He strode along the path from the stable block, not remembering where he was meant to be going, his thoughts full of her. His mind skipping erratically about, unable to settle on any one thing.
Qyburn... so many different versions of what was true. The old man's words still buzzing like flies in his head. Jaime hadn't liked hitting him, but at the same time he hadn't hesitated. Each blow had released a new and improved truth.
By the time he'd located Qyburn at an Inn on Silk street, it was almost dawn, Jaime's eyes were dry from countless smoky rooms, and fatigue was throbbing in his temple. Realising the Maester had lied to him all along, that he'd had her all along... Jaime felt his head start thudding anew. Fuck you old man. I wish I'd hit you harder.
Jaime weaved through abandoned tents and picketed horses in the outer wards, praying Cersei was still returning from the ceremony. He remembered how he'd thought only of his sister every day, for months, while chained to a stake in that stinking Northern pen. In his mind he'd wanted nothing more than to be with her. He'd known that everything would be right, if only they were together again. His other half.
But the reality of Cersei was somehow... wrong. Her skin was too pale, the scent of her powders and fragrances cloying. Her cultured voice grating to his ears, her airs and practised poses irritating. The cold smile that never reached her eyes. The elaborate gowns and hair styles so pretentious and affected.
But that was unfair. His sister hadn't changed.
She just wasn't you. That's why she was wrong.
And today was Joffrey's wedding day. Jaime cursed to himself. The biggest fucking event on the Lannister social calendar, and I could care less about it. The marriage would be official by now, and everyone would soon be back in the Red Keep for the feast. Jaime dodged a scullery maid balancing a pole on her shoulders, reached the kitchen keep and turned down the laneway behind it. He wanted to run, but his legs felt heavy with dread. Will you still be there? Alive?
The recessed door to the store-room was closed, but Jaime's sword striking the bolt made it shudder and swing open. He kicked it wide. For a moment he saw her there, sitting with her back against the far wall, smiling up at him with relief. The rare, infectious smile of hers, that hit him like a punch in the gut and cut through all the artifice of title and class, reputation and prejudice. The way she looked at him and saw him only as a man. To her, he'd been no Ser or Kingslayer, no son of an important House, no heir to a castle, nor infamous villain. She had loved him for who he was, and he would never find that again. People's expectations of me, from the moment I was born. People's preconceptions of me, before we even meet. It's never been possible for anyone to really see me. But you did.
Then his eyes adjusted to the gloom and she was gone.
The room was empty, save for debris and shelves stacked with decaying foodstuff. Jaime stepped through and crouched in a shaft of sunlight just inside the doorway. He put his fingertips to the floor and touched the congealing splatters of blood shining there. His eyes flicked over the area. How much blood was here, soaked into the dust? Enough? He brushed straw aside, pressed the black pools beneath to test their depth. Rubbing his fingers together, the sticky liquid still felt warm. But maybe it was just the sun.
How long ago did your blood run onto these stones? How little time did I miss you by? Jaime's heart felt too big for his chest, beating painfully against a ribcage that seemed to have shrunk. A memory swam up to him from some hidden depth of consciousness; a boy's body draped across a horse, shadowed by the huge bulk of the armoured rider behind it, only a small hand visible as it flopped loose. Blood wreathing the skinny wrist; trailing down it like a dark vine that splashed red flowers onto the grass below.
I should have told you, about that night. Your brother.
Kneeling in the store-room, Jaime had the overwhelming urge to scrape frantically at the stained floor with his hands, gather together all the spilt blood, every drop. He wanted to find her and put her back together again. I have to tell you... why didn't I tell you? The air in the windowless room was suffocating; it was hard to breathe. Jaime stood up and staggered out.
Hurrying back along the laneway, he stumbled a little on a broken cobblestone. Aware now of being completely, utterly exhausted. He'd been physically tired many times before, but this was different. His entire body, his whole being, felt defeated.
Where are you? Are you alive? Please, by all the gods, if you can hear me...
The main courtyard was emptier than usual, only a couple of kitchen staff and serving wenches crossing with supplies. One stopped to adjust the load she was carrying, and as she puffed limp hair from her face, Jaime saw it was her. Her wide lips, her cheekbones... then he blinked, and she was gone.
