Alys
"I would like to claim the bastard of Alys Stark as my son."
Jaimes words rang through the hall and ring through her mind stammering it and leaving it whirling. "I can not on my honor leave it any longer."
"Your honor as a Kingslayer?" Ned spoke from where he stood near the Kings table. He had straightened up, fists clenched tight on either side of him, and anger was radiating off him like a roaring fire.
"My honor, regardless of your thoughts on it Lord Stark, will do what it believes is right." Jaime replies, sharp and succinct.
She felt the eyes of the court fall upon her, there were no whispers yet but she could almost feel them being held back with bated breath. And she swallowed, heavy and hard in her throat as she kept staring at Jaime. He was still looking to Robert, back straight and chin held high. Her heart was hammering harshly in her chest and she nearly missed Roberts addressing of her.
"Lady Alys?" She blinks and forces her gaze away from Jaime and to the King, he holds the same bemused interest he'd held when Jaime had first spoken of righting another dishonor, but there is the same shadowed grief deeper that she always sees when he looks to her, like he sees the ghost of Lyanna in her place. It makes her stomach swoop with the situation at hand. "Is this true? Is Jame Lannister the father of your bastard?"
Her eyes flick again to Jaime, who has tilted his head slightly to look her way, she can see in the green of his eyes that he's willing her to say yes. To go along with this scheme he's concocted, that he hadn't even bothered to inform her of.
And she was stuck by it.
She couldn't deny it, now that he'd stated it. Rumors were one thing, but to have him come out and claim Jon as his own? If she denied she would more than likely have to give a name for the true father, and what name would she have? And if she refused to provide one that would only draw more attention.
She lets out a low breath, forcing herself to straighten and look to Robert straight on, wills her voice to be still and steady. "Yes, Your Grace."
Ned stiffens further than he already has, his gaze as sharp as the blade of their house and as cold as its name, and pointed to Jaime with more disdain than it had ever held before. But she had no other choice, and Ned stilled his own tongue as he seemed to know that as well as she did.
They'd been backed into a corner.
"Why are you only coming forth now to claim her son?" Jon Arryn is speaking now, a shrewd and studying look as he glances between Alys and Jaime.
Jaime returns his head straight, looking to Jon Arryn as he continues to hold himself up. "Plenty of reasons come to mind," Jaime responds, "but the pressing one was that I was uncertain of my feelings towards the development. There was quite a bit going on, killing a king, wondering at my status as Kingsguard, watching a new reign come to fruition with my sister as queen." Alys glances to Cersei, sat beside Robert looking near like stone, her chin raised and her green eyes sharp. "Alys had run off right after the sack, and when she returned… many things were uncertain to say the least. But I know my path now, it is not that of a Kingsguard." He shifts, just slightly before continuing. "It is that of my father's heir," he says it with as little enjoyment that he showed to the title Kingsguard. "It is that of a father to the son I have sired." Alys sees his eyes flick to her, "and if Lord Stark allows it, it is that of a husband to Alys Stark."
The court was a quiet hush, and Alys could almost feel the tension of the court gossip and intrigue feeding off of this whole exchange. It made her stomach twist and her heart hammer harder, she felt near to faint and wished for nothing more than to excuse herself. But she stayed in her seat, gripping tightly to the armrests of the chair and holding her face in a quiet composure.
Jon Arryn seemed to turn his gaze to Ned, Alys watched as the man who had taken a surrogate position as her brothers father for years studied him. "I imagine that will be of some discussion between your two houses." He replies carefully, "for now, as the King has stated, you are released of your vows as a Kingsguard." The Hand glances to Alys, and she keeps herself still. "And your claiming of the bastard Jon Snow is acknowledged by the court."
"Thank you, my lord," Jaime acknowledges, he looks to Robert and bows, "Your Grace." And Alys watches him turn and walk from the table.
The court sits in a quiet hush. But soon the small trickle of whispers comes through the large hall. Gossip and rumors confirmed, and a new scandal to latch onto.
