A/N: I must apologise for the awfully long hiatus! All the Jaime feels on the show have me...confused, over where to take this. To be honest, I usually extensively plan out my chapters before I even get to them, but when I got to the last chapter I posted I found that I couldn't think of anything to plan for the next chapters. BUT I am back (hopefully), and I have some goodies in store for you! Hopefully, i'll be able to gradually ease my way back into things.

HearMeRoar: I can't thank you enough for your interest in this story and the support you have provided me -it truly is inspiring! I love that you love this and love you as well x.

Lorraine

The Sept stood still and quiet as I entered it somberly just as I had done for the past fortnight since Jaime's departure. Praying had never been a habit of mine -I was certainly too young to know the Gods before my 'incident' and too confused to look for them after, they were never truly of any concern to me. But there was no other solace -no other way. And so I turned to the only thing I hoped could sooth me even if it hardly did anything for me; perhaps it could do something for someone else. If the Gods knew what lay in our hearts what good did it do, what purpose did it serve, to need to say those words in front of a certain man on certain days in one certain place? Words are secondary in life -the fact that I exist proves it, but I know now that I would go farther than pray at a close by Sept if it meant there was a chance it'd ensure my husband's safe return.

As I lit a candle before the Mother I knelt down on to my knees and tried to speak to someone that supposedly only Septons could speak to. But instead of one intriguing dialogue I found myself in reverie over how deliciously silent the Sept was. Casterly Rock, as big as it was, was hardly ever so. It was silent in my rooms -though, in my bed, at my table, but it was the loudest kind of silence. The sort of silence that screamed for its loss as if it somehow wished to alert me that something was amiss or not in its place -I knew very well what or who wasn't there where he should be -by my side, until the end of days. But here in this Sept, the silence does not speak -at best, there are only whispers of the prayers said here, and I marvelled at the silence that allowed such things to be heard with no shame.

I had gotten many suggestions -and complaints over my lifetime both to my face and behind my back, on where to take my unwelcome silence. Nobility was certainly no place for someone as seemingly queer as I. I suppose my husband and I had something in common in that regard -although the extremities of both situations would beg to differ of course. The most popular suggestions had always been to join the Silent Sisters -a monastery meant to respect the dead, transition their souls to the next world and treat our mortal bodies the way the next world demanded they be. It was always a joke -i'm sure they must have thought it fitting for me as well as the vow of celibacy to accompany it, but out of all of the places I was jokingly said to go, the ruins of Old Valyria included, the only place that remained in my thoughts was the Quiet Isle. A place untouched and unmarred by the spoils of man. A place where people did not need their words, they had only gentleness -and such pride was taken in such kindness and peace! It almost sounds to me like a made-up world, something at best across many many oceans, but it was real and lay almost exactly across from where I dwelled. I could only wish for its preservation and its sanctity to be respected and upheld -but I was coming to know too well that nothing was held sacred in this world. Only corruption, violence and war have the potential to grow and spread, and they seem to spread at such a vast and vicious pace that it leaves no time for anything good to fight back. War is always fought with war, so was it even a surprise that out of the entirety of Westeros there is only one small sanctuary of a place that understands the strength found in not fighting?

My senseless prayers for Jaime's safety, for my sister's safety, for Addam's, it all led to some mumble of a prayer for all the causes I knew -lost or not. I prayed for Jaime's uncle Gerion's safe return, too, for he had been lost at sea -presumably on his way to Old Valyria, for more than ten years now. Tywin Lannister sent fleet after fleet looking for his brother, who had left none but a bastard girl in his disappearance, and yet they never found him. Whenever Jaime speaks, or spoke, of him he would have the easiest of smiles and I knew then that his uncle was most loved by him. I saw his shadow, even though I knew not his face, approaching the shores of Casterly Rock with a mist of ships behind him curdling in smoke. I saw it, clear as day, and wished Jaime was here to somehow see it with me. Tyrek was blessed with the miracle of his return, why not pray for Gerion's return as well? Or was that not how the Gods worked?

