It's startlingly easy; getting used to life at the Red Keep.

At first, Jaime had been sceptical about it. After the years spent in overstuffed bedrooms, surrounded by people on all sides, first in the home he'd been assigned to and then in the army, he had never had the chance to get used to the unbearable stillness and quiet that the palace can offer him. There really aren't that many people here at all - there's the Small Council, the Queensguard and the Queen herself, all of them manning the state together from its administrative centre, but all their family - the royal family included - are scattered within the country, micromanaging other regions as they'd been assigned to. There are the princesses, too - all three of them, and all without their families - and their guards, as well as a skeleton crew of cleaners and ladies in waiting; all people who either do the housework or nothing at all, depending on how far within the inner hierarchy of this place they'd managed to move. Put together, there can't be more than about two dozen people in total in a castle that looks like it could house two hundred - and it had, once, from what he'd heard.

It's easier these days. Jaime's own world is even narrower than that - it's limited to his sleeping quarters and wherever the princess he'd been assigned to goes, which is rarely far. Her schedule had been easy to get used to - she gets up before sunrise, does who-knows-what for about two hours, calls for breakfast, attends the meetings of the Small Council, eats lunch, sorts through her correspondence for the good part of the afternoon with great care of the international relations that must be involved, participates in the evening briefing projected on every television screen in the Crownlands (and the rest of Westeros, likely, for all he knows - an elective monarchy with decades-long elections can be quite the show if you're not used to it, he supposes), takes her dinner and retreats back to her rooms early into the evening.

It's a routine like any other. Different from what he'd been used to before, but not too different - he's still dependent on others and his days never quite belong to him, but Jaime can't find it in him to protest. There's a curious kind of peace in this. In the long weeks of his recovery, he'd felt terribly aimless with no schedule whatsoever to follow and finally, there's a new base for him to build his life on, no matter how repetitive and limited it is. He'd been well aware of what he'd signed up for when he'd first agreed to this job.

It's in this exact lull - the false sense of security that Cersei's schedule had provided - that her first free day comes and shifts the still waters that his life seems to have become.

He notices it early in the morning, when he walks up to her door to summon her for breakfast and finds the numerous lock of her door still in place.

"Cersei?"

No answer. For a moment, he wonders if he's misspoken, but it can't be that - at the very beginning, she'd asked him to call her by her first day instead of picking one of the numerous honorifics he could have settled on instead.

The doubt is followed by a sharp stab of fear. It's irrational, as nothing can get past this lock, or they'd have assigned her a guard at a night shift, too - or there would have been signs of someone struggling to get in, if they'd managed it - and Jaime pushes it down as he rings the small bell by the door instead of calling out again.

This time, there's a response. "In a moment!"

It sounds less lively than she usually is by this time of the day, as if she'd only just woken up, and sure enough, less than five minutes later, the complicated cogs and wheels inside the door spring to life and the princess emerges with clothes more uncomplicated than anything he'd seen her in so far, hair pulled to the back in two braids tied to each other with a bow, and an woven picnic basket hanging on one forearm.

"Uh," he greets, less than prepared for the sight he'd been faced with. "Good morning?"

"It's my day off." She takes pity on him, closing and locking the door behind her back. Jaime follows her down the corridor towards, he assumes, the kitchens - she'd have to fill her empty luggage with something for them to eat, if this truly is meant to be a picture perfect rest, which he doesn't doubt about in the slightest. Everything the princesses do - on the clock or in their limited free time, doesn't really matter - is picture perfect, with every aspect of their lives being made an example of for anyone who watches. It makes sense, in a way, seeing as one of them is going to be the country's future leader, but it still feels altogether too invasive for his tastes. "This means I can either go out in the city and socialise or spend it in the gardens and do whatever I see fit. This time, it's going to be the latter."

He would rather die than say it out loud - he's too good at what he does to admit to any worry - but Jaime is quietly relieved at the news. He can guard her just fine outside in King's Landing, but it's far more comforting to know that there's not going to be any threat on her life today no matter what she chooses to do. It's strange, how quickly he'd come to associate the Red Keep with safety, but he welcomes the sensation with open arms. The sense of safety had been sorely missing from his life for too many years for him to count.

"So what is it going to be?" She throws him a questioning look over her shoulder as they enter the kitchens and Cersei waltzes past the staff, greeting them and snatching away anything she fancies at the same time. "What is it that you'll do in the gardens?"

"Read, likely." She'd brought no book, from what he can see, or any device at all, and she smiles back at his confusion. "Or socialise anyway. just not with my future subjects."

From anyone else's mouth, it might have sounded cocky or overconfident, but with Cersei, it feels like nothing but the truth. It's what she'd been born to do; Jaime knows it with the same certainty that has followed him through life, usually reserved only for the world's simplest, most obvious facts. The sky is blue, it snows in winter, and Cersei will be queen. It's part of the natural order of things, almost.

