"I am sick of being careful. The Targaryens wed brother to sister, why shouldn't we do the same? Marry me, Cersei. Stand up before the realm and say it's me you want. We'll have our own wedding feast, and make another son in place of Joffrey."
- George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords, Jaime VII
X-X-X-X-X
Cersei turned away from the man who had once been her own image, her own self, who was now a man she hardly recognized. For a few long moments, as she straightened her skirts, she studied the flickering candles that had been far enough away from their coupling to remain upright. In the dancing of the flames, she could almost see her child's face turning dark, the way his fingers clawed at the tender flesh of his throat, drawing blood as he struggled and failed to draw breath...
"Cersei," her twin asked in a low serious voice.
Slowly, she turned and faced him.
"I don't want another son!" she hissed to him, feeling his seed drip down her leg. "I want my son – our son."
Jaime reached out, the arm of his sleeve flapping uselessly against his stump, and Cersei recoiled.
"Cersei," he said once more, bringing his useless arm back to his side and taking a step towards her.
She felt the coppery scent of blood hit her nose and drew her eyes up to his.
"I can't bring him back," he whispered sadly.
With agonizing slowness, she felt her face crumple and the inevitable flow of tears began to fall down her cheeks. Without realizing what she was doing, she found herself in her twin's arms, searching for the comfort she had found there so often. His body, the match of hers, still fit to her curves, despite his gaunt state. Her fists beat futilely on his chest, and a low, keening noise escaped her lips.
"Joff," she moaned into Jaime's shirt, clutching at him.
He raised his left hand to her hair and slowly stroked the silky strands between his fingers. Suddenly, Cersei pulled back and stared imploringly at him through eyes puffy from grief. "We need to try."
He stared uncomprehendingly at her.
"Joffrey, we need to bring him back!"
"There's nothing," he started to say, trying to pull her back into his embrace.
"No!" she exclaimed, wrenching herself away from him and kneeling in front of the body of their son, whose face was still a mottled purple. "I've heard of things – whispers. There are those who can -"
"Cersei," he repeated again, kneeling beside her. "What is done cannot be undone. All that you've heard, the things people say, doesn't actually work."
"We have to try!" she begged, her voice was raw with emotion. Then she stared up at him once more, with the look in her eye he could never deny, and he knew he not say no to her now.
"We will," he agreed as she grasped his remaining hand in hers and they knelt silently before the body of their child.
X-X-X-X-X
Cersei stood in the doorway of the apartment of the Master of Whispers, clutching the frame in the early morning light. As her shadow reached in, the sole inhabitant looked up from his work.
"Your grace," Varys said in a gentle tone, rising from the table he had been sitting at. Several papers with notes and drawings scattered the surface. He eyed her more deferentially than he usually would, with an expression that almost look like sympathy etched on his face.
"Lord Varys," she responded, her voice hoarse and deep with grief.
Without a word, he pulled out a chair and gestured for her to sit, then stepped away to pour some wine. She dismissed this with a gesture.
"My son," she said, looking him dead in the eyes.
"A terrible tragedy-"
"I need him back." Cersei stared at him with almost dead eyes, not allowing his gaze to leave hers for an instant."
"Your grace," he said once more, softening his voice yet again, "I do not understand."
"You have resources at your command, you know who comes and who goes. Surely you know of someone who can raise my son."
For several seconds, the eunuch considered the woman sitting before him. Usually pristine, her clothing was torn and dirty, her hair tangled, and her face puffy from tears. This in itself was to be expected. However, in her eyes, he saw a cold, hard determination, an unwillingness to accept defeat.
"I will do anything."
It was the closest he had come to hearing her beg for anything, and knew in that instant, if he did not comply, his head would be decorating a spike in King's Landing.
With deliberate slowness, the Master of Whispers stood and shuttered the windows, then sat once again across the table from her. She had not moved from her position and did not react with the sudden dismissal of light.
"I cannot promise anything," he began, "but I have heard stories of a woman in Flea Bottom has been said to possess certain...powers."
"Bring her to me," she responded flatly.
"It is not that simple," he said delicately, raising his hands and clasping them together. "The woman is unable to leave her bed, much less her house. She had not left for twenty years. If you want to seek her help, you must go to her."
Cersei rose with an elegance that did not match her haggard appearance. "Bring me to her."
"I must have time to arrange this."
"Tonight, at night fall," the queen commanded, leaving no room for argument, then stepped quietly through the door as quickly as she had appeared.
Uttering a half-remembered prayer to the Seven, one he had not said since he was a boy, Varys summoned one of his little birds.