And Alys reaches the end of her frail tether, pushing herself from the table she looks to Ned. Her face heats up and she tries to convey as best she can in her look that she had no clue of what Jaime had just done before hand. And Ned looks back to her, with the gaze that tells her they'll be talking later, before he is turning to Jon Arryn and the two men fall into lowered and tense seeming discussion. Her brothers hands still clenched into tight white knuckled fists at his side.
Alys, heart still beating heavily in her chest and stomach still twisted into knots, makes her way from the Great Hall. She can feel eyes upon her, can hear the whispers. Her name, Jaimes, Jons. It crawls over her like a chill and not the sort she's used to from years in the North.
Stepping out of the hall lessens the feeling, but only in the thinnest of ways. The shutting of the doors cutting away the whispers and leaving her in the quiet of the Red Keep. She walks, the only sound her steps and her heart pounding a cacophony in her ears.
A hand grips her arm and she jumps near out of her skin at it.
"Alys…" Jaime's voice almost calms her. Almost… if she weren't still feeling the rush of her heart from his declaration, his actions. She looks to him and shakes her head.
"How dare you?" She says, her voice a low shaking rattle. A door opens nearby and she pauses, pulling back from him slightly and forcing herself still. She shakes her head, breathing slow in a feeble attempt at calming the roaring race of emotions coursing through her. "Come." She pulls him along, his face a low frown at her reception.
They go through the halls and keep, all the way until they get to her rooms in the Maiden Vault. She enters and sees Wylla sitting with Jon upon the floor, the small boy lying on his belly looking about the room. He smiles when he spots Alys, and she feels a bit of warmth pump through her racing heart, it doesn't settle her entirely but it certainly helps.
"Leave us for a bit, Wylla, please?" The wet-nurse glances between the two, and looks more forcefully to Alys a question lingering in her gaze. "I'm fine." Alys dismisses, though she tries hard to make it sound true.
Wylla's look as she stands and heads for the door tells her that she doesn't quite succeed.
Alys walks and lifts Jon from the floor, walking into the nursery to place him gently within his cot. Jaime follows carefully.
"What you did…" She starts, looking at Jon in the cot. He reaches a hand up towards her as he lays upon his back and she takes it. Letting it calm her some before she releases and turns towards Jaime.
"I did it for good reason." Jaime says, his words treading carefully from his mouth. "You expressed worry over my father, he will be no problem now. If Jon is mine—"
"But he is not." Alys snaps, walking towards Jaime. "He is not yours, and he was not yours to claim."
"It forces your brother…"
"I did not ask you to force Ned into anything."
"Your brother refused despite saying marriage would your choice," Jaime reminds her, "and you told me that you couldn't risk Jons safety. Me claiming him fixes both of those issues, your brother will be put into a position where he can not truly refuse a betrothal, and Jon will be heir to House Lannister and thus safe from my father."
"You would do that to your house?" Alys tries, "make someone the heir with no blood relation to it?"
Jaime pauses, and she wonders how deeply he had actually thought on that matter, but ultimately he shrugs. Stubborn to stick to this choice has made. "What does it matter to me, he'll be a Lannister in name."
Alys shakes her head, and pushes past him into her room proper. "I did not ask you to do this. And you did not even ask me if I would agree to it."
Jaime is silent again, a few moments before he quietly responds. "I knew if I did you would refuse."
She laughs, sharp and strained. "Of course I would. Do you truly not understand what sort of danger you have put Jon in?"
"He'll be safe."
"Unless your father discovers the truth," Alys says, pacing the space of her room, "unless he grows and begins to show signs of his true father."
"He'll look like you then, as he already does."
Alys sighs and shakes her head. Her mind felt a mess, a jumbled mess of racing thoughts and feelings that she couldn't quite catch up with. "It was reckless, and dangerous, and you have now put him in more danger than before. He will be more watched, more considered than if you had left me to raise him as my bastard in the North."
"Do you not care for me at all?" Jaime inquires.
"You know I do!" Alys responds turning on him, walking close, "But Jaime, I told you before that Jon must come first for me. That I made that choice, and I must live with it. And now you have endangered it."
