They came to get him at sunset.
Jaime played peek and seek with his daughter, in a chamber not too far from the birthing room, as her septa knitted in a chair by the casement, looking on everso often. Sara was all of five, long limbed though still a bit chubby, and hid herself away nearly as well as he could. He found her, quick enough this time, betwixt the thick golden drapes and rust stone wall, scrapped toes poking out from underneath. He readied himself to pounce as the heavy redwood door swung open.
The boy came in with nary a knock, though that didn't bother Jaime. What concerned him was the nervousness of the boy. The panicked trepidation on his face caused Jaime to scramble to his feet within an instant. The boy was breathless and sweaty, panting like some great summer beast.
"My lord." He rasped.
"What is it?" Jaime stood before him. Looking down as Torren, Tarrent, struggled for breath. "Out with it boy! Has some woe befallen the lady? Do you come from the birthing room?"
His palm grabbed the boy's shoulder before he could stop himself. "Did the maester send you?"
The boy nodded through puffing gasps. "Your...presence is...requested with immediate haste, my-"
Jaime all but pushed him down as he made for the maesters' chamber, for the birthing room, for his wife, for complications...
His strides increased into a sprint once he reached the halls. He ran around twists and turns, through the straights and corners of the stone corridors he knew better than the back of the only hand left him. His chest heaved by the time he reached his destination. Servants exited and entered the doorway in a fluster, much like headless fowls, carrying large pots to and fro.
He could smell the blood before he reached the door. Heavy and metallic, the scent grew stronger as he entered. He walked slowly, mayhaps in a daze. The room looked a ruin after a battle: blood stained the sheets of the bed she lay upon; there were puddles of her blood upon the floor; the nursemaids' gowns were covered with it; the maester was coated in it. Brienne's blood painted the room.
Jaime moved through the chaos unnoticed until he was nearly upon her. The maester, a pheasant looking man: bald head, beaked nose, loose, wobbly neck skin; turned to one of the nurses, turned to speak, but stopped short as he took him in.
"My lord." The man's beady eyes were wide with horror. "My lord, if you'd wait outside. There was but a small complication...easily solved I assure you."
Jaime turned to him. "You assured me there will be no complications." His calm was strange, even to him. "This looks a great complication, maester."
"I-my lord, I-" the man bleated much as a sheep would.
"Jaime." Her voice was weak. "Jaime."
He left the pheasant where he stood and went to the bed. It was worse than he could have imagined. Brienne was paler than cream, paler than the moon. Her skin was clammy and grey. The wild strands of her hair stuck slick to the sides of her sweaty face. She shivered, trembled. Her lips were blue; much as her eyelids, much as her ears.
"Jaime." She said again.
The bed, all and sundry below her waist was doused, drowned in crimson; bathed in blood.
"...she's still bleeding." The nurse's voice was a faint, fading thing behind him, and it was just as well. She didn't matter.
"Fetch more-," the pheasant chimed, prompting Jaime ignore them completely.
"Jaime. Come...here Jaime." She held her hand up to him and smiled.
He went to her without thought. Her palm, her arm was cool. Cool due to the blood painting the room. She looked at him, as she always looked at him. Her too blue eyes shun with love, as though he were the best thing to ever cross her path, to ever grace her presence. She looked upon him as though he were the sun, and all other worries burned away in his wake.
"Jaime."
Unwontedly, speech failed him. He kissed her palm instead and sat beside her on the blackened, blood-soaked mattress.
"Jaime. Two...boys."
He didn't take his eyes from her. "Two more boys, Brienne. You need to rest. We can show them to the other children together once you have recovered."
"Jaime." Her breathing was a deep movement in her chest. She grasped his shaven cheek -he'd the whiskers clipped just for her, for this- and it seemed a harrowing task. Her brows drew together. "I…can hear them...we won't tell...them together."
His grip upon her palm tightened. "Of course we will. Don't be a fool."
"Where...are the…they?"
His eyes stung. "Tymaios is with the king, in the Hall of Heroes."
She smiled, horse-toothed and lovely. "He'll be...a knight. He loves the...stories."