X-X-X-X-X
Cersei pulled the black cloak closer around her and stepped closer to Jaime. The hours she had spent in the sept, washing Joffrey's body with oils and trying to ease the ravages done to his throat seemed endless. The entire time, her twin had stood watch, never coming closer, but never leaving her side. She could tell he thought her mad, but she would do anything to bring her boy back.
A mother would do anything for her children.
When the time came, a waif appeared at the entrance to the sept, and she knew immediately to follow him. Grimly, she and Jaime covered themselves in cloaks and followed the child through twisted paths, through alleys that smelled of refuse, past onlookers who did not spare them a second glance. Looking twice in Flea Bottom could mean death.
Finally they came to a hovel with a door that may have once been red, but was a faded and scratched brown. As quickly as the waif had appeared it disappeared into the night, no doubt to report this exploit to Varys.
For the first time, she froze with fear. Her brother looked at her, then stepped forward, mind made, and knocked thrice on the door.
Long seconds passed, until a wizened voice bade them enter from within.
The room was dark and smelled of long sickness – festering flesh and spoiled herbs, air that had been breathed too many times. The sparse furnishings were barely illuminated by the insufficient light of a single candle, burning low on the far side of the room. It took several moments for their eyes to adjust, and, at first, all they could see was the faint glint of light on eyes that seemed too black and large to exist.
Like a hand from a grave, the person in the bed beckoned them closer.
"A child is lost." The voice that emitted from the figure on the bed seemed inhuman, a voice from someone who had been dead for decades.
"Our son, Joffrey," the mother began to say, but was silenced by the faint but firm croak from the woman in the bed.
"This child can no longer be in this world."
"You have not even seen-"
The slow movement of the hand belonging to the mysterious woman served as a far more efficient means to hush the queen than anything else ever had.
"I know," the woman croaked simply, then took a long, rattling breath and was silent for what felt like a lifetime.
The father of the dead boy took a careful step forward, not certain if he wanted to check if the woman was yet alive, or if he wanted to end her life.
"If your desire is true, you may be able to have your boy together."
"Anything," Cersei whispered, grabbing Jaime's arm as she stepped closer. The air stirred in her skirts, making the flame of the candle dance and almost extinguish.
"It will be different...another world...and there are sacrifices."
"What must we do?"
"In three hours times, bring me the hair of the father, the mother, the child. Blood of the three. The fire that burns wild. Magic steel. A sacrifice."
For the first time since they entered the dank room, Jaime spoke. "What kind of sacrifice?"
"Three hours..." was the only response he received.
Then, with a small pfft the flame extinguished, and they were plunged into complete darkness. The crone spoke no more.
Without a word,Cersei grabbed Jaime's remaining hand and dragged him out the door.
"Cersei," he hissed, not wanting to draw attention. "I do not like the sound of this."
She whipped around, hair flying even after her body had stopped its movement. "Would you not do anything to save your son?"
He said nothing, and saw the rising fury in her eyes.
"For the love you bear for me, for our child, for your own miserable life, listen to me," she commanded, ice running through her very words. "Joffrey is all that matters to me – our first born. We will do everything in our power to bring him back."
"The woman said he could not be in this world."
"I will go wherever I must to be with him again."
For another instant, he debated, but knew that he had been apart from his love for too long, needed to be beside her and been unable to touch her, unable to see her."
"Yes."
"Now, go to the vaults and retrieve a bottle of wildfire, then go to Joff and get the sword that is with him. I will meet you there."
"And...the sacrifice?"
"That is my task."
Her face once again giant and pale, she hurried once more down the muck and filth of the road, not noticing how it clung to the hem of her cloak.
X-X-X-X-X
Two hours later, Cersei stepped through the door to the sept, looking strained and defiant. The refuse of Flea Bottom still clung to her clothing, which clung to her legs and impeded her movements, but she gave it no notice. Without a change in expression, she pulled several vials from a satchel she carried and extended them.
"Hand me the sword," she said quietly, and took the proffered blade in her hand. Taking a breath, she sliced her palm and flexed it, letting the blood drip inside one of the bottles, until she was satisfied and stoppered it.
"What of the sacrifice?" he asked again, hesitantly, as she wiped the blade dry on her ruined cloak.
"It will be there."
With a fierceness he had missed sorely, she grabbed his hand and pulled it to her. Closing his eyes, he prepared for a kiss, but was rewarded only with a sharp slash on his forearm. A fearful chill ran though him as his own blood dripped from his flesh. He had fought in countless battles and melees, laughed at death a hundred times, but this...there was something sinister about this.
He was hardly aware when she stopped gathering his blood, but was jostled to reality when she used the still-bloody blade to shear the hair from his beard, depositing it into another bottle.