The serving girl gaped at him, revealing a missing front tooth. Jaime frowned, and she quickly cast her gaze down and kept walking.
He leaned against a wall of an outhouse. Closing his eyes, the burning in them was like ground glass under the lids. He rubbed them harshly with his thumb and forefinger, as if he could erase the memory of the past few days, ever since he'd returned to KingsLanding.
If only he could go back, to when he last touched her waist and stroked her warm skin. He would never have trusted Steelshanks or his men to take care of her. He would never have let that evil schemer Qyburn draw one breath in the Capital. If he could go back even one day, he would tell his father to go fuck himself, he would wrap his hands around his sister's graceful neck and choke the truth out of her, while there was still time. He would, he would have...
What? Scooped you up and ridden straight back out of KingsLanding? To go where, and live how? Jaime shook his head, in denial. Would I have done that, given up everything that matters to me? Brienne said I couldn't, and I agreed with her. My family, the Kingsguard; I am those things. They define me. I am a Lannister, I am a knight. But I thought I could have you, too. I didn't know I had to choose.
'Fuck,' Jaime muttered, opening his eyes and staring unseeing out into the courtyard. People were trickling in through the main gates of the Red Keep, as the King's wedding procession began to slowly return.
You're gone. I lost you.
He understood then with sickening clarity that the thing you want most desperately to keep is the very thing that slips most easily from your hands.
When did I fall in love with you? What moment was it, exactly? When you smiled at me? When you sent your horse to attack me, and then stitched up my wounds? When you kissed me? When you faced down three armed outlaws for my sake? When you walked miles through the night to get an axe for my chains? When you defended your brother's memory, against all the evidence?
Or was it before any of that, when I looked up from the gutter and first saw your face?
There was, at most, an hour left before the feast. Cersei, Joffrey, Tyrion, Tommen, his father, his men, all expecting him: Ser Jaime Lannister, eldest son of Lord Tywin Lannister, of House Lannister, Captain of the Kingsguard. His role, his duty, was to be standing there beside them all.
I can still see you. Everywhere I look, I see you.
Jaime pushed up off the wall, spun away from the returning wedding guests. It was a short walk back to the stables and as he entered, a groom was putting his horse into the stall.
'I just unsaddled 'im Ser...'
'Saddle him again.'
Jaime rode out of the gates and turned the opposite direction from the stream of traffic. He could see the gold tips of the Royal carriages gleaming through the bobbing heads of people. The horse was bone-tired but he kicked it into a trot, and headed along a side street towards Market Square.
The two guards stationed at the Mud gate stopped slouching and stood to attention at his approach. 'Ser?' One of them looked confused, uncertain perhaps if he should intervene. 'Your presence is required at the King's Wedding. Is there some other matter of... of greater importance?'
'Yes,' Jaime said, and he realised he'd never meant anything more. 'There is.'
He didn't pause but continued straight on past the guards as they dithered over their duties. Out on the road, he dug his heels into the horse's flanks and it surged into a weary canter. The air was damp and clammy with approaching rain, his face felt chilled without the insulating beard he'd worn for almost a year. The back of his neck was similarly cold below his cropped hair.
Would you even recognise me, if I saw you again?
Increasing desperation spurred him on along the road, searching the faces of the smallfolk and traders as they passed. Looking for her build, her limping walk, the red-gold tint of her hair under a hood. The tilt of her nose, the way her brows slanted like arrows. Her curving mouth. So many times he thought he caught a glimpse of her, but each time he rode closer the face that turned toward him was wrong. Each unfamiliar face became more hideous than the last, until Jaime began to feel the gods were mocking him, and he were surrounded by gargoyles instead of people. He criss-crossed the little settlements set up outside the Capital, riding his labouring horse back and forth until it tripped and almost fell.
He reined in at the edge of a camp by the King's Road, and dismounted. His own legs wobbled to support him. The wind cut through his cloak like a frozen knife and he shivered. I must get back to the Red Keep, right now, the wedding feast will be starting. Cersei will be looking for me. There'll be seven hells to pay if I miss it. But suddenly it seemed to Jaime that his whole life of feasts and accolades, privileges and status, was just one long fake pretence, which he had acted his part in diligently and never even questioned why.