"That was a choice you never should have made," Jaime scowls, "your brother…"
"He is not Neds!" She near shouts, catching herself and forcing herself to quiet. They were alone in a room but that did not mean potential listeners did not roam the halls.
"Like hell he isn't," Jaime scoffs, "he's not yours so who else—"
"Lyanna." She finally exhales, a quiet whisper cutting him off.
Jaime frowns, his brow furrowed as he blinks a few times. "Lyanna…" he repeats, soft and incredulous.
"Yes." She confirms, voice soft and pained. She looks to Jon through the archway leading into the nursery, lying quiet in his cot. Her mind is struck by the memory of her sister, bloody and broken on her birthing bed.
Promise me.
Has Alys failed her vow to her sister because of her own dalliances in love?
She looks to Jaime again, and sees the realization upon his face as it all falls together in place in his mind. "The prince." She nods, bringing her arms tight around herself. "Jon is… Rhaegars son."
"Lyanna's." Alys says forcefully, "more so than his." She looks to him, "I promised her I would protect him, that I would not leave him. And he," her gaze drifts to Jon once more, tears burning in her eyes, "he is all I have I left of her."
"Alys."
"I can't let anything happen to him. I would die before I let anything happen to him." She meets Jaimes eyes, bears into them the full force of her meaning. "And he is in so much danger, if Robert knew. If your father knew…" She remembers the men climbing the walls of the keep, looking for Rhaenys and Aegon. Tywin Lannisters men.
"I won't let that happen." Jaime states, reaching and taking her hands, unwrapping them from around her and pulling her closer, steadying her.
"This is why I didn't want you to claim him," she says, "if he starts to resemble Rhaegar… in the North he could be forgotten, overlooked, but—"
"I won't let anything happen to him." Jaime tells her, stone straight and full of force. "I swear, I promise, on my honor…" His words falter and she can see the worry in his gaze, the worry that his choice this evening had shattered her thoughts on his honor more so than his killing of Aerys had.
"I trust your honor Jaime," she says soft, as even in this moment of anger with him, of fear for Jon, she meant it. "But I—"
"I give you my word," Jaime states, "more than any vow I held for a king, I swear I will protect that boy with my life. As you stated, I was the one who brought this new danger to him, so I will be the one to stand before it."
Alys looks at Jaime, his eyes green and genuine. And remembers another memory, remembers a boy she hadn't even met kneeling before a tourney, donning a white cloak and swearing vows for a king. It was so long ago and so many things had passed for them both.
She closes her eyes, "you've put us on this path." She breathes the words out slow, "so we will walk it."
"Alys." He starts, but she just opens her eyes and lifts his hands to her lips pressing them softly there.
And then she steps back, "I've always trusted you. And you have always been here, through all this time. And so I will trust you now, with Jon." She swallows, "but I… I need time, just for a little." She saw the fear flash in his gaze, the uncertainty. And she smiles, "but we will walk this path, Jaime. Together, I just… need time."
He pauses, before nodding and she steps back further. He nods again, a pensive look to his face before he steps towards her, pressing a soft kiss to her temple before departing the room and leaving her with her heart still in a fast racing beat.
Ned finds her hours later in her room. Jon is sat lightly sleeping against her chest as she sits looking out the window at the Blackwater. The gentle rhythm of the ocean doing as much to settle her nerves as the rhythmic rise and fall of Jons breathing.
"I know." She says the second the door falls closed behind him. "I didn't ask him to do it. I know it is a risk."
"This is why I asked you to keep your distance from him."
"Perhaps that was the problem Ned?" She looks to him, her voice stays low, quiet so as not to disturb Jon. "You told me I could choose who I wed, that if I wished it I could be the one in charge of that choice."
"So you're saying I forced Jaime to put Jon at risk."
"No," Alys shakes her head, "I'm saying… perhaps there had been some other route besides this one. But we won't know that, we can't know that, only the gods can. All we can do is follow this one before us."
"He had no right…"
"No," Alys cuts him off. "He didn't. But it happened regardless."
