - dazed, fearful, and exhilarated. "Your good-father is dead. We need to find your daughter."
"She ran out before I could stop her," Elia answers. She's slowly becoming animated again as the shock wears off. "I think she's gone to hide in her father's rooms." The floor above the nursery. Another flight of stairs away.
Jaime curses. "We have to hurry. There are soldiers already climbing to the top of the tower - they belong to my father. Keep close." One hand holds Elia's, and he leads the mother and child up the stairs. There are no soldiers left this high in the tower - Targaryen or Lannister.
The doors to Rhaegar's rooms burst open violently. Ser Amory Lorch, a veteran from his father's campaign against the Reynes and Tarbecks, is already reaching under Rhaegar's bed, digging blindly. He's wielding a dagger, slashing violently.
Elia is screaming.
The other Lannister men falter at the sight of Jaime. Most are still climbing in through the window. Jaime never gives a word in warning. Stepping forward, he seizes the older knight by the shoulder and throws him away from the bed. The short knife clatters to the ground. "Your fath-" Jaime thrusts his longsword through a gap in Lorch's breastplate before the man can get another word out. The fresh blood soaks the steel, coating over the first layer of Targaryen blood underneath. He feels like he's killing Aerys again.
Panting, Jaime retrieves his sword, pushing the dead knight into the wall with a violent shove. He doesn't look at the body again. Instead he turns his green stare into his father's men, three common foot soldiers from the look of their attire. "I'll assume that my father's ordered you to take the princess into your custody," he remarks sharply. "There is no need for that, I've already secured Princess Elia and her children. Let my father know the Mad King is dead and the city has fallen."
Elia is too distraught to catch his words. Out of the corner of his vision, the Dornish princess bends to her knees, coaxing her daughter out from under the bed with tearful words. What might have become of Rhaegar's wife and children had Jaime remained to guard the Mad King's corpse?
Elia looks at him with ambivalence now. His father has betrayed the king, but he has saved her and her children. Jaime doesn't like to wonder how the scales may tip when she discovers that her good father was not slain on Tywin's orders but at Jamie's own initiative. Instead, the young knight remembers Queen Rhaella and how he had been forced to guard her chambers night after night in stoic silence while the king took his rights. He remembers how Aerys had refused to hold Rhaenys, and hopes that Elia remembers as well.
He's at least impressed by how well Elia holds her composure in the presence of the Lord of the Casterly Rock. His lord father not kind to Elia the last time they had met, when he had rejected her mother's proposal to marry he to Elia or Cersei to Oberyn and instead offered newborn Tyrion for the Dornish princess.
Eddard Stark is kinder to Elia. He abides by Jaime's declaration of intent to remain with Elia and her children, but only begrudgingly and only after Elia pleads on his behalf.
But Lord Stark looks at Jaime with his cold northern eyes, and sees only the blood that stains his white cloak. And Jaime knows that men like Stark will never understand the decisions he's made. They could not comprehend anything more nuanced than what basic, blind honour demands. Jaime bitterly nurses this thought while he stands guard over Elia's apartment with a pair of Stark soldiers. He lets the hurt and sense of injustice fester as a wound and determines to keep silent - at least he may manage to keep one oath from the brotherhood yet.
When Robert arrives - King Robert now - he smirks at the sight of Jaime. "Kingslayer!" he greets him in his booming voice.
With Robert's arrival in the capital, the Lannister flags are lowered from the Red Keep and Lord Stark rides south to lift the siege of Storm's End. But Jaime maintains his silence. Robert is even more fool than his frigid friend. He stands guard in all his waking hours. He doesn't entirely trust his father's men and he trusts Robert's even less.
Elia calls him into her chambers once, when her children are settled in the adjoining bedroom. It's an oddly intimate scene, one that recalls memory of Cersei from the night she seduced him into the Kingsguard - the sight of her fair face, the scent of her golden hair, and the soft touch of her maiden skin. Jaime half-thinks that the Dornish princess is scheming to seduce him into some new machination, but Elia only takes his hands and pleads. She pleads for the lives and safety of her children.