I finished my prayers in more silence, and as I left the Sept the still early sun shocked my senses -the Sept is a place where time is practically unknown to those that go to worship. Finding myself now at a loss for what to do since I had exhausted my begging for one day, I walked to the conservatory where I could usually find Tyrek in at this time of day.

To be fair, though, it was hard to find him anywhere else. I've noticed that he's been quite...shut in. I can't presume to have known him well since I had only known him when he was an infant -but father always spoke of Aunt Darlessa's son as such a spirited lad and yet the young man before me cowered away from the sun and fresh air as if it would scrape off what was left of his skin. He was almost looking grey from being indoors for so long -lions of Lannister do not do well with no sun to water their golden locks.

Tyrek looks so much like Jaime -enough, I presume, to be confused for his son. It was a miracle that he had returned and returned to us. Could he have come here, and fought to come here at that, just to wither away? All that time, all those miles traveling, and I feel like the young man has forgotten himself. I have never seen a lion so...broken before. Jaime was fractured, yes, when I met him, but I still heard him roar. He never gave that up.

Sunlight broke through the conservatory as I walked in, and just as I did Tyrek's hesitant body flinched away from the glass he was reaching out to like it stung him.

"Good morning. Is it still morning?" These were only rare moments, but he looked like such a boy then. I smiled and nodded affirmatively. Yes, Tyrek, though time stands still as we await the castle to breathe again, it is still morning. We have a long day ahead.

I sat on the seat where his volume lay pushed away and unloved. It seems that he'd rather force himself to read all the books he could find on just about any subject matter to take his mind off something he had not spoken of yet. Jaime always hated books. Perhaps, if I were a lady with a voice, i'd read to him and force him into appreciating it just as I had taken to riding with at his insistence. I was never one for listening to much instructions, but every time I rode out into the broken wind I could feel Jaime close behind -even if it was in fact only Benedict keeping his eye on me.

I looked around and wondered how many times I lay my chest on Jaime's chest in this room -how many laughs we had and all those times we made love here. It was all a collection, a long stream of images sliced through with the feel of my hair dancing in the wind, and I shivered unforgivingly when longing slithered up my arms and through my shoulders like a snake.

It touched me, raking its nails across the back of my neck as all the colours and sensations burst through my senses. Like a crooked and grim smile, a crack broke through the smooth ground I had made for myself before I had the chance to hold on to whatever was left of menace of my golden memories.

"Mistress?" I looked up, snapped out of my torturous reverie, to find Tyrek staring at me with concern.

He had been through more than enough, and he did not need to come here just to watch his cousin wallow in her private sadness. Instead I stood up -what did I even sat down for, anyway? And approached him tentatively as I placed a soothing hand on his forearm with a gentle squeeze.

"Should we go outside?"

With only me for company Tyrek, too, was quickly taking to my hidden language, and so with quick understanding he gave me his answer with an insincere shrug.

"What is there to do outside that can not be done here?" He plopped down onto one of the seats surrounding us, leaving me standing and wondering, still, how to get the young man to do anything other than waste away in a castle. I was all too prepared to do so -content at all that I knew before Jaime came and showed me far, far more. But Tyrek was the complete opposite to my past self -he had seen too much, too much and too soon and now he wanted to hide away thinking the world would surely change by the time he decides to come out again.

"I want to show you something."

He followed obediently -unusual for a Lannister.

Our laboured steps took us back to my chambers where he reluctantly entered behind me. We did not need to search far to find what I had meant to show him -the now happy family of kittens and their mother settled comfortably on a larger cot in my -our, lounging area. I crouched by the new family tenderly, and as soon as I did so the youngest of the litter -Pinky, dotted in black spots upon her ranging white and ginger fur, leapt into my lap and purred lightly into my arms.

Noticing the empty space by my side, I looked back to find Tyrek standing there looking like he knew not what to do with himself, and I tapped the desired seat by my side for him to down in.