"Tywin Lannister has put forth a request for a betrothal, and requests for upon said betrothal Jon's legitimization… as a Lannister." Alys looks to Ned, whose tone and expression shows so clearly the displeasure he holds at this turn of events. She doesn't have a response, and after long moments of her silence Ned throws his hands up and paces away from her. "I do not trust him, I do not trust Jaime, and I certainly do not trust either of them with Jon." He looks to Alys, stern seriousness in the icy grey of his eyes, the next words are nearly hushed entirely, "with Lyanna's child."
"Do you trust me?" Alys inquires, rocking Jon slightly when he stirs just the smallest bit. A hand running up and down his back until he curls closer against her chest, a soft sigh escaping him as he resettles. "Ned? Do you trust me?"
It gives her brother pause, a moment where he seems lost for words. A look of incredulousness upon his face that says he can't comprehend why she'd ask him that. As though the answer were obvious. "Of course I do." He finally speaks.
"Then trust me," Alys implores, "Jaime means Jon no harm, his actions tonight were not out of malice but out of want. He will not let any danger come to Jon, and neither will I."
"I trust you, Alys, but I do not—"
"I trust him," She states, hard and clear even in her more hushed tone to keep Jon stilled in sleep. "I trust him, and if you trust me as you say you do then you need to not fight this. You need to trust in my trust of him. Even if you don't hold it yourself."
"He killed his king," Ned says, but his tone was more desperate. "He broke vows that he swore before his gods."
"Then tell Robert the truth." Alys watches Ned carefully, "tell him of Jons parentage, his true parentage. Because not doing so is treason, is it not? He is adamant on finding all the children of Targaryen descent, Jon fits that. Keeping this from him—"
"Is not the same as killing a king." Ned snaps defensively.
"You are lying to a king, that is treason. I hid Elia and her children, smuggled them south to Dorne, that was also treason." She sighs, "I know you do not like Jaime, I know you think him dishonorable. But I am tired Ned, tired of arguments, of defending him from you. We are all guilty of dishonor in this world, we have all made choices that could be viewed poorly. But I trust him as much as I trust you."
Ned was silent, still where he stood in her room. And the quiet held, tense and treacherous between them. Minutes passed, and Alys just watched Ned steady himself. "Jon Arryn has advised me to accept Tywins betrothal," He finally informs her. "That it would be a show of good faith in the tensions we've had over the last few months."
"I didn't want to force your hand," Alys says. "And I am sorry that it has happened this way."
"I meant… I wanted to mean what I said. That you can choose," he looks to her. "Is this what you choose? Marrying him?"
Alys nods, a slow breath escaping. "I do."
Neds jaw is tense, his stature rigid. "Very well." He turns, and leaves her to her room alone.
She slumps in her seat, letting her head loll back to gazing out the window. She watches the steady waters ebb and flow, and she holds Jon all the tighter to her with it.
Jaime
"That was quite the way to go about it." Tyrion's voice exclaims early the next morning, waking Jaime from his little bit of sleep that he'd gotten in the night before.
Jaime rolls over in his bed and opens his eyes to spot his brother already leisurely sat on the chair before this fireplace. "It was your suggestion in the first place." Jaime pushes himself up from the bed, dragging himself over to get dressed while Tyrion smirks with pride over by the fire.
"Yes, but you did do it in quite the ingenious way, a very public way, I never would have expected it from you. Really forced Lord Starks hand." Tyrion spoke complimentary his way and Jaime scowled half-meaningfully towards his brother.
"I'll take that as a compliment rather than an insult."
"It is a compliment, you were using your brain, some cunning. Good to see its possible." Tyrion laughs when Jaime throws a boot at him. He's quiet a few minutes while Jaime dresses, but once he is done Tyrion remarks, "and yet, here you are still sulking."
"I'm not sulking." Jaime defends, "I've only just woken up."
"You got what you wanted did you not?" Tyrion continues, "and yet you don't look nearly as giddy as you should."
"Alys… wasn't exactly pleased with my methods."