"I don't know your lord father but I suspect that his men would have killed my children and I," she confesses. He silently agrees. "I do not know the Usurper's character - " She is insistent on calling the man who made a widow of her such, but has yet to call Robert by that new moniker to his face. That's for the best. Jaime doesn't know if even he or Barristan the Bold could defend her from the Usurper's rage. " - but I know that as long as my children breathe he can never sit on the Iron Throne comfortably." She squeezes his hand, her own so soft and small. "I know you slain King Aerys - " Elia meets his eyes, her gaze hard despite her soft voice. " - but he was cruel and mad, and I had no love for him." Her good father had kept her a prisoner and hostage in the final months of the war - just as the Usurper did now. "Ser Jaime, I put my trust in you out of everyone in this city. I can only pray that my trust is not misplaced. Please keep your oaths, defend my children. They may be the last Targaryens left in the world."
Jaime has not been given a new white cloak. He wears his stained cloak before King Robert's hastily assembled court. Princess Elia and her children remain in Maegor's Holdfast. His father is not present - he has returned home to Cersei - but Tywin Lannister's presence is still felt in the tense room. The dragon might have been slain, but the golden lion of Casterly Rock has just awoken. The rest of the realm cannot afford to continue bleeding.
The new Hand - the fourth this same single year - proposes that the king brings the Westerlands fully back into the fold by wedding Lord Tywin's daughter. This will make Cersei queen - but not a dragon queen, if that should make any difference to his sister or their father.
But Stark keeps calling for his head. He acts as if Jaime had killed his father and not the man who murdered his true father and brother in a fit of madness.
His only brother from the Kingsguard to survive the rebellion is Ser Barristan the Bold. Upon his return to King's Landing, he is pardoned by Robert Baratheon and swears a new oath to the Usurper. Jaime only has to look upon Ser Barristan once to know that his image in the older knight's eyes is already forever tarnished. But no one else judges Ser Barristan for betraying his king and swearing new oaths.
Everyone wants Jaime to wear black. If that should come to pass, he thinks he might rather see his own head chopped off. Beheading seems to be a more fitting consequence of oath breaking and kingslaying than the Wall - which was still a life no matter how wretched it was.
But true to his nature, Jon Arryn always advocates caution. And of his golden twins, Tywin Lannister loves his son, his heir despite all of the vows Jaime's sworn. Cersei as queen would not be enough - not by half. Not after all of the slights Tywin's suffered in House Lannister's name.
So Robert kills two birds with one stone. A fortnight after he weds Cersei, he orders that his brother should secure the Reach by wedding a Florent girl once she flowers, and that his new good-brother should wed Princess Elia Martell to secure Dornish compliance. It's the very same match envisioned by his lady mother at the court of King Aerys from better days, reinvented this time by Jon Arryn.
Jaime mourns the loss of his white cloak. But the realisation that Cersei would finally belong to another man hurts more. He dreads the idea of a captive domestic life at Casterly Rock.
Jaime joins the honour guard to escort Cersei to King's Landing, along with every lord or knight from a major house of the Westerlands. (She looks like a sacrifice, positively enticing in the red and gold of their house.)
Their father joins the honour guard, masking his anger with a cool sheet of grim resolution as he placed a firm hand on his son's shoulder. "The Usurper thinks that this ill-thought union can end the Lannister line?" Father has that look of ice in his green eyes, the same coldness Cersei sought to emulate. "Once again, the lion's resolution is underestimated. Jaime, you will get Elia with child again - consequences be damned."
Elia remains a prisoner in her apartments in Maegor's Tower while Jaime rides home. He never has the chance, never thinks to ask Elia how she feels about their impending marriage.
"You're really going to marry him," Jaime remarks mournfully. His green eyes trace over the form of Cersei's naked back, his gaze tender and sad. He wants to commit every detail to mind before she joins her husband's court and he returns to Casterly Rock.
"Of course," Cersei scoffs. She's not facing him. She's dressing herself, to become presentable for when it is finally time for her to wear her wedding gown. "You know I don't have a choice."
"No, you don't," Jaime agrees. "But you would still marry him even if you did." His accusation is childish, but Jaime is still a youth - seven-and-ten when he cut down the Mad King.
"Are you jealous?" Cersei peeks at him from over her shoulder, her mouth mischievous. Her mouth is his, her green eyes are his. He's staring into a picture of happier days.
They had never had enough time together. Their mother separated them in childhood, his squireship took him from Cersei, and the kingsguard vows separated them again, just when they had thought they had finally won. Marriage would be the final nail in the coffin. The harder he fought it, the more painful the hurt was.