His chest tightened. "Sara is with her septa. She's waiting for me to finish our match of peek and seek."
"She beats you." Brienne's face pinched in pain and it seemed an eternity before she relaxed. "The boys, Jaime...don't blame the boys. Tell them-"
His tears fell freely. "I have no quarrel with infants, wife. You will recover and can tell those boys your own thoughts."
She released a tranquil sigh. "It is my last...battle, my lord."
Jaime had enough of her sighs and calm words. With the way he held her hand, surly his grasp was strong enough to crush her fingers. "May the Others take you woman. You've a family. You swore an oath, a holy oath, in the light of your blasted Seven. It won't do you any good to become an oath breaker like me."
She smiled the lazy, content smile she held the entire time. The smile of the dying. Again, she touched his cheek.
"Hush...now." Brienne soothed. "Hush now, love."
Jaime's mouth was a thin line. His tears fell upon her pale breasts. "I will not."
A breathy laugh and she rose one clammy brow. "There's the...stubborn wench...I remember."
Jaime was livid. How dare she content herself with such a fate. She survived impossible odds: a hanging, the collapse of the Wall, the annihilation of the capital, the secession of the seven kingdoms, bastards, and fire, and madness. She slew a dragon, by the Seven! And here she lay, murdered by infants.
"That does not amuse me." He growled.
"It...amuses me." Her eyes glinted with the mischief she came into only this year past. Jaime's throat began to tighten, disagreeably.
"Please, Brienne. I need you to stay. We need you to stay."
It made no sense. It was so long ago, but in that dream, the only dream he remembered, the light of her sword shone bright, as his own sputtered out and fizzled into nothingness. Quite against his will, Jaime came to think that it may be some metaphor for their deaths; a vision if you will. He was supposed to die long before her. That Gods damnable white wood! I should have burned the bloody stump before I left to get her.
Her eyes were closed. Her astonishing eyes were closed, and it was slowly beginning to dawn upon him that they may soon close forever.
"Please, wife." Her blue eyelids opened at his words. "Please, sweetling. Please." Jaime needed her to fight. He needed her stubbornness. He needed the mischief she had come into only this year past. He needed all her awkward, ungainly self. Anything otherwise; a life without her, was too great a feat for him to face.
He kissed her with all the passion and desperation which threatened to consume him. It was much like the first time, their kiss. He was so angry, but her lips parted under his influence and she melted into him. As he trailed his tongue along her teeth, and he couldn't believe what he'd just done. He murdered his wife with his seed. He killed the unkillable maid.
"Please..." he whispered against her mouth.
Her chest rose and fell like waves rushing through the tide and she still had that damned smile upon her face.
"You'll...do well Jaime. Have faith...I will see you...again."
He brought the back of her hand to his lips and pressed them against her cool skin, saliva and tears making it slippery. "I have no faith in your Seven. I've only faith in you."
Her gaze seemed to lose its focus. She's fading.
"Jaime...You'll do so well..."
Her hand fell from his face. Her papery eyelids fluttered closed. Her breathing stopped. And he heard a child fidget somewhere behind him.
My wife.
I killed my wife.
Have faith.
I hope they're real. Jaime hoped each of the Seven were as real as his wife's corpse. When her palm fell, he swore an oath, perhaps the most important vow of his life.
Each of her Gods, I shall murder them all for this.
A child wailed, piercing, pathetic in the silence. It shook Jaime from the milky fog of grief staring at Brienne induced. He kissed her palm once more and stood.
His feet were quick, quicker than the pheasant could register. He grabbed the maester's neck and pinned him to a wall. "You assured me there would be no complications." His voice was heavy with sorrow, broken with rage. "I should run you through."
Bulging eyes, mouth agape, the man stunk of fear. "Please my lord! Please!" He sniveled, hands clawing Jaime's palm about his throat. "My lord, there were...the babes were large- my lord, please!"
Large babes. His wife was large. She'd the constitution to birth an army had he given her one. Jaime glanced upon the small medical table beside them. There were delicate knives and curious instruments foreign to his knowledge. Jaime released the man pheasant and quick as cat, shoved a small blade to his flimsy neck.