He remembers the way she'd spoken when he first stopped her in the hall. How dare you? Sharp and harsh and unlike a tone she'd ever used against him… well except very early on. When he'd told her she was doomed. But this was different almost, sharper, not blunted with grief.
"You didn't tell her before hand did you?"
"If I had she would have said no," Jaime scowls.
"Hm…" Tyrion hums, considering it all. "Well father got up early to meet with Lord Stark, so either the Northern Lord will have slammed his foot down, which is unlikely, or you will be betrothed by noon."
Odd thing. Jaime thought, a few years ago that was the worst thought to imagine. Betrothal to anyone but Cersei. It had been what drove him to the Kingsguard.
And now betrothal to someone other than Cersei is what draws him away.
"A father, a husband, and heir once again." Tyrion muses, his legs swinging against the chair. "How does it feel?"
Jaime frowns, father. He thinks of Jon, little and not much to really ponder on. At least he hadn't been. Before he'd just been something attached to Alys, a barrier, a sign of Ned Starks hypocrisy.
Now… now Jaime had attached himself to the bastard. Now, he knew more.
Rhaegar and Lyanna's son. He would be raising Rhaegar and Lyanna's son.
He wishes Alys had just told him from the start.
He wonders why she didn't.
"Come on," Tyrion shakes him from his thoughts, "I'm hungry, lets fetch some breakfast while you are still untethered."
Jaime lets his brother pull him along. And tries to push thoughts of Jon, and even of Alys from his mind.
He's not very successful, but he does enjoy getting a bit of food in his stomach. And by the time he parts ways with Tyrion who has elected to spend yet another day in the library, he's feeling less put out by the anger Alys had shown his way. He could only really hope for the best there, as with how he can only hope for the best with his father and Lord Stark's meeting this morning.
Jaime goes where he always seems to when there is nothing much else to do, and spends some time swinging a sword against straw men.
An hour passes before someone comes along, and it's not who he would ever have expected to come seeking him.
Ned Stark watches as Jaime sheathes his sword with the same harsh stoney look of hatred he always holds Jaime's way. "I trust discussions with my father went well, Lord Stark?" He calls as he walks forward.
"It is only out of my care for Alys," Ned remarks, "that I allow this at all."
"Really? Has your care grown for her then?" Jaime inquires, "because only a few days ago it seemed you were adamant against allowing any sort of betrothal."
Ned scowls, and Jaime feels a small burst of pleasure at having elicited it. "Your father and I have come to our agreements regarding a betrothal." Jaime felt even more pleasure at that being stated, and the tense way that Ned spits it out. The Northern Lord steps forward, close to Jaime and with a dark look to his grey eyes. "I do not like you, I do not trust you. I think you dishonorable and unworthy of my sister," Ned states, tone sharp and harsh. "But Alys has made her choice, and you have forced mine. So the only way to go is forward." Jaime just nods, forcing the urge to smirk from himself in a moment of self-control. He didn't doubt that Ned Stark would jump at an opportunity to hit him once more if given the right push. "But Alys is coming North with me, as originally planned, before any marriage happens between you and her."
"I doubt my father—"
"I have made it clear to your father that this would be required," Ned's tone cuts through his words. "My sister agreed to help Rhaenys settle, and beyond that she deserves to see her families burials. And to see her home one last time before she is stuck south by you."
Jaime scowls now, sharp dislike jumping at Ned Starks tone. "As you said it is her choice."
"Forced by you, regardless of what she says." Ned responds, he doesn't give Jaime any moment for retort. Departing from the yard and leaving Jaime frowning after him as he disappears into the keep.
He joins his father for dinner that evening. Actually he joins his family as a whole for dinner; his uncle Kevan sat to the right to his father, Tyrion beside Kevan and even Cersei having joined them, sat across from Kevan and Tyrion to the left of their father. Jaime settles himself into the seat opposite of Tywin.
He barely makes it through his first bite when his father states with little fanfare, "You will accompany your betrothed and son to the North."
Jaime nearly laughs, "Don't trust the Starks?"
"Ned Stark," Tywin Lannister says with pure distaste to the tone, "dragged his feet and made it quite clear this morning how reluctant he was to even agree to this match, despite the clear benefits it holds for him, his sister, and his nephew."