"Of course, I'm jealous." He stands up from the bed, joining her across the room in half a stride. "I love you." Jaime says this intently, as if he could will Cersei into believing him even more earnestly by the intensity of his stare alone. "We came into this world together, we belong together - that was what you told me." Giving up everything for Cersei had been easy. He would do it again, he would do it three times, four times and forever. "We could still be together - steal away on a ship right now, live out the rest of our lives in Essos, fucking and drinking."
"Life isn't a song, Jaime." Cersei turns away from him, her long gold-spun hair falling into her face. She's growing cross, impatient now. "You are the heir to Casterly Rock. What about Father? What about our little brother?"
"Father can give Casterly Rock to Tyrion. He can give Casterly Rock to our cousins - I don't care." Jaime's eyebrow quirks. "We could even take Tyrion with us, but I find it difficult to believe that you've developed such a strong affection for our little brother while I've been away."
"I haven't. But I know you love him all the same."
He wonders if Cersei does this on purpose - strings him along to coax out more sweet words of devotion. He knows he would - Cersei is enticing when she's needy for him. But she hasn't been on her knees for him, hasn't been so sweet for him since their first night together.
"I don't want to marry Elia Martell."
"But you will." Cersei says this as fact, and it comes to pass just as Robert decreed it would.
Jaime Lannister and Elia Martell are married in a quiet ceremony at the Rock. The wedding is not befitting of the golden splendor deserved of Tywin's beloved heir. Robert's court attends and leaves as soon as they see Jaime placing his cloak over Elia's shoulders.
Elia smiles graciously throughout the wedding despite it all; in another lifetime, she might have been happy to be Lady of Casterly Rock. But behind closed doors, she turns away from him, thinking he's a green boy, thinking he's still her knight, thinking he's still only there to serve and protect her.
Jaime never takes her on their marriage bed. He's truly none of the things she believes he is, but he also doesn't not want to be those things. He remembers Elia's friendship with the Sword of the Morning, the knight he had once aspired to be. He could never live up to Arthur Dayne, but he would try to be good and fair to her.
While Father continues to grumble over the fact that no new Lannister issues have been produced, Jaime spends much of his time with Tyrion. He hasn't spent so much time with his little brother since he was a boy himself, before he was sent to be fostered at Crakehall.
Tyrion will never be fostered and Father takes in no new wards. Jaime finds that it's nice to feel needed; no one else will protect his brother so it naturally falls to him.
Tyrion warms to Elia in time, although Elia remains cool around her good father. She never deigns to raise her voice against the Lord of the Rock, but her black eyes cut all the same.
Once and only once, his wife speaks of her first husband. She confesses that Prince Rhaegar had told her Lyanna was the fire but that she was all ice. Jaime finds that he can't disagree with the assessment, despite not having known the northern girl, but what he does know and hear in Elia's voice is that she had loved the dragon prince in her own way, all the same - even after Rhaegar shamed her, even after he went and died at the Trident. Like his own sister, like the Smallfolk, she loves Rhaegar.
Cersei writes to him often, always careful to refrain from speaking too explicitly. She asks after his health and father's. She tells him of all the people who bow before her in court and conspire behind her back. She tells him of how unhappy Robert's made her - how he shamed her at the wedding of Stannis and the Florent girl, and how she discovered his infidelities on Greenstone. She tells him about Joffrey, a beautiful fair-haired boy of blue eyes. She entreats him to come to King's Landing to see her and the boy; take Tyrion if he must.
Jaime writes back, first only advising her to join Robert on his hunts. His sister is as proud as the best Lannister, as proud as he, and it's only when Jaime is reading about Cersei's situation miles away that he can look at the scene objectively and cast pride aside in favour of reason. It does nothing to better Cersei's marriage by rebuking her husband. But Jaime never forgives Robert for shaming and hurting his sister. He despises the Usurper for hurting her during their couplings, but Jaime cannot be with Cersei to protect her. It breaks his heart to know that.
Against his better judgement, after long nights of ruminating on Robert's mistreatment, he rides to King's Landing. His father allows him to take Tyrion and even encourages him to take Elia.
The Dornish princess thaws, become a little livelier at the prospect of seeing her children again. She's always spoken to Jaime softly and kindly, but she seems to genuinely like him now. She's not been allowed to write to her children, although with Robert's begrudging allowance, the Spider regularly sends her reports of her children's well-being. Rhaenys is likely to marry Joffrey when they both come of age. But there are no mentions of plans for Aegon.