Then, with a tenderness he seldom had seen in his sister, she knelt before the bloated corpse of their son and tenderly stroked his head. With precision, she cut a lock of hair from the back of his head, where it would not be noticed, and gently rolled up his sleeve, then drew a long cut down his forearm. Clotted black blood slowly oozed from the cut, and the smell of death pervaded the room more strongly than it had before.
Without a care to the paste that had once been the lifeblood of her child, Cersei grabbed a hank of her hair and tore the Valyrian steel blade above her hand.
"It is time we go," she stated, placing her collection of bottles into the satchel as she again cleaned the blade on her skirts.
With the tinkling of glass and the smell of death, the mother pressed one last kiss on her son's head, then turned and left, her brother following behind.
A waif once again met them and led the way, but this time did not disappear once they arrived. Instead, the child opened the door and went to stand quietly in the corner.
A small round table now sat in the middle of the room, scratched and scorched, tilting badly to one side. A bundle was laid underneath. A new candle was lit and sitting on the round table, far brighter than the one that had burned previously.
The woman with inhuman black eyes made a gesture with her withered hand, and the waif responded, stepping up to the mother and father.
"The hair, m'lady," the child asked, staring wide-eyed at Cersei.
It was a mark of how desperate she was that the queen did not react to this lesser title, and instead handed over the bottles containing the pale hair from her family.
The waif set the strands of hair in a pattern on the tabletop, surrounding the candle, making swirls in some sort of patten. With a noise from the crone in the bed, the child stopped and looked to Cersei again.
"The blood of life."
Again, she reached into the bag and retrieved the vials, and, shaking, handed them over. The waif drew patterns on the swirls of hair with a piece of straw, strange patterns in a language neither recognized. The blade was placed just so amidst the gore, and the clay container holding the wildfire was carefully placed as well.
As the waif looked to the bedridden woman, she began to sing. The words were not in a language that could be found on earth. There seemed to be no reason to the changes in pitch, and it make Cersei's flesh crawl, and Jaime's bones ache. The room grew shadowy as dark figures seemed to dance around, heedless of the boundaries of walls. Whispers from nowhere began to emerge, speaking strange words, hissing disapproval, chanting, engulfing the senses.
As the noise reached a fever pitch, the waif grabbed the sword and stabbed the clay container so hard the blade pierced the table. Instantly, the table was engulfed in greedy flames, darting up to the ceiling, but never leaving the boundaries of the hair and blood. The mother reached out and grasped the hand of her lover as a fiery serpent lashed out at her from the blaze. Jaime tried to pull her back, as if to protect her from the specter, but she stood strong.
Then, as if being controlled by a force other than herself, she removed her hand from her brother's and grasped the red-tinged sword, now glowing green in the flames, and slowly, deliberately reached down to the bundle on the floor Jaime had all but forgotten in the spectacle surrounding them. A small hand fell from the cloth surrounding the bundle, and he saw a shock of pale hair and a small, familiar face that was instantly soaked in sticky blood. He felt a pain run though him as the life dripped away from his youngest child onto the green fire that grew ever higher.
The last thing he remembered, the world exploded in a wave of emerald.
X-X-X-X-X
As he awoke in the next morning, Jaime looked to the rich green draperies above the bed and moved his right hand, out of habit, to rub the sleep from his eyes. With a start, he felt the skin of his fingers touch his eyelids. To his side, a woman with flowing blonde hair slept peacefully.
"Cersei..." he whispered, reaching out to touch her. For the first time, he noticed a link of metal on his left hand.
With a sleepy sigh, she rolled over and, as he had, looked up to the fabric above their heads. For one moment, she was at peace, until she abruptly reached for the table at the side of her bed and picked up a stick and waved it at the window. The velvet curtains parted with her gesture, and she stared in wonder at the object she now held.
Just as suddenly as she had stilled, she swept into action, drawing a rich robe around her, and flew out the door, down the hall, past a small and disfigured creature, and through a door decorated with hissing snakes. When he finally caught up to her, she was clutching a child to her breast, whispering loving words into his ear.
He did not have to see the child's face to know it was Joffrey.
The man began to feel strange, as if there was wildfire dancing in his veins.
He saw the child she was holding had gray eyes instead of green.
He saw her face turn younger, but more haughty.
He felt a power rising within.
He felt as if a stranger was fighting everything he had know.
He was losing himself.
"Draco," he said, without knowing why.
The child looked at him with recognition.
For an instant, the smile of a young and happy child flashed before his eyes, then was gone.
"Come, Narcissa," he commanded, putting a guiding hand on his wife's shoulder.
Placing another kiss on her child's head, she complied, following her husband through the door.
For the briefest moment, Lucius Malfoy wondered why he and his wife had woken their son, when there were house elves around for exactly that reason.