While you're reading, I advise you to listen Nothing Else Matters, by Ramin Djawadi.
All Game of Thrones belong to GRR Martin and DB & DW
Enjoy reading !
There are no words to describe the guilt Tyrion feels when he passes through the gates of King's Landing, so great is it.
Guilt for believing in the wrong person.
Guilt for not believing those who told him the true nature of his queen, the queen he had chosen.
Guilt for leading tens of thousands of innocent people to their deaths.
And as he walks through the devastated streets of the capital of Westeros, this guilt grows.
This feeling suffocates him, oppresses him, strangles him, makes him cough almost as much as the dust, the ashes, the souls he breathes, as he walks, there, towards the Red Keep. Or walking towards what is left of the Red Keep.
And, as he gets closer, even the thought that his brother Jaime may have been able to get Cersei and their baby away from this nightmare fails to overcome the thought that perhaps Jaime and Cersei are dead or dying somewhere in the bowels of the castle.
And yet, this castle, red, red as the emblem of the Targaryen, red as the blood that was shed and which, invisible, smears his hands, red, the color that Daenerys saw when Missandei's body fell from the ramparts, attracts him like a magnet.
While her brain and heart are screaming for her to run away, to run away, away from here, to leave, never to return, never to see fire and blood again, her legs refuse to obey them, and carry him to the Red Keep. They lead him mechanically to the foot of the Aegon Hill, make him pass in front of the Unsullied, Grey Worm, Jon Snow and Davos Seaworth without stopping, without stopping their crazy race.
And that's it, they stop. They finally stop. They stop when he has passed through the castle gates.
Now, since he's there, he might as well go and check what was tormenting him, what haunted him, what tortured him, what tore him apart.
Tyrion wonders where Jaime might have led Cersei to reach the underground. But could he have just dragged her there?
Was he able to get to her in time?
Did he die on the way, lying in the middle of a corridor, alone, crushed by the roof, crushed by death from heaven, whispering apologies to the woman he loved more than anything else in the world for failing her?
What about Cersei?
Had she agreed to follow him, abandoning what she had lost everything for?
Was she already dead when he got to her, burned alive, stabbed, strangled?
If so, there would have been no need to kill Jaime. He would have died with a broken heart, broken to see his golden sister lying on the ground without having been able to save her.
Had they died separately, fear devouring them, loneliness consuming them, as they each gave up their souls on their own, when they should have been together, in death as they should have been together in life?
But perhaps they were alive.
Maybe they were alive, on a boat to Essos, or somewhere in a forgotten corner of the Red Keep.
Maybe they were alive, Cersei safe in Jaime's loving and protective arms, whispering to her that everything was going to be all right and they were going to be okay.
Maybe the golden twins were finally entitled to something that had always been denied them.
Maybe they were happy, now, happy and together.
Or maybe they weren't.
It was this thought that kept Tyrion going.
Until he reached the patio where the map of Westeros was painted.
To tell the truth, he wasn't even sure it was that patio. It could have been anywhere else in the castle, anywhere else in the city, anywhere else in the world, that Tyrion would simply be unable to recognize the place.
For him, time had stood still.
His legs continued to move forward, and his eyes were fixed on the scene unfolding in front of them.
They were here.
They were here.
Embraced, in the place where Casterly Rock was painted on the map, stones all around them, some on top of them.
Embraced, lying on the ground, bathing in a pool of their blood.
Their blood. One blood. One blood, one soul, one being. But two bodies.
Cersei turned her back to him, trapped in Jaime's tight, firm embrace, cradled to her chest, as if he could have protected her from the death raining down on them.
But when he came to them, Jaime opened his eyes.
Emerald eyes. Lannister eyes.
Jaime murmured, almost imperceptibly.
''Tyrion...''
Cersei's eyelids fluttered in turn, revealing her puddles of wild fire, but which hardly burned any more, a very last flame illuminating them. She turned her head towards him, her face covered with dust, making her skin even paler than ever, blood and tears finishing to color the fine features of the Queen of the Andals and the First Men, grimaced under the effort that such a movement cost her, when all her limbs seemed to be on fire, like the world around her.
Tyrion would have wanted to cry, to see them dying like that, these beautiful golden idiots. His brother and sister. The blood of her blood.
But he has no more tears. His eyes are dry. All his tears, he has already shed them.
Cersei's dry white lips open, and she blows, in a low, hoarse voice, because of the dust, the ashes, and the pain :
''Tyrion... I beg you... The passage... Behind the tapestry... The room of the Hand...Quickly... I beg you...''
For Tyrion, her words are incoherent, he does not know what she speaks about, but the despair in her weak voice is such as he knows that it is not a trap.