"I'm not following."

"You'd better." The play of words doesn't escape him and Jaime allows himself a snort, his heart stuttering over itself for a moment when she beams at him in response, smile much brighter than any he'd seen her offer during the briefings to the subjects in questions. "I'm about to show you the part of the palace you've never been to."

~.~

The food is good. It's better than what he usually has, but it's got nothing to do with the princesses receiving higher quality than the guards, he assumes, considering that Cersei had picked everything up seemingly haphazardly. It's either that her taste is better than the one of whoever it is that decides what the menu for the day is or that he's sitting on the grass by a fountain with the sun streaming over the both instead of the mess hall that he's already so used to.

They're alone. He supposes that this week, the other two competitors had picked King's Landing as an option, or perhaps they all have their hiding places, but what feels like hours has passed by the time Jaime realises that they haven't seen another living soul since they'd arrived here.

"It's an old place," Cersei shrugs when he asks, eyes straying away from the calm, endlessly cycling water in the fountain. "Something keeps drawing me to it. Ever since the first day I arrived, I felt as if I'd been here before. I hadn't, obviously - my family were close to the Queen since before I was born, but we'd never come to King's Landing before and I'd never seen the Red Keep from the inside, but it was still— I think you felt it too," she adds and suddenly, it's as if she's looking right Jaime and into some part of him that he hadn't even been aware had existed. "When you came to meet me. It's stupid and I can't explain it, but it happens."

"I know what you mean." Whatever it is, she's definitely not alone in it. He'd had glimpses of it before - their home's visits to the Riverlands when he'd been little, a little of Dorne when they'd passed through it during his deployment - but it had rarely been as intense as it had started being ever since he'd arrived in King's Landing. The fact that the Red Keep had started feeling like a home quite so quickly doesn't escape him. "It's called—"

"I know what it's called," she interrupts him with the same wounded tone she seems to adopt when she's being underestimated, "but it's stronger than that. I feel like something happened here, but I haven't been able to figure it out in the years I've lived here. I suppose there were records of the important meetings in the capital before Seven Kingdoms fell apart, but most of it burned down during the Targaryen attack all those years ago." Her smile is back, this time a little more pensive. "Pity. My namesake was the one on the throne right before that; from what I've heard, she was diligent about paperwork. Or, well, what could be considered paperwork in the Middle Ages."

"Figures." When she raises her eyebrows in obvious question, Jaime does his best to backtrack. "That you're named after a queen, that is. Typical for nobles."

"You're not counting yourself as a part of that group, then." It's a statement; not anywhere near as weighty as he would have expected it to be from someone as far up the food chain as she is.

"I'm an orphan, so no, definitely not. It's fine," he waves her off when he sees her delicate features crumple into the sort of distress he's seen countless of times by now. He's heard it enough and the sentiment is more than clear on her face. "It was a long time ago. I barely remember them." It's curious, the way that loss sometimes feels – curious and terribly lonely as if at some other point, a far longer time ago, he'd had someone to share that grief with. It's there again; that same sensation that his princess had described just a while ago. I felt as if I'd been here before. So had he, even if it had been all so terrifyingly new and confusing to his four-year-old mind. "Your family sounds a lot more interesting."

"My parents are devoted to history," she concedes, one hand fidgeting with a clover while the other rummages in her basket for what little is still left. "And they've always been ambitious; my father started discussing whether they'd start preparing me for the crown when I was seven." Another one of those fleeting grins. "Figures. I guess that's why they picked her. She was the Queen, though; the first and the last on the Iron Throne. Didn't have too good of an end, but then again, queens rarely do, do they?"

"I suppose not." The conversation had taken a rather morbid turn altogether too quickly and Jaime steers it as gently as possible in a slightly less bleak direction. "But that's what I'm here for. You can be one of the rare ones."

"Funny you should mention that." There's nothing particularly funny about it, but Jaime refrains from saying so. "The Queen I was telling you about? The Lord Commander during her time—"

"Miss Hardwicke?"

They both whip around to look for the source of the interruption and Jaime squashes down the irritation that rises up in response. It's the governess because it always fucking is, and he's got the sneaking suspicion that she'd been watching them for a while. Even on days off, sitting in the gardens for hours on end unchaperoned with still relatively strange men is a less than appreciated activity. Talk about Middle Ages.

"Over here," Cersei calls out, the ease draining out of her as easily as it had seemingly possessed her this morning. Just like that, with nothing but a name, the princess is back. "Stick around," she says to him, smile still frozen in her other guardian's general direction, and Jaime nearly laughs – even if he'd had any plans of pulling away, there's little chance of anything of the sort now. "I'll have to tell you about it later."