This chapter was written as part of the Facebook challenge "Sur Votre 31":
- Invite : ''I love you''
- Number of words: From 100 to 1000 words.
Context: AU - Season 8 where Jaime and Cersei led the Lannister armies together at Winterfell.
The entire Game of Thrones universe belongs to GRR Martin, DB & DW.
Enjoy reading!
It was freezing cold, absolutely freezing.
The snow was thick and kept falling, the flakes were gently flying by the hundreds, and the sky was grey and cloudy.
The White Walkers may have been defeated and the King of the Night killed, but winter was still there.
The Long Night was over, but dawn had not yet come.
Dawn had not yet come, and for Jaime, it would probably never come.
He had fought death itself as bravely and courageously as he could muster, but now the only thing he wished was that death had prevailed.
All the survivors of the Great Battle of Winterfell were now gathered outside the castle grounds.
Hundreds of funeral pyres had been set up, on which were stored the thousands of corpses, the thousands of men, women and children who had perished in the war against the army of the dead.
Many people were crying. And Jaime would have gladly cried with them, if he had not already shed all the tears that his body contained.
Tyrion was a little further on, beside the dragon queen. He, too, had been crying, it was obvious, his eyes were red and slightly swollen, and he seemed to carry all the pain of the world on his shoulders.
Several people had already begun to grab burning torches and set fire to the bodies of their loved ones who had tragically disappeared.
Jaime felt an intense heat, contrasting sharply with the biting cold that cut into his skin like a knife with a sharp blade, when Tyrion came and stood right next to him, a flaming torch in his right hand projecting its orange glow onto the white snow that covered the ground.
He didn't want to feel warm, nor did he want to feel cold, no, he didn't want to feel anything, nothing, only nothingness, because feeling things only reminded him too painfully that he was still alive.
Tyrion gave him the torch, and Jaime, in his turn, walked to the pyres.
His footsteps guided him naturally, mechanically to the one that concerned them, he and his brother who walked right behind him, and whose footsteps squeaked in the powder snow.
He had not cried from the beginning, but when he saw her, it was too much for him, and tears rolled down his cheeks, streaming down his face, even making him look like a coward in front of all the other men present, who were not crying.
But he didn't care. He didn't care about being a coward. He didn't care what other men, other women and other children thought.
They didn't know. They didn't understand. They couldn't understand, and he could never understand.
No one could ever understand.
Jaime contemplated Cersei's body, lying there like so many others around her.
She was even paler than usual. Her golden hair looked dull, and her green eyes, the beautiful emerald green eyes that he had so loved to get lost in, her burning, piercing eyes, were closed. Her lips were white, almost blue.
His tears redoubled when he was next to her, when he gently passed his gloved hand over her face, tenderly caressing her cheek, once warm, but now cold, icy as the air.
The Starks had insisted on burning all the bodies, even though the White Walkers were no longer, no longer existed.
All the bodies, without exception.
Jaime had protested, wanting to take Cersei's body back home to Casterly Rock, the only place where she had truly been happy in this world, wanting to be able to gather himself with her when he needed it, when he needed to be with her to forget that he would never be whole again, to forget even briefly that the one who was unquestionably the woman of his life was gone, that she was no longer there, all because of him.
It was he who had insisted on coming to fight in the North, and she had at first refused, not wanting to help with this war, convinced that the Lannisters would inevitably come out of it as losers, and then had finally accepted after her many pleas, and had not wanted to let him go to Winterfell alone, for fear that something might happen to him. And it was she who had paid a heavy price, giving her life to save his own when a White Walker had attacked him from behind.
The only things Jaime remembered from that moment were Cersei's gasp when the dead man's spear had sunk into her entrails in place of her brother's back, her body collapsing to the ground, and the distant echo of his cry of pain when he realized that it was over for her, for him, for them.
The Starks had insisted on burning all the bodies, even Cersei's.
Jaime didn't know how long he'd been standing there watching her, and it didn't matter in the end. He might as well have stayed for hours, days, weeks, since it was the last time he would see her in this world and he couldn't bring himself to do so, because it hurt, much too much.
He bent down to kiss her forehead and then her lips for the last time.
He couldn't help noticing that her lavender perfume persisted, despite everything, despite everything else, that perfume that he had loved so much, like everything that came from her, that perfume that smelled like paradise for him, that smelled like home, a home that he would never see again.
For a long time he leaned towards her, his tears streaming down both their faces, and finally he whispered to her:
''I love you. I love you, Cersei. I've always loved you. I will always love you.''
He kissed her cheek one last time, then straightened up.
He placed the burning torch under the pyre, which quickly caught fire in turn, ending Cersei's body as he ended Jaime's life.
It was when he realized what he had just done that he let himself fall to his knees in the snow, barely aware that Tyrion was hugging him, too, crying, but not as hard as Jaime, of course, everyone was crying less than Jaime, because none of the beautiful people gathered around the corpses had lost as much as Jaime.
No one had lost a sister, a twin, a best friend, a confidante, a lover, a mother of children, a lifelong love, a soul, another half, everything.
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.