"So I am to suffer the North to be sure that Alys will come south and marry me?" Jaime thinks of it, he knew Alys loved the place but the thought of the cold put Jaime off just a little. "I don't like Ned Stark, or particularly trust him, but Alys will follow through on her word."
"Perhaps, but her brother could always find ways around it in that time." Tywin looks to Jaime, a look to his emerald eyes that says there will be no arguing over the matter. "You will go North, allow the Starks their burials, and then you will bring the Stark girl and your son south for your wedding."
Jaime paused, considering his father a moment before venturing, "or is it me you don't trust as well?"
"You made it quite clear that you would only return if she was your wife, I will not have you rushing off because Ned Stark holds her in the North." Tywin says it plain, but there is a sharpness to his voice that Jaime knows to be ever present.
"Very well," Jaime acquiesces, reaching for his wine and sipping it. He stays quiet for the remainder of the dinner, his father speaking primarily with Kevan over their own plans of returning to Casterly Rock soon enough.
And all through the dinner Jaime pointedly does not look in Cersei's direction.
He knows how she is angered by this, he has seen her anger. Felt it even his direction before, though likely not as hotly as it is now. It was something he knew would be inevitable, a fact that was coming from the moment he placed that crown of roses in Alys's lap.
Perhaps earlier even, from the moment he'd kissed Alys in the gardens the night of Cersei's wedding.
It did not mean he was looking forward to facing it.
But face it he must, and Jaime for all that he was was not one to shy away from things.
"Will you walk me back to my rooms, Jaime?" She inquires after dinner has finished and their father has retired away. Her voice is sickly sweet, but he can see through that thin layer to the venom beneath.
"Of course," he holds his arm out and she takes it tightly, nails digging just slightly into the skin of his arm.
They walk in a thin tight silence, slowly through the halls of the keep. He wonders when she will broach the topic, when she will shatter the silence. He ponders for second on the thought that she won't, just for the bitter pleasure of keeping him in tenuous suspense.
She doesn't though, because for all Cersei has always enjoyed torturing people for her pleasure she has also never been one of innumerable patience.
Especially when angered.
"How long?" Cersei's voice was flat and edged with something hard. It cut through the quiet of the halls as they neared her rooms with sudden appearance.
"Hmm?" Jaime feigns ignorance of what she'd be asking a little longer.
But Cersei just rolls her emerald eyes and levels a stare his way as they walk that was as sharp as Valyrian steel. "How long," she speaks slow and sharp "have you been fucking that Northern whore?"
Jaime freezes their steps and levels his own harsh stare her way, "do not speak of her that way."
"Is that not what she is, essentially?" Cersei asks, a thick tone of feigned sincerity to her question. "A child out of wedlock," she clicks her tongue with disapproval as she begins dragging Jaime forward back into their walk. "I mean… how improper."
"You're one to talk about improper," he says, "or have you forgotten all our tumbles together?"
"Have you?" She counters harshly, bitterly. "Besides, the difference between me and Alys Stark is that I was not so idiotic as to let a child come accidentally from those 'tumbles'." She tilts her head his way, "you didn't answer, how long?"
"Does it matter?" He asks. "Long enough to have a child together. Long enough to know I care for her." Cersei's eyes darken more at the second statement than the first.
"Oh you care for her, how sickly sweet." Her voice drips with disdain now, no hidden sweetness no attempts at pretending. "You know she is just so innocent seeming, you must have felt like a real knight there, saving her from the misery of being a hostage. I could almost hear the bards singing it like a song, some romantic tale of the knight saving a maiden in a tower."
Jaime frowns as they come to a stop before the door to her room. "Is that jealousy I hear, Cersei? I mean, green is certainly your color but that might just be a bit too much of it."
"I am the queen," She snaps with sharp thorns thrown through her voice, "I am married to the hero of the rebellion, a man who toppled a centuries old dynasty, and I am heading a new one as his wife. To be jealous of some northern whore who sat in a tower and cried the whole of a rebellion is beneath me."