So he goes back.
He runs away again. He runs like he's never run before, runs to what was his prison during Joffrey's reign, runs to the place of what he long thought would be his release.
He comes storming to the door, tries to push it, but can't open it, his hands are shaking so much, his heart is in a panic.
At the end of the third attempt, he manages to open it, and enters Qyburn's apartments, in which he floats a strange perfume.
He throws himself on the tapestry behind which he knows that the secret passage is hidden, then opens the door.
When he hears a cry.
A cry.
Baby crying.
He grabs a torch hanging on the wall, and moves forward in the dark.
When he sees it.
A cradle.
He approaches, and finally, he sees the source of the cries of distress he heard from the entrance.
He sees her.
The little girl swaddled in scarlet swaddling clothes has blond hair, and when she opens her eyes full of tears, they are the same ones that looked at him with sorrow a few minutes before.
Diamond tears. Emerald eyes. Lannister eyes.
He cautiously takes his niece in his arms and suddenly the baby stops crying.
He doesn't even want to think about how long she's been there, locked up, alone, screaming. But deep down, he knows.
He knows that Cersei put her here because no one with evil intentions would find her. Because she would be safe there. And he knew that, as horrible as her sister was claimed to be, she would never, for anything in the world, have left her precious little lion cub, the apple of her eye, here, leaving the city without her, without coming to get her. Only, she had been wounded before she could do so. And so was Jaime.
He understands now. He also understands what he has to do.
So he takes the little lioness with him, and he goes back to where he came from.
He only hopes for one thing.
That Jaime and Cersei will still be alive to see that their baby, their little girl, their pride, their joy, who they died for, will be safe, loved and protected.
He runs, slower, now that he's holding the little one, but still hurries.
In a few minutes he is back on the patio.
When they hear footsteps, Cersei and Jaime turn to him as much as they can, allowing themselves to hope that he has found their daughter.
As Tyrion enters Cersei's field of vision, she thinks her heart will burst with relief.
He holds Joanna, who is shaking a little in her blankets, as if she has sensed the presence of her parents. As if she had felt death.
Their baby is going to live.
And that's all she cares about.
When Cersei looks him straight in the eye, Tyrion sees a fire that burns even harder than the one that destroyed the Baratheon fleet during the Battle of Blackwater.
But that fire burns with love. With love and relief.
Jaime looks at it too, and he finds the same flame in his eyes as in Cersei's.
Then he comes closer, and gently tilts the baby towards his parents.
Cersei and Jaime both kiss the little one on the forehead, using their last strength to tenderly caress her misty hair and whisper things in her ear.
Little Joanna babbles, reaches out her hands to her parents, grabs her mother's and father's fingers, and gives them big smiles.
But Tyrion must lift the baby up, and give his brother and sister the rest and peace they deserve.
As he stands up, Cersei puts on the biggest smile he has ever seen on her face. In her eyes, it's no longer a flame of wild fire burning, but an has heard how the Great Sept of Baelor exploded, but it is nothing compared to the explosion of love dancing in his sister's emerald iris, whispering :
"Our Joanna... ''
Jaime grabs Cersei's hand with his good hand and squeezes it tightly, bringing her as close to him as possible as she closes her eyes and exhales deeply.
That's it.
It's all over.
Cersei has passed away.
Joanna suddenly fell silent.
Tyrion always thought he'd be happy then, but he's not.
Tears flow silently from Jaime's eyes as his half dies. When he dies.
Then he looks at Tyrion and Joanna again.
''Go on... Cersei's waiting for you...''.
Then Jaime nods gently, kisses Cersei on the forehead and hugs her body very, very tightly.
That's it.
It's all over.
Just as Jaime lets out his last breath, Joanna starts crying.
And so does Tyrion.
He sheds all the tears he thought he no longer had, seeing the bodies of his golden brother and sister.
Cersei's corpse in the arms of Jaime's corpse.
Cersei and Jaime. Jaime and Cersei. Together.
Tyrion knows he must leave quickly. Cersei Lannister's daughter cannot be discovered. No one knew that she was born, and it was better that way.
But he cannot leave his niece without any memory of her parents, who died trying to take her to safety, who had loved her more than anything else in this world as soon as they knew she was there, in Cersei's womb.
So he takes Cersei's lion pendant, jewelry and crown, and Jaime's golden hand.
When she is older, he will give them to her.
He will give them to her, and he will tell her everything.
All about the greatest love story Westeros has ever known.
Thanks for reading! Please take the time to leave a short comment, it's always a pleasure. Don't be too hard on my English, it's not my mother tongue.