Olenna Tyrell has no pretty delusions about what it means when she sees the Lannister army marching on Highgarden from her vantage point on the balcony. It means this is the last day of her life. It is the last day of House Tyrell.
She curls her fingers around the stone ledge. She's dead. They're all dead. They'll fight as well as they can, but rose thorns have nothing on a lion's teeth. They will lose. She hopes they'll leave the women alive, all the handmaids and cooks and the like. She should have thought, should have done a better job of protecting her people.
She feels a twinge of fear at what they'll do to her. They can't possibly leave her alive. She's been as brave as she could be her entire life, but the thought of pain, torture, rape...she is a woman still, and an old one at that, and she is afraid. She thinks that probably the best option would be to throw herself off the balcony right this minute, before she can lose her nerve. There's not a chance she'd survive the fall, and it would be as near to painless a death as she could hope for. It might be freeing, even, to fly through the air in her last moments. She pictures herself floating down like a great black bird in her mourning gown, staring up into the last sky she'll ever see. She clutches the ledge and tries to gauge whether she can climb upon it to jump or if she'll just have to sort of tumble over. That seems most undignified and she'd rather not, but then again she'd rather live to see Cersei Lannister die in agony, and that's not going to happen either.
Cersei...the thought of her makes Olenna's stomach twist in rage. She finds herself suddenly, fiercely glad she'd killed Cersei's vicious little bastard of a son. She had done it only for Margaery's sake, but now she's simply glad she did it because he was a monster, and because it wounded Cersei's evil soul. That notion gives her pause as she considers trying to heft her old bones up onto the ledge. If she dies now, Cersei will never know that it was she, Olenna, who took Joffrey from her. You took all of mine, she wants to tell her, but I took the first of yours and it set in motion all the others. The only other person who knew was Margaery, and she's dead. Well, and that vile climber Littlefinger, but who knows what he'd tell.
She pauses, looks down at the ground. It's so far below, but it feels welcoming. It feels like it wants her to fly to it, to end this life in its embrace. She knows she cannot. If she must go, she's going to do her best to finish this one task, to even the score against Cersei Lannister. It is the last, and only, revenge she can enact on behalf of her soon-extinct House. She knows she may never get to speak to Jaime, that an over-eager swordsman may run her through before she gets the chance. But it is a chance, whereas jumping now leaves her none. So she goes to sit and wait for the oldest Lannister son, to tell him all she knows before her life ends.
She is grateful to see it's he who finds her, not half an hour later, sitting calmly at the table and waiting. She wants to speak to him before he kills her, and not only to reveal her hand in Joffrey's death. Olenna is nothing if not curious, and people's motivations fascinate her even now, in the literal hour of her death.
He truly loves his sister, and not like a brother should. She'd known that, but it's still shocking to see it so naked on his face. She wants to feel revulsion (and she does a bit), but she's so tired and heartsick now that mostly she just feels sad over the waste of it all, the waste of this man. He should have married well, had children he could claim, clever, kind children. (Tommen and Myrcella had been, may they have peace, and Olenna knows it is because they were more their father than their mother. But still, he could never feel or express the pride in them that he must have wanted.)
He'd had to hold himself back from loving them true, and she understands the pain of that a bit. She could never allow herself to let anyone know how deeply she'd loved her family, because it could be seen as a weakness. She hoped they knew, though. Especially Margaery, whom she'd loved best of all. She'd loved her family to a one...her husband, dim though he was. He was funny, sometimes. He loved her, respected her, recognized she was by far the cleverer of the two of them and so let her have her way in all things. Her portly, ridiculous son, who despite anything else was always still the sweet, chubby cheeked baby she'd so loved. Her foppish grandson, too fond of clothes and men but intelligent enough, and sweet and good. But beautiful, clever Margaery had been the future of the house because she was so like Olenna herself, with one substantial bonus...she had Olenna to teach her all she knew. Olenna had had to learn herself.
Oh, her poor lost family. Thinking of them, she can barely blame Cersei anyway, for making her way with her cunt. Hadn't she herself stolen Luthor Tyrell from right under her sister Viola's nose?
Viola was the pretty one but she, Olenna, was clever. She could read people the way Viola never could. She knew how to get to Luthor and get to him she did. It wasn't just any highborn lady who could go from a few coquettish looks to riding a man's cock like her life depended on it in a mere hour. But she could. She sneaked in to speak to him after her embroidery lesson, shyly at first, saying she was lost. Then a little bolder, a bit more flirtatious. Glancing at him sideways, a few giggles. A mention of how lucky her sister was here, a quick bite of her bottom lip there.
And then (and Luthor never quite knew how it happened) suddenly there was a meeting of lips, then his hands racing over her, and before he could remember his duty, his honor, he was buried to the balls inside of Olenna, moaning and quaking from pleasure. Olenna would later recount this to her closest friend, saying that she'd "ridden that man like he was my favorite horse, and I was escaping a forest fire astride him," and there was much truth to the matter. In any case, she'd fucked the wits out of Luthor Tyrell and there was no indication he ever recovered them. He hadn't been able to walk to the chamber pot, let alone downstairs to ask Viola for her hand. He wouldn't have even if he could have, as by then all he wanted was Olenna and more of what she'd given him.