"Yes you're married to the 'hero' of the rebellion, who now drinks ale and squeezes serving girls asses as you sit primly beside him as his queen." Jaime smiles bitterly, "you can wonder why I would choose to leave."
"So it's your own jealousy then? Making you leave."
"Perhaps I just don't want to live my life in the torture of serving a king like Robert Baratheon."
"Not even for me?" Cersei's tone shifts, her head dipping lightly to look up at him through her lashes, green eyes that he'd long ago felt he'd do anything for. "I thought we were one, Jaime. One soul in two bodies. We came into this world together, we said we'd be together always." Jaime's jaw tightens at the reminder, the feelings weren't gone. He doesn't think they'll ever be gone, the draw and love he has for Cersei burns through him without thought.
But that doesn't mean it is all he has to him.
And somehow, Alys, sees what else there is. Sees him, beyond the burning draw of Cersei, beyond the Kingslayer brand. And that draws him more than any bit of Cersei.
Grey eyes of ice that see him. That see Jaime.
"I was ready to be with you forever." He settles on, "that morning, I asked you to leave with me. To be with me." He thinks of it, and yet it feels so much further away in time than it is. "To get on a ship, to be just me and you together always."
"To be nothing."
"To be ourselves."
"I was meant to be the queen, nothing less." Cersei says it with clear and full belief. "And you could have been here, beside me, through it all. But instead you chose her." She shakes her head, "and do not act like it was a choice made by me, by my refusal to be less than I deserve." She lifts her head, "you made the choice the second you laid in her bed, and you betrayed me the moment you did."
"There was no betrayal, Cersei." Jaime scoffs, "the plan, you so perfectly laid out didn't work. You didn't marry Rhaegar, I was not the white knight outside your door."
"And so what, you go for whatever closest?"
"Alys wasn't whatever was closest, Alys is…." He pauses, stammers for the words to describe it to Cersei. "She is…"
"By the seven." Cersei pulls back and studies him, "you really love her, don't you?"
Jaime hadn't thought the word, love. Cared for, yes. Desired, yes.
Loved…
He hadn't thought of love. Not really.
But it fit. Oh, it fit.
The way the first sword he'd picked up as a child had fit so perfectly.
So does the word love, and Alys Stark.
And there, on Cersei's face, is a clearer more deep look of utter betrayal and hate. "She's stolen you entirely." She shakes her head, her jaw tight and something like violence brewing beneath the green of her gaze. "If you think I will just let her get away—"
Jaime felt a hot rush through him, the sort he gets in battle when someone is coming towards him with a sword and he has to meet it or die. "You touch her, harm her," Jaime has stepped into Cersei's space entirely in the doorway of her room. So close they nearly touch, his face near hers in dark seriousness. She has frozen, eyeing him with a wariness she's never shown his way as his words, dark and low with warning, come out. "And I will go before the king, and tell him how I fucked you the morning he married you."
"He'd kill us both." Cersei throws out, her face a frozen scape of stone.
"Then we'd leave this world as we entered it." He replies with dry sincerity, a smile spreading over his face with no real joy to this moment. This moment of threatening his sister, a thing he'd never thought he'd do.
Cersei had clearly never thought it possible either. She eyes him with wary observation, clearly weighing whether this was a bluff.
But Jaime wasn't bluffing. He knew he was honest, felt it vibrating through his bones.
If Cersei hurt Alys, he vows to pull them both down into the seven hells together.
"I hope you are happy." Cersei says, with a bitter laugh at the end as she pushes him away and moves for her door alone. "I hope it brings you all the pleasure you so clearly crave. And then I hope it is stolen from you, and you realize that whatever happiness you see with this girl, whatever love," she spits the word out like poison, "you think this is, it isn't true. It isn't real. Not the way we are."
And she leaves him there, like that, with a sharp goodbye and a bitterness burnt between them.
Thank you so much for reading! And for all the patience as this chapter took me quite a while to get together! Please, as always, let me know your thoughts! I always love hearing them and it always makes my day to see your comments!