When they arrive at the capital, King Robert has fled into the Kingswood. He hunts for weeks at a time, and Jaime imagines that he will not see the Usurper again for a very long time.
Elia is permitted to visit her children, and Jaime accompanies his wife to the highest room of the highest tower of Maegor's Holdfast. She hugs her children desperately. Elia loves her children as much as his sister loves little Prince Joffrey.
When Jaime is summoned to Cersei's room that night, it's difficult to remember how jealous he was of Robert, how infatuated Cersei had been with the king at one time. Cersei only speaks of Robert with venom and simultaneously praises Jaime so fervently in the same breath that he feels he must have already died. She treats him with the same romantic nostalgia of the great heroes he once aspired to.
"I wanted to kill Joffrey," Cersei admits in a whisper. They lay together in the afterglow of their love-making. Her golden head is on the white pillow beside his. "I didn't want to give Robert anything, not even half of me." She speaks with no shame, only candidness. "But I couldn't find a woman to cleanse me. I couldn't trust anyone in the Red Keep - least of all Grand Maester Pycelle, for he is Father's creature. No one." Cersei sighs. "But then the midwife placed my son in my arms and I forgot all of the hate, I even forgot that he is half of Robert. He doesn't look much like him, save his eyes." She speaks a promise. "I love Joff, he's all I have now that the Dornish woman has taken you from me." Her voice drops to a despairing hush. "Why did you have to bring her here? I can't stand seeing her cling to your arm."
Jaime doesn't answer, not immediately. "She wept to see her children." He knows Cersei understands that love, he knows his sister is good. But the queen still sends him from her bed for his words, disgruntled and dark.
When he returns to his rooms, Elia is behind the door and she presses up against him with a fervent kiss. "Thank you, thank you," she murmurs like a prayer. Her hands are steady and warm, and Jaime does not find the strength in him to refuse her.
They return to Casterly Rock, their welcome worn out. Neither the king nor the queen are happy to host them longer. At the least Elia and Tyrion enjoyed the holiday. Elia hugs each of her children one last time and departs with clear, black eyes. Tyrion follows his good sister like a lost puppy.
Tyrion doesn't remember, but Jaime does. He remembers how Elia had delighted at the sight of the baby, even as disappointed as Oberyn had been that there was no monster of Casterly Rock. Elia might have even embraced Tyrion if it were not for Cersei's palpable loathing for the infant.
But Cersei is far away in King's Landing, and Elia treats Tyrion sweetly. None of it is flattery or manipulation, and Jaime allows himself to relax around the woman with no ulterior motives.
Myrcella is born and Aegon dies. Myrcella is Jaime's daughter, Cersei wants to believe. Aegon, they say, died of fever and that the Maesters had tried and failed to save him.
Elia weeps miserably into his chest, while Tyrion watches sadly. Cersei writes to him, entreating him to visit and look upon his niece.
When Jaime inquires after Aegon instead, his queen sister is affronted. Sickness is sickness. How could she be called upon to answer for the will of the Stranger?
Father gives them leave to return to King's Landing. Elia dresses in black, and Tyrion follows suit accordingly. At the least, Robert allows Aegon to interred below the Great Sept of Baelor with the rest of his ancestors.
But the same day Aegon is put to rest, King Robert formally announces the betrothal of Princess Rhaenys Targaryen and Prince Joffrey Baratheon. The little prince clings to Cersei's skirts, looking spitefully at his princess, all wild hair and blue eyes. Rhaenys, even in her young age, looks gloomy and grey.
Elia spends the rest of the day with her daughter, and Cersei summons Jaime to the nursery. Like Elia did before her, his sister nurses her children at her own breast.
Jaime remembers this room - it had looked menacing once, when his father's soldiers were climbing in through the windows. Now the room looks soft and warm, and he recalls their mother vividly, in the final months leading to Tyrion's birth.
Cersei sits at the centre of the nursery with Myrcella in her arms. She's dismissed the attendants from the room; Joffrey is in the courtyard playing at swords with Renly. In private, she asks him to hold his daughter. Alone together, Jaime imagines that in another life he had been allowed to wed Cersei and that Myrcella might have been allowed to take the Lannister name. She already looks Lannister enough - gold hair, green eyes.