Reflecting on it now, Olenna doesn't even know why she'd done it. Maybe to win one over her prettier sister, though the Seven knew she'd loved Viola dearly, and anyway Viola hadn't been angry at Olenna's treachery for long. (She never was a sore loser, Viola. Olenna misses her suddenly, painfully, though it's been years since her sister died of fever. Viola had shrugged off the loss of Luthor Tyrell and married a Tarly, happily enough.) Maybe it was nothing more than the whim of a 15 year old girl. She'd just known that she couldn't marry Daeron Targaryen the second she'd laid eyes upon him. He was too handsome, too strong. He wouldn't let her have her way, and anyway she never trusted a Targaryen man to not be carrying on with his sister on the sly. Not that that is a solely Targaryen failing, she thinks as she eyes the man in front of her.
It's odd, to feel sorry for a man who's in the process of murdering you. But she can't help it. She feels nothing but a detached pity for Jaime Lannister, even as she gulps down the poison he puts before her. He could have been great. He's handsome to be sure (even as her vision grays a little around the edges, he's something to look at), and one of the best natural swordsmen she's ever heard of...or had been, before he lost the hand. But there is or was a deep sense of decency to him. It's too bad his father couldn't have nurtured it, or at least seen fit to keep him away from that hellbitch of a sister of his.
Still, she muses, one doesn't make a man do anything he doesn't truly want (as she knows as well as anyone) so really all Cersei did was exploit the weakness in Jaime. It's funny, thinking of the Lannisters. The proud tall beautiful golden twins, nothing but cowardice and sneakiness and rotten spongy places beneath the surface. And then Tyrion with his scars and lechery and stunted body, but the only pure lion of them all. It's a grand cosmic joke, is what it is, and if there is an afterlife (and Tywin Lannister is in the same place she's going to) she'll be sure to laugh until she cries over it. She'll tell him he shouldn't have ignored that boy, because he was a Lannister for true. The others, not so much. That was Tywin Lannister's greatest failing, she thinks. He couldn't see the trees for the forest. That's reversed, but it's true. He saw only The Family, not the people in it. Only his golden treasure, not the pieces that made it up. Not all of them were worth what he thought they were.
She wonders where Sansa Stark-Lannister-Bolton-Stark is now exactly, and if there's ever a chance that she and Tyrion will take up the reins of their runaway horse of a marriage. She wishes she were going to be here to advise them to do so. It would unite the houses, and also it might, in time, give them as much happiness as they can hope for. They're much the same, those two. Sansa with her Tully looks and manners and frivolous dreams, all hiding a core of pure northern Stark steel. Olenna would have told her...
She's growing woozy now. She should stop thinking of the Starks, stop worrying over the living chess pieces she did so love to arrange in this life. If there's somewhere else, somewhere after, is it wrong to hope she can watch the rest of the game play out?
She's coherent enough to stare Jaime Lannister dead in the eyes and deliver the last stinging words of her life. And oh it feels good. Even though perhaps she should be trying to be pious just now, try to reflect a bit, she can't deny that the small change in Jamie's face makes her heart leap. It isn't much, just a widening of his pretty Lannister eyes when she says "not at all what I intended", but it is enough to give her a thrill of pure joy to hold onto as she slips away. "Tell Cersei" she tells him, and she knows he will. She thinks it as he turns on his heel and walks out, shaken. He will tell her, if only to prove his brother (whom he still loves, Olenna knows) is just as innocent as he always claimed.
Her breathing is going shallow now. The gray spots on the edges of her vision turning to black. She should panic, should be afraid. She doesn't. She isn't.
After all, even if there's nothing, what a relief nothing would be. She's lived so long due to sheer cleverness and game play, and it's exhausting. She's old and she's tired and she wants to rest. She's tired of the game, and tired of living with the vicious, bone deep pain of missing her dead family. If Jaime Lannister hadn't already stormed out, she might have thanked him.
Ah well, it's done now. It's all done now. She thinks of those who are still alive, who will still have to fight every single day for every single thing they want. The beautiful dragon queen, so strong but hiding so much loneliness and pain. Olenna hopes she can burn her enemies into the earth without becoming ash herself. Tyrion, who if the world is just (it isn't, she knows) will outlive the other Lannisters by decades and find happiness or contentment at least. Jon Snow, that bastard inexplicably turned king, far in the frozen north, trying to learn to lead. And why not, she supposes, he's as much Stark as any and more than some. His sister beside him, tall and red haired and stronger than she looks. Olenna heard her marriage to Ramsay was nothing but misery and pain, and it saddens her, thinking of the quiet, sweet girl Sansa had been. Scared, yet kind enough to warn Margaery of Joffrey's...predilections. And strange, bald, whispering Varys, going here and there and everywhere, always watching, always listening. He and Littlefinger are two sides of the same wretched coin, but Varys, at least, wants peace. She hopes he'll find it. She reflects on them all, wondering who will win and who will die. It's out of her hands now, and all she can do is pity them and wish them the best.
Her head is heavy now. She puts it down on the table to rest. Her last rest, probably. She can't see anything now, and it's harder to breathe but she isn't worried for some strange reason. She hears, dimly, someone dying in pain in the distance. One of her bannermen, most likely. She hopes he hurries to his rest. She sees and hears no more after that for quite some time. Then off in the distance she thinks there's something, maybe a very faint, very muffled "Grandmama!"
But that may just be a trick of dying ears, after all.