"My lord," He cried, eyes misting with tears. "Please, please. I-"
"I should slit your throat now." Jaime was able to draw blood, a thin line of the bright liquid, before he was pulled away. The pheasant grabbed his throat tightly, securing the cut, and stared at Jaime in frightened shock.
Two men held him by the shoulders, ushering him away from the maester. A nursemaid, one he met days before, she'd a pretty, slender neck, and he remembered her large brown eyes, began speaking to him. "I shall show you the babe." It wasn't a question.
His feet were soundless upon the rushes as he followed her across the room. The miniature mattress sat atop a small round table, between the hearth and the casement.
"He is hale and hearty with great lungs, my lord of Lannister."
The boy was indeed large: a bald, chubby, squirming mound of blotchy pink flesh; with cold blue eyes, much like all the others had been. Jaime was sure the blue would fade to green and gold in time, it always did. He was swaddled in cream coloured silks. Jaime lightly touched the babe's arm. The infant smiled in turn.
You killed your mother. You killed my wife, you wretch.
"Two." The word slipped from his lips, unbridled. He cleared his throat and addressed the nurse. "My Brienne said there were two boys."
Much to her credit, the woman held his gaze. She did not cower as the pheasant had. "The other child was lost, my lord. The birth was too much for him."
"How so?"
"The birthing cord wrapped around his neck during the pushing. The Gods did not grant us the means to revive him."
The Gods. Damn the Gods.
"Show him to me."
"At once." She went to the opposite end of the room and grasped a bundle of white silk. "Your son, my lord." She said once she returned to her place beside him.
Jaime held the boy in the crook of his right elbow. The dead child had blue lips and eyelids such as his mother. He was a hairless, fleshy mound, same as his twin. He stroked the boy's cheek.
"Leave us."
She hesitated and looked at him warily. "My lord-"
"Leave us!" He said louder, loud enough for the ears of every shuffling servant to hear. The nurse's expression tightened. Nevertheless, she bowed her head slightly and one by one, the room emptied.
Jaime walked to the bed and placed the dead child upon the still breast of his dead wife. The living one began to fidget and whine. Jaime picked him up and held him against his chest with his right arm. He returned to Brienne and sat near her upon the mattress.
"Two more sons we have, Brienne." His eyes stung again with pesky, odious tears. "I told you." His cheeks were wet again. "I told you to stay. Damn you for never obeying me."
Jaime kissed her and tried not to think that it would be the last time he kissed such lips. His lips moved to her blemished cheek, right over the scar, and then to her mouth again. "Damn you, sweetling."
All around him smelled of a million copper pieces, rusting away in a bucket of water, and the scent of death was beginning to settle upon her. It was acrid and clung to his nose such as frost clings to glass. The child began to wriggle and squirm, and Jaime was forced to stand. He leaned over the bed and brushed his lips across her brow before heading out the door.
The servants stood in two rows by the walls nearest the room. Rather immediately, Jaime found the nursemaid with pretty neck, making a point to bypass the incompetent pheasant.
"Have them cleaned and prepared."
"Yes, my lord." She looked to the babe in his arms expectantly. He glared down at her, turned and left.
He roamed the halls aimlessly, without direction or way and ended where he knew he would. It was his wife's favorite courtyard these last few months since that pheasant forbade her from practicing swords.
The summer night was warm and the moon's face bright and full. Fire beetles flickered in the darkness. The air was ripe with the smell of flowers. Red lions, tiger claws, lion's tail, and pussy willows grew with little chaos in the triangled plots before the golden fountain of the Mother. Servants lite candles in the sconces on the walls near their ornate alabaster bench, casting the yard in the glow of flames, as well as the moon. He could see the flowers from where he sat. There were no roses.
...I used to hate roses...
That was before, and things were quite different by the time the girl was born. A moon's turn before Sara's birth, Jaime had a florist adorn her bed chamber with one thousand golden roses. She cursed his extravagance and he held her swollen waist as he kissed her face flush. Have I never told you what an infuriating man you are?
The babe squirmed in his arms, making Jaime remember where he was, what's happened. He regarded the child for a long moment and could see his grim reflection faintly casted in the firelight against those wide blue eyes.