It was surely not a scene for nobles of our standing to be seen indulging in, but when had I ever cared about propriety before? Jaime knew that fact well. Sometimes I like to think that it was one of the things to draw him to me if ever one could say I was the kind of person that men were drawn to.

'There are no men like me.' That's what Jaime would say to that. I find myself doing that sort of thing more and more as of late. I think about what Jaime would say to this or that, whether his jaw would flinch at a certain display of mine, whether his eyes would wander as they usually did if I was dressed richly in his colours -these were all things I found myself missing like someone had taken something away from me without me knowing.

The new kittens in their lazy -and rather luxurious, splendour took to Tyrek with immediate curiosity. Within minutes, four out of the five new kittens were sniffing out Tyrek's robes and trying to latch their tiny, undeveloped, nails into the unyielding cloth. He seemed taken with them in turn, which surprised me even though the entire point was to pique his interest -I could not really say that Duncan was ever the same, and Addam certainly never even indulged or humoured me.

"Do you want to take one?" It seemed like a natural question to ask now that he was quite acquainted with them, but he looked at me suddenly with so much apprehensiveness and near terror that I found myself in the mode I was always ready to be in with Tyrek -prepared worry.

"Don't they have a mother?" Could that truly have been cause for alarm to him? Did he somehow fear Amber's wrath? It is perfectly normal to adopt a kitten especially when under the same roof as its mother. Yes, Casterly Rock is vast, but it's still the same place. And yet I had the sense that the specifications about the exact distance that would constitute being 'away' was not what seemed to trouble the boy.

I never failed to read his discomfort, and yet its essence or cause was as elusive to me as the sea that stretched before us. I promptly answered him with subtle encouragement hoping it would plant the seeds of something beyond the hollowness he knew thus far.

"Maybe they want a friend, too."

Tyrek

A funny thing it is, truly, for kittens to want a friend and for myself not to feel the need for such. I have not felt the need for such in the longest time...

I promised myself a thousand times over on my travels that if I ever found Casterly Rock, or anything resembling home or family, then i'd be good and live as plainly as I could. But it would seem that my cousin's wife did not find that to be acceptable. To let me be in my nothingness was too harsh a reality for someone like her, and so every day I had to endure not only the constant attempts to liven up the day but that I had to ardently deny her as well.

This, however, was not unpleasant. It was nice to touch something soft. Something that did not at all fear you or know the blood that sometimes stained your hands or the chill that turns through your bones.

"The night is dark and full of terrors." I have seen my share of darkness, I have had terrors that would forsake the hells. But now I rest at Casterly Rock, and I am prepared to face the light and the sea and the salt of the earth if it means no more fighting.

Lady Lorraine did not fear the night. At least, I don't think so. It was very hard to tell what she feared beyond the obvious loss. Lady Lorraine -how strange to think of her so! Lady Lorraine, of whom my mother often spoke of being such a queer and dreary child as well as a lady with no future prospects beyond being a 'liability to her father and brother'. And yet here she dwelled in the den of all the Lannisters. My grandmother was a Marbrand; her niece my mother; and her niece was now my cousin's wife. A Marbrand is lady of Casterly Rock once more. She is half me -is she not? The same way I am half my cousin Jaime, I must share my other half with this perfect stranger. I had never had the opportunity to study here and look up to her the way I had with my cousin -I had not spent hours of my life dreaming that I could match her, just the same as my father did upon Jaime's. But here in this lonely castle I could imagine stranger things were bound to befall me than finding solace and justice in the company of a mute.

"Let's go to the stables." I was getting quite adept at understanding her -to my own pride, but the downfall to that was that it clearly meant that the invitation was received and thus made it harder to refuse.

I have no need for stables. Stables are for horses. Horses are for riding. My riding cloak is torn and dusted, and a new one shall not replace the damage incurred the last time I rode with a dying horse beneath me. However there was something about the way she asked it almost like she was demanding it -like it was not a question at all. And so I gave my quiet acquiesce and trotted to her side as her sworn sword followed closely. Just because we were going to the stables it did not necessarily mean there would be riding involved.

