This chapter was written as part of the Facebook challenge "Sur Votre 31":
- Invite : ''Protect''.
- Number of words: From 100 to 1000 words.

All the universe of Game of Thrones belongs to GRR Martin, DB & DW.

Enjoy reading!

From their earliest childhood, Jaime promises Cersei that he will always protect her.

After all, that's the way it's supposed to be: Cersei is beautiful, the most beautiful, beautiful enough to become a queen, and if she becomes a queen, then Jaime will be her knight in shining armor, always there, always ready to defend her.

That's what they play at in the gardens of Casterly Rock, under the tender eyes of their mother: each time, Cersei is the queen, and Jaime, the knight who protects her from the monsters.

They think that everything will always be as simple as that, that they will be able to live happily, together, and that nothing and no one will ever be able to stop them.

But it's all just dreams.

Time passes. Time is cruel. It destroys children's illusions, shatters their dreams, their utopias, and reveals to them the brutality of the world in which they live.

And this brutality will unfortunately prove too many times that Jaime won't always be able to protect Cersei, because it's impossible.

The first time they experience this is when Cersei sneaks into the woods with one of her friends, or the closest thing to it, and Jaime is not with her.

Jaime is not with her, and cannot protect her from the words of an old witch, words that will gnaw at her all her life, without her even being truly aware of it. In any case, what could he have done?

The second time is when their father takes Cersei by force to King's Landing, to be presented to the court, where she will constantly parade before the eyes of lords two or three times her age, like a mare to be sold to the highest bidder, to be married to the one who will pay the best price for her.

The following times are much worse than these two.

They are much worse, because Jaime is there, right there, a few meters from Cersei, and this is the first time he feels so helpless.

They are just separated by a wall, a door, a door in front of which Jaime is supposed to stand guard and behind which Cersei is being raped, no, not raped, that's not the right word, people would say, she's not being raped, it's her husband, her husband who is riding her violently, he's just asserting his rights, his privileges as a husband and a king, privileges that he claims by almost fulfilling part of the prophecy that haunts Cersei since that fateful day, since Maggy the Frog and her story of crowns, shrouds, gold, queen, valonqar, with the only small difference that it is not her little brother who fails to choke the life out of her by squeezing her white throat while her tears drown her.

Cersei is being raped, or, whatever the proper word is, subjected to what no one should have to endure, and Jaime can do nothing about it.

He could walk into the room, barge in, interrupt everything, stick his sword in the king's back, as he did with the previous one, because after all, if he could kill a king to save a kingdom, what wouldn't he kill for Cersei?

But he doesn't, because Cersei explicitly asked him not to, because she asked him not to kill Robert, not without his agreement, and he promised her, a promise that is more valuable to him than all the other oaths he may have taken together.

It is at this point that he begins to think that he will never be able to protect Cersei properly, because nothing will be able to protect her definitively.

When, years later, they run for their lives, their lives and their child's lives, Jaime thinks back to those childhood promises, promises he could never keep, and which he will fail again.

He failed to protect Cersei. To succeed, he would have had to be able to protect her from herself, from herself and from the words spoken by Maggy the Frog, words that seeped into her veins and destroyed her from the inside like poison.

He may have tried everything, but he failed.

To be able to protect her from this prophecy that was devouring her, consuming her, he should have started by protecting their children.

But Joffrey was dead, then Myrcella, then Tommen.

They were dead, and there was nothing he could do.

He could do nothing to protect Cersei from the Great Sparrow and the public humiliation of having her crown taken from her, because, even though the hair was growing back, the Atonement had taken more than her hair from Cersei, just as the amputation of Jaime had taken more than his hand from him.

The only thing that had given him hope for the success of his mission, the purpose of his life, was when he had managed to seed her, when he had managed to allow a new little lion cub to begin to grow safely in the belly of his other half.

Another child.

Another little lion cub.

A fourth little lion cub.

A fourth, when the prophecy had foretold only three.

This baby had acted as an antidote, an antidote to the poison that corroded its mother, an antidote that could have saved her, protected her.

But this miracle antidote will never see the light of day.

When they realize they're going to die, for Jaime, it's just one more failure.

He failed, he failed to protect Cersei.

When, in a last hope that maybe all is not lost, he covers her as well as he can with his own body to keep the stones from falling directly on her, to keep death from falling on her.

This last hope is a last failed attempt.

Cersei dies with him, as she had so often predicted, but too soon, much too soon.

When, years later, people will read in the White Book that Ser Jaime Lannister died protecting his Queen, they will not be able to know that it is not true, that this honorable sentence hides a much uglier truth, which proves that finally Brienne of Tarth did not know Jaime Lannister as well as she thought she did.

Jaime Lannister did not die trying to protect Cersei Lannister, but rather trying to protect her, and that he failed, his sister and lover dying with him, because children's illusions and song stories rarely become reality, and that, unfortunately, many knights fail to protect their queens, in this world that spares no one.

But, if Jaime didn't die protecting Cersei, because nothing protects us, or not for long, he died doing what he did best in his life: loving her, holding her and reassuring her.

Thank you for reading!
Please take the time to leave a little comment, it's always a pleasure ^^
Don't be too hard on English, it is not my mother tongue.