"You killed your mother." He whispered scornfully whilst the boy yawned. "You're a kinslayer...but so am I." Saying it aloud made it worse, somehow. "The idiot septons you'll meet will call it a great sin." Jaime looked at the fountain. "A great sin indeed." He looked at the water pooling there, rippling, inviting. It would be an easy thing to toss the child in.
He made a noise then, rather like the mewl of a kitten. The babe reached up and grabbed his forefinger. He gave another mewling sound and yawned, such as fat, content things ofttimes did. There was naught to do but watch him, and the more he looked, try as he might, Jaime couldn't hate the boy. Would that he could...
Another yawn and a toothless infantile twinkle of the lips. Jaime sighed. "You killed my wife, you little shit...but you may say I'd a hand in that as well. What say you to a truce?" The boy stared at him silently. "You shall grow into a man with every ounce of integrity and rectitude that she possessed. With that I charge you, boy. Anything less desecrates her sacrifice. Anything less, and I'll kill you."
The babe yawned once more and sucked upon one small fist. Brienne would be cross to learn of such words, but Jaime didn't care. She was dead. Killed by himself. Killed by the boy in his arm.
"Alright then."
He rose and took the boy to his nursery. The wet nurses bowed their heads and mumbled condolences as Jaime handed the boy over to the buxom maid Brienne handpicked for him. He left before they saw fit to repeat their prattle.
The apartments he's had since childhood gave him no comfort that night. He shed his clothing and washed the day and the dead from his face.
I killed my wife.
He went to the balcony. The brine of the sea breezed warmly upon his skin. He screamed into the darkness, roared into the night.
I killed my wife.
He lay on his bed and stared at the ornamented ceiling carvings until the sunlight shone, burning his tired eyes.
I killed my wife.
His peace, his loneliness remained unbroken for four days; until the king stumbled into his chambers and demanded an audience.
His brother was dressed in all black finery, save the golden lion stitched upon the breast of his doublet. The sorrow in his mismatched eyes reminded Jaime of his own grief, angering him.
"Jaime." The baritone of his voice resonated loudly in the stone room and bounced in echoes. "Jaime, I'm sorry."
It took Tyrion a while to climb upon his high bed. They sat in silence until-
"I gave you four days, brother. Regretfully, I can spare you no longer." Tyrion adjusted his jerkin. "Are you going to speak at all?"
Jaime lay silent.
"She was something, your lady. Mayhaps the best of us."
"She was without equal." He snapped. After a moment, he sighed and covered his eyes with his palm. "I killed my wife."
The king snorted laughter. "Then I shall rejoice. For it was father who slew our mother and not I."
He tasted bile. "I knew the words were coming."
"How could they not? Surely, you've had similar thoughts, and you made a proper mess of things already. Your actions that day made for a rather fine spectacle. Father would call you a fool-"
"I'm in no mood to humor you." He glowered.
"Though I feel Mother would have approved. I doubt she was shown a modicum of the emotional display you've exhibited."
Jaime's frown deepened. The king laughed.
"They told me you nearly ran the measter through."
Jaime's eyes were hard, yet soft in his grief and he was exhausted. He hadn't slept since he slept with her. "He's lucky I only nearly ran him through. He told me all would be well. He swore all would be well. I played with my daughter, while my wife lay bleeding. She was calling for me." She was dying for me.
"And you couldn't save her." The fact was worse when said aloud, worse coming from someone else's lips. "Jaime."
He said nothing.
"Brother, my sweet brother." Tyrion placed a hand upon his knee. "Jaime. Men trained could not save her. How were you supposed to? How would you have?"
"The fault is mine." And it was. She was murdered by my seed. Those boys ripped her apart. I really should kill the other one.
The king huffed. "Father told me once, that upon my birth, he was plagued with thoughts of tossing me into the Sunset Sea." His brother's laugh cut. "Should I be concerned about my nephew?"
Jaime's defeated eyes met his gaze. The smile stayed playing upon Tyrion's lips, but his eyes were focused, intense. Jaime sighed.