When we made it to the stench of the stables the lady I was to accompany darted straight towards her intended target -a strong dark horse I knew as Arrow from all her stories. She was a heady thing, eyes full of night time even in the stark day light, but her new mistress approached her with such ease and forthrightness that I could almost see the mare visibly curl into her touch as she stroked the darkness along her back.

Something about the way her hand kept brushing at the soft hairs, so dark that they almost looked wet, drew me in and I found my feet pulling me farther in to the stables and my own hand stretching out to the beast.

I forgot what it was like to place my hand on a horse -all muscle and groomed hairs, since I could still feel the backbone of the last horse I had stretch across my ribs at night. Day and night I rode upon it with only one thing in mind; i'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry that you will die just so I might live. And here as I stood before something so alive I wanted so badly to weep for what I felt I had killed.

There had been so much done in the name of survival; but what I had strangled and choked with the most ruthlessness was the parts of me that could not exist if I needed the to stay in the world. I killed my empathy, I killed my old home, I killed my mother. Her face was one I could hardly remember -only her voice as it sang to me remained. I did not know exactly where she was or whether she still had any hope of searching for me -Jaime and Lorraine had thought it best not to send word to her of my survival since a raven sent to King's Landing could not be trusted and they had yet to understand the exact mechanics behind my disappearance.

"Mother told me about you...you know." The world slipped out of me like rain from a dense cloud. My cousin's eyes darted to me in curious alarm, and as I looked down at my pale, shaky hands in a stark contrast against the hair of the horse I found some will to break my silence.

"Whenever she'd speak of our Marbrand cousins she'd list them almost like a nursery rhyme -there are many of you. Janyne, the eldest; Addam, the brave; Reina, the fair; Elaine, the jester; Lorraine, the silent and Duncan, the troublemaker." I could almost see it now that I could say it out loud myself -sitting in the dining hall with mother as she wrote to my uncle Damon after receiving a letter from him telling her of Duncan and Elaine's latest pranks on Reina.

What I could see even clearer was the picture I had painted time and time again in my mind's eye when I was in King's Landing. I'd wish -i'd long, to see Ashemark and meet cousins who would become friends and I could finally let my own eyes bear witness to things that I only ever hear of in letters.

"I'd imagine you all in my mind at Ashemark, especially since I had never met you. I'd be there, too. I only knew your brother, Addam, and even then he was barely an acquaintance. Court has that effect on people, you know, it turns everyone into a stranger. But I kept thinking that perhaps in their -your, own home i'd find friends that I never found back here or in Lannisport and King's Landing. I imagined that Addam would help make me a warrior like him -like my father was, and that Duncan and Elaine would get me up to no good. Perhaps i'd read to you -or practice doing so, anyway, and I thought that if I saw Reina to be as fair as my mother claimed then I should have liked to draw her in my foolish young thoughts. I found I kept thinking of Ashemark more and more on my journey -I nearly went there if it wasn't Casterly Rock that was closer. I never thought i'd meet you of all people here. Somehow...you're just the same as I imagined you to be."

It was all true. Especially on my long and strenuous travels, sometimes the only thing that held me closer to the strings keeping it all together was the thought of the once imagined Ashemark -sieged and yet still untouched and glimmering with the etherealness of my painted family.

The sound of the familiar scratch of a pencil upon paper drew me out of the recurring image and I refocused unto the sight of my cousin handing me her trusted notebook.

"You can read to me here, if you 're safe here." I read it over and over again; I am safe her. My fingers curled around the softened hard cover with a simple tree drawn upon it -I am safe here.

"I can't run away from myself." It left as a whisper, and predeceasing it immediately was the feel of my cousin's hand above mine. She did not ask me whether I wanted her touch -whether it made me comfortable or not for her to feel the skin that so prickly and foreign on my flesh, and yet I welcomed it all together. And soon, I found myself curling into her hands much the same her horse did. In that reaction she must have found encouragement, for she moved around the horse to my side and placed her arm square and steady on my shoulder for a long moment as I looked down breathing. Only breathing.