Jaime takes Myrcella into his arms and says, "Aegon was poisoned, wasn't he?" The question comes out directly and flatly. "Did you arrange it?"
And Cersei answers just so. "Yes, and no."
The dragon prince is too much a liability - the king could never allow him free range at the Wall. Nor could Rhaegar's son be allowed to marry into another great house at the worst, or even at the best, remain in King's Landing and marry Myrcella and challenge his good brother.
When Jaime returns to Casterly Rock, he finds his father waiting for him.
"Why is the princess not with child?" Tywin is standing in the solar, his hands planted on the desk. The old lion stares him down. "You have one duty to your family. Elia is not so uncomely or venomous that you should dread it."
"I have done my best to do my duty to Elia and to this family." Jaime settles against the opposing wall, his posture deliberately aloof. "But you know what the maesters have been saying for years. She will die before she gives anyone another son."
"And you already know my thoughts on the matter." His father stares at him; thinks him a craven. "Are you so daft? So soft-hearted? So be it. She will give you an heir, or in failing she will give you the freedom to remarry. Margaery Tyrell is still a child but it is prudent to start early with bethronals between great houses." Marrying into the Tyrells could undermine Lord Stannis Baratheon and his new Florent wife. "Otherwise, the Lord of Oldtown has many fine daughters - you could have your pick."
Jaime shakes his head, weary of his father's needling. Decades of the same repeated lectures about legacy and duty. "You've always hated Elia." Jaime pushes himself off the wall, slowly walking towards his father. The two men glare daggers, separated by a desk. But Jaime has already backed down too many times. He has to push. "You ordered the murders of Elia and her children, didn't you?" Jaime has always despised political intrigue and covert manipulation. Treachery should have been beneath a lion's dignity. "Did you poison Aegon too?" But this one is a step too far.
Tywin snarls like a lion, not wounded but pricked. "I would have expected that you would have been more sense than to blindly believe whatever new plot your wife has accused me of."
"Elia speaks nothing of you," Jaime retorts. His voice raises in anger, vexed. "But Ser Lorch was aiming to kill during the Sack. And the Mountain had missed us only by a hair - the armour slowed his climb. And now? Now, you have as much to lose as Robert if Cersei's children's claims are challenged."
"I never ordered Elia's death," Tywin grounds out finally. "But her children are dragon seeds and we had stayed out of the fighting for too long because the Mad King held you hostage in King's Landing." His glare is imperious. "If House Lannister was to survive in the new order, we had to throw our lot behind Robert Baratheon and quick. We had to cut all ties with House Targaryen." Tywin sneers, green eyes hard. "Your sister's husband is a fool, for all of his bloodlust and violent ravings, he would never abide by publicly executing children - not when the Smallfolk call him hero, not when more others know him as a usurper."
"So you would stain our house's legacy to preserve Robert's image as a hero?"
"You already did that when you broke your vows and murdered the king you swore to protect." The reminder cuts. Jaime will never wear the mantle of Kingslayer comfortably. The shame still burrows into his dreams at night. "You should not have acted so recklessly. Ser Elys Westerling and Lord Roland Crakehall came upon the throne room while you still had your sword in the Mad King's back. If you had stopped and thought for even a moment, your white cloak would have remained clean. For Cersei, Robert would have freed you from your vows and you could have returned to Casterly Rock, unblemished." His father looks at him - furious, but not even with half the loathing he reserves for Tyrion. "Never accuse me again. Elia and her children were not killed on my orders that day, and Aegon's death was not by my hand."
Jaime holds his father's stare for a long, tense moment. Even when new problems arise, it feels that they have been fighting in the same tone for years and years. He leaves the solar, cold and angry. Eventually he finds Elia alone with Tyrion in the gardens. She holds her brother in her lap, as if he is still half his true age. They both look surprised to see him, but smile at the sight of him. Even Cersei's sweet smiles had never come so freely.
Silent, Jaime sits on the stone bench beside his wife and his heir. Inhaling deeply, he wills his heart to be as hard as the Rock itself.
I still have the poll on my profile asking about readers' preferences between past and present tenses in writing. Would be grateful if you took the time to answer that poll or you can leave your opinion in a review. I'll be returning to classes soon, but hopefully I'll still be able to find time to write and update.