"You need not worry, Your Grace. As our Aunt Genna once told me, I am not our lord father's heir. My days of kinslaying are over. I've no wish to fling him over the parapet of the south tower."
"Good." Tyrion released a sigh of relief. He climbed down from the bed and stood before him. Do you believe me so lowly as to harm mine own newly born son, brother? He nodded and then, quite suddenly, struck Jaime across the face, sharp and swift.
Wide-eyed, Jaime clenched his jaw. "I suppose there was a reason for that." His voice was low, threatening.
"More than reason." Tyrion barked. "You think this grief is your own?" His stubby arm gestured to Jaime's bent frame. "She had children. I grieve her too. Other bloody kingdoms are in mourning. She was well loved, Jaime. You don't get to halt everything. You don't get to stop your life and try to die with her. Yes, Brienne died brother, and it tears me to pieces whenever I think of her; but the world keeps spinning and we have to move with it."
"Careful, imp." His voice was no his own. "What might you bid me do? Frolic through the streets? Find some whore to bury my sorrow in?" He was angry now. "Forget about her?" That was what he feared most. I'll forget the colour of her hair and the sound of her laugh in time. I'll forget the majesty of her eyes.
Tyrion moved to slap him again, but Jaime was quicker and caught his wrist. "There are laws against harming your king."
"Aye. And striking newly widowed old cripples is also frowned upon. Why are you even here, Tyrion?"
"I am here," the king looked around, "in your stale smelling apartments," his right hand waved about, "because I'm the only soul brave enough to make you leave them. Your children ask for you. I cannot keep telling them the same things."
"You're a wise man." Jaime's tone was low and biting. "Tyrion the Wise, they call you. You'll think of something."
The king squared his shoulders. He stood as tall as he could and pulled his doublet down, straightening it. He glared at Jaime, and with perhaps his most authoritative voice spoke. "You will leave this room and attend even meal with myself and your children in the dining hall of my chambers. You will shave and bathe and dress in clothing that befits your station. That is an order, Lord Commander."
Jaime's own eyes were sharp, he knew. "You sound like Father." Tyrion didn't falter. He wouldn't back down, so Jamie had to. "As His Grace commands."
Without another word, his brother turned on his heels and waddled out of the room, leaving Jaime to his anguish.
He went to Tyrion's dinner that night and lied his way through every question his children asked. The king frowned the entire time.
Six days later, there was a funeral precession. Mourners came from throughout the realm; from the ruins of King's Landing, from the kingdom of the Stormlands, from the ruins of the Reach and the Riverlands, even Dorne. The Starks of the north would arrive too late, though the king read their ravens, and the last Arryn of the Vale sent some gift or another.
They dressed her in blue: a fine silk tunic and doublet, satin breeches and high black boots. A length of delicate gold and sapphires pearled her neck whilst large sapphires studded her ears. A replica of her house sword lay across her legs, held with one lifeless palm. The gem in its pommel was as big as her fist, as blue as her eyes.
The dead child, his dead child, lay upon her breast, cradled in her arms always. They put him in a gown of crimson silk; the lion of their house stitched in gold thread upon the back, roaring for the dead.
Jaime stayed in the sept long after the crowds were gone. He stayed after the children were sent away with septas, after the king left. He stayed until there was naught but silence, and moonlight spilled through the high stained-glass windows. Faintly, he could hear the breaking of the ocean waves.
Brienne looked peaceful with the boy and her sword. The Mother. The Warrior.
"Perhaps I'll never forgive you for this. I blame those boys, Brienne...I blame myself." His chest was a pitiful thing, constricted and hollow, like a decaying tree. "You said you'd want to return to your island should you fall. Before our last war you said it. Forgive me wife, but I shall keep you here. This is your place. You'll sleep with the rest of the lions. And in time enough," he cupped her cool cheek, "I will rest beside you once more."
A/N:
Regarding the name of the boy, Timeaus or Timaios is a Greek name derived from timao, meaning "to honour". I couldn't resist and thought Tymaios a fitting Lannister name for a child of our favorite swordswench. Call me crazy. Thanks for reading. I might add more…