"You like to draw?" She motioned, and suddenly restless I raised my head and voice to answer.

"Yes. At least I used to. I'm not sure anymore." I'm not sure of anything anymore -but I remember drawing, and often. The tuft of my cousin Tyrion's hair blowing in the strange breeze, the sad smile and flowing robes of Sansa Stark was she floated about the keep to look like she was not the prisoner that she actually was.

At that, I received another rushed note from my companion.

"Elaine is a lovely painter. I'll show you her sketches later. Maybe when she visits you could work on something together."

Yes, perhaps. Perhaps, if I were not so broken, I could hold a pencil in my hand without shaking and find colours in mind worth drawing.

The small moment of reflection we had suddenly gained was suddenly interrupted by the entry of the stablehand, whom, at seeing us both with such apparent interest to Arrow, asked what he was paid to ask.

"Are you going for a ride, M'Lady?"

"Yes," She motioned whilst turning to me with a smile before continuing, "would you like to join me?"

"No, no i'm fine, thank you."

Maybe my day was coming -maybe it was just around the corner and a day away, but it was not today. Not with the sky so grey and my wounds so fresh -my mind still so...clouded with who I have been when I was not myself.

"Another time. I'll go back in-" I rushed my hands onto her elbows, feeling the bone through the layers of linen.

"No, I insist you have your ride. You're getting quite good, you know."

"Are you sure?" She asked with uncertainty, but I could already see her leaning towards her favoured mare.

"Yes, I have a kitten to keep me occupied now." I am just like you now.

I left the stable but lingered on outside -strangely enough, just long enough to see the lady of Casterly Rock ride off with her silent guard in close pursuit. As the dark head of hair trailed along the line of the thin woods and disappeared against the darkened sky, I wondered whether it was truly the right choice for me to stay put just as I was instead of try to be the cousin -the friend, that I wished I had been so long ago. When the first raindrop plopped onto the skin of my palm in a wide bubble almost like some sort of warning I found myself retracting my earlier statement, and my feet finally gave enough push to lead me back inside where I knew I was safe.

"The sky looks too grey, anyway," I kept telling myself, "I don't want to see what comes after."

Addam

He charged with force out of the mountains, the constant collision against the wind being almost enough to make him forget the feel of Margot's lips against his temple as she said her goodbyes to him when he left Ashemark.

It was a terrible need -overcome with all of the things he refused to allow any manifestation as Commander of the City Watch, but there was not enough reason to match it. His father, ailing in health and in time, worried too over his sister whose sincerity never seemed to quite reach her letters. Something was off -something was wrong, and it was enough to make him doubt just what they were all thinking sending her off from her haven of Ashemark to a stranger's home in Casterly Rock where convention -something that Lorraine quite surely never took to, would ask of her things that he wasn't sure she could handle.

Addam had nearly rehearsed the number of times he'd tell her he'd visit before actually doing so -but since his worry had exponentially grown, a strange and eager protectiveness he had always had over his sister, Addam waved all the formalities aside. Sure, one would need an invitation to storm in unannounced at Casterly Rock -but I am not just any one.

I am the heir to my one of my liege's strongest vassals. I am the closest friend of Jaime Lannister. I am the brother of Lady Lannister.

He was all those things -and as his heart pounded into the stormy ash that the Westerlands around them seemed to leave in his wake he also wondered whether he was not foolish, above all else.

It felt right to have Tyrek as a full first person POV character somehow instead of a third person. I wanted him to be a little more relatable to Lorraine since they're now stuck in the same place with pretty much only each other for company and I wanted to show this new, special relationship by having the both of them be fist person POV's. Plus, Tyrek in my fic suffers from aftershock and PTSD and I thought that the best way to portray that was through the first person. Tell me what you think!