But if that is not me, then who am I?
Rain began to drizzle down, a grey veil, obscuring the features on those who continued on past him as he stood there by the road. The horses and livestock and pedestrians and wagons, all merged into an amorphous blob, an undulating creature moving across his vision. Not even real, a monstrous hallucination.
Jaime couldn't trust his own sleep-deprived eyes any more. He leaned back on the sweaty shoulder of his horse to steady himself.
You're long gone. I only hope you're still alive, and safe. Wherever you are.
He closed his eyes, rested his head on the saddle.
A commoner. Fierce, compassionate, loyal, brave. The opposite of every sly, self-serving sycophant surrounding me at court. Who would have known. A common girl would be the most un-common person I ever met.
His tiredness dragged at him like an undertow.
Your face made me notice you, but what was inside made me love you.
I only wish I'd told you, about that night. About your brother.
As if he were dreaming, Jaime saw the forest around the Crossroads as he'd ridden through it back then. More than a year ago, but he saw it again now as if it were happening to him for the first time. The moon full and blue-white, so that the landscape appeared bleached of colour, the shadows like fathomless pits. His horse's hooves the only sound in the stillness as he moved through the trees. Hunting a boy. A boy who had threatened his bastard son, Prince Joffrey. A boy that Cersei had demanded be found and made to pay. A peasant, a butcher's son.
Jaime had separated from the main hunting party who were concentrating on the river banks, and ridden up into the thicker forest behind the Inn. It was hours since they'd begun the search, and no-one had found any sign of the boy. Even after the Stark girl was located and brought in, the boy remained elusive. Despite Jaime's determination to avenge the honour of his family, and self-righteous anger that anyone, particularly a lowborn, would dare threaten his own blood, he couldn't help but feel a grudging admiration for the little fugitive. All the men at the Royal's disposal, and one mere boy was getting the better of them?
In his waking dream, Jaime rode once more through the silent trees, coming unexpectedly across the red-headed boy hiding in a thicket. The kid's clothes were torn, and marks of tears streaked through the dirt on his round cheeks. He looked exhausted. When he'd turned and seen Jaime there, his eyes had widened in fear and he'd risen as if to flee. But Jaime, for reasons he didn't even understand, had held a finger to his lips. The boy froze, unsure. Then Jaime had turned his horse's head away and ridden back the way he'd come.
He had returned to the main hunting party and said nothing.
The Hound had found the kid anyway, a few hours after. Inevitable, really. Jaime had known deep down the boy couldn't stay hidden forever. The next morning, he'd wondered why he'd ridden away. Was it weakness? An aberration? He'd pushed a boy even younger than that one from a window not long before, and justified it as the right thing to do.
But now, with his eyes closed, standing on the road side in the humming rain, Jaime remembered that moment when he and Mycah had stared at each other. One a knight of the Kingsguard, one a butcher's boy, and Jaime had recognised their common humanity. And spared him.
I wanted to tell you. He was the last person to see her brother alive apart from the man who'd killed him, and maybe this would mean something to her.
I was afraid you would say I should have done more to save him. But I couldn't have saved him. Mycah was already dead from the moment Joffrey had held the sword to his cheek. I lied when I told you it could have ended in just a few bruises, if only Arya hadn't interfered. Joffrey meant to kill your brother. It was inevitable.
Jaime opened his eyes, dizzy. The grey sky above him spun, the rain fell harder. It dripped from the ends of his hair as the strands plastered against his skull. It fell into his eyes, and he couldn't tell if that was why he was crying.
I'm sorry about your brother, I didn't want him to die. One small act of pointless mercy, in a lifetime of callous acts? In the end, does it mean anything?
But maybe sparing Mycah wasn't an aberration. Maybe that was who I am.
A.N: So sorry for the unforgivable delay. If you can bring yourself to forgive me :) the final chapter will be up next week. It will be a new POV, from someone we haven't had yet. Thank you for bearing with me.