Jaime remembered many things about that night.
He remembered night falling, and a green glow in the distance and I shall never forgive her for this, he thought.
He remembered the way the malignant radiance caressed Arya's face as she appeared suddenly beside him, mumbling 'Stay safe, Lannister,' not hearing 'And you, Stark'; riding away too soon.
He remembered the weight of his armour on his limbs and how heavy it felt, heavier than it had ever seemed before, and the clouds burned green and purple and red; bursting with death, not rain; mortality glowing in the surface of every sword that caught and reflected its light.
The enemy was a molten mass of blackness and strangeness, the shadows before the city walls and the shadow on the floor like thousands of tiny eyes creeping so closely together that they became one. He gripped the sword in his hand and felt that it belonged there, the hilt hot against the leather against his palm, the steel crying out for sustenance and begging him for blood. He answered its pleas tenfold, dancing through the black blades of the enemy and ripping them steel from steel and limb from limb, the blood of every man he killed the blood of the Red Priestess, spilling, spattering and showering as his own blood roared and heaved.
He remembered the hundreds of men and horses sent toppling to the ground like supplicants from the force of a colossal cloud of green flame erupting suddenly from the centre of Blackwater Bay; the steel of Jaime's helmet shrieking loudly and ghastlily in his ears as it hit the earth along with him and sang him a song of fire; of the morning when Aerys had fed a mother and her baby to the flames; and Jaime not knowing why, not even asking why, far away, inside, protected by his waking self. The fire out in the bay had the same shape, the same tormenting flames licking both its victims and its lips.
Men were rising up around him as the fire faded into the sky; Jaime's knees collapsing beneath him each time he put his weight on them; his armour becoming thicker and heavier with every move he made, his head lighter, his vision duller, and one of Stannis' twenty thousand bearing down on him; his eyes dark and alert, his body enclosed in a shell in plate.
He swore at himself to get the fuck up.
He couldn't.
The man's sword was a shining ribbon of green and purple and red that swung down and pierced the air so hard that Jaime screamed aloud; the steel seeming to pass right through him.
Get up. Get up.
He felt his legs cracking and his muscles screaming in protest, but he thundered back at them, and urged and goaded and impelled, and he was on his feet again, thank the gods – without a blade in his hand.
Jaime ducked as his enemy swung at him, his head spinning like lunacy (what the fuck is happening to me?), and crouching he lunged swiftly for his sword where it lay red on the ground, red… alongside his right hand.
He remembered his skull caving in on itself and taking his mind with it as torn muscle, bone and flesh suddenly came alive with agony, and his eyelids were flickering and trapping him inside them as he fell.
He remembered torrents of blood exploding from the throat of the man who had crippled him and spilling like rubies across a sword wielded by a deathly pale young girl with no armour on, her hair and clothes wet with blood.
He remembered her pouring wine down his throat, red wine; not stopping as he gagged and choked and dying men screamed around him and voices babbled on and on too loudly far too loudly
'The safest thing would be to take the whole arm,' a venerable voice was opinionating, 'it will very likely be necessary in any case.'
'You do anything of the sort and I'll stick a sword in your guts. Losing his arm will kill him.'
'Keeping his arm may kill him.'
'You know perfectly well that's not what I mean.'
Silence, and screaming, more silence; darkness, then light, too much of it, far too much; and bells, why the fuck were they ringing bells, and his head so light so heavy, eyesight an agony, breathing an agony, the world a shattered mirror, and Arya's face filling his vision, her grey wolf eyes like the rain.
'Stop pretending you can't hear me. Just stop. Just open your mouth and make a sound so I know you're…Jaime. Jaime. JAIME, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SAY SOMETHING!'
A stone ceiling and the smell of salt and smoke, an emptiness at one end of his right arm, and his head turning in the direction of an open window, the sun shining and the sky colours turned to black and grey and white, and silence, the silence and the smell.
Cersei's hands caressing his face, her gown Lannister crimson, her eyes dark green with horror, her golden hair beautiful, beautiful.
'You're so thin,' she whispered, her voice hoarse in her throat.
He wanted to hug her. Why wasn't she hugging him?
'Who did this to you? Who?'
And he remembered inhaling smoke and ruin and blackened flesh, and saying
'You did.'
Cersei turning away from him, a door slamming, a jolt in his heart, not meaning it, not believing it. And knowing that she would return; knowing that she would know. She would come to him, because he could not go to her. He hurt too much. Too much.
A stone ceiling. The smell. The flame. Burn them all, he kept saying. Burn them all.
Father dead behind his desk. A shadow on the floor. A girl gasping in ecstasy. And a small boy falling from a window, his spine shattering as he hit the ground.
