The milk of the poppy had filled his head like a vast invisible fog; the events of that day had exhausted and aggrieved him; but Jaime burst out laughing anyway; his entire body aching in response. There was no mirth in the amusement he expressed, but it did, however, achieve the desired effect: making Cersei furious.
'Be your Hand?' Jaime scoffed, hoping she would mistake the tears of pain in his eyes for tears of laughter, 'why your Hand? Has Joffrey done everyone a tremendous favour and died sometime this afternoon?'
'How can you speak in such a way about your own son?' his sister snapped.
'My seed, do you mean?'
Her anger was exquisite to watch, exquisite like the play of the candlelight on the black velvet she wore; waking up a passionate brilliance in her eyes. The way her mouth curved downwards when she was displeased or thwarted; the way she turned golden when she laughed, like sunlight…
But she hadn't laughed once that entire evening, preferring instead to echo bloody Pycelle's constant insistence that he stay in bed, and speak a lot of fucking nonsense to him.
'Will you stop smiling and fooling about for once in your life and listen to me?' Cersei hissed, her voice more bitter than desperate, 'Joffrey is –'
'Why should it matter to me what Joffrey is, sweet sister?' he grinned in response, trying to ignore how heavy and thick and useless the milk of the poppy made his tongue feel, 'I'm simply applying your own precepts to the situation. I squirted him into your cunt one night and that was the end of the story. Your words, not mine.'
'It was for his own safety as well as yours; how many times must I explain it to you?'
'You'll explain it to me a thousand times more if that's what it takes to make me understand why I should care a fuck about him now.'
She wanted to hit him. He could see it. It made the corners of her mouth turn up. Seven hells, he had missed her.
But instead of hitting him, she came to him and knelt in front of him, her nails sinking painfully into his knees, her mouth finding his desperately, her tongue coaxing his lips open, the taste of her like home, like cruelty.
'I need you,' Cersei begged, her lips still wounding his as she spoke, 'I need you. I need you.'
'I know,' he whispered back, leaning in to kiss her again.
She shoved him away.
'There are traitors everywhere,' Cersei declared, as though nothing had happened, her lovely face looking up at his, 'treachery everywhere I turn –'
'Only tyrants use the word 'treachery,' sister,' he pointed out, his head hurting.
'Don't try to sound like Father, Jaime,' she sneered, 'it doesn't suit you. Tyrion has – will you stop laughing?'
But he couldn't help himself. The old bugger was dead. Father was dead, and this was what he left behind. An eldest son who didn't give a fuck, a younger son who did give a fuck, and a daughter too paranoid to let him give a fuck, convinced that she was their father resurrected, convinced that Jaime Fucking Kingslayer Cripple Lannister would be a perfect Hand of the King. Hilarious. It was fucking hilarious, and he laughed.
Cersei hit him in the face. He moved to stop her and almost cried out in pain and frustration at having raised his right arm to do it; his entire mind hardening and turning red and warping yet again as it remembered that it had been defiled; that it didn't know what it was anymore.
'Jaime,' he heard Arya scream, 'JAIME FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SAY SOMETHING!'
He couldn't open his mouth, just as the Stark boy hadn't opened his as he fell, not once, not even to scream, just a gasp on the edge as he realised what was happening; and the smell of the nape of Arya's neck and her voice, her thoughts, and her skin beneath his hands, both his hands, one of them, lying on the ground next to a sword.
His twin was plunging on regardless; though she saw his distress, though she knew it; her eyes flickering involuntarily to the stump where his hand had been, her lip curling ever so slightly, and just as involuntarily, not taking no for an answer.
'Tyrion has been allowed to become too –'
For fuck's sake, I don't care, how many more times must I say it?
'– the lecherous little stump, has threatened Joffrey with death more times than I can count; the Tyrells are – '
Enough.
'Cersei,' he declared angrily, trying to raise his voice, not managing it, 'can you honestly imagine me sitting around a council table for the rest of my life? Listening to Littlefinger making polite enquiries about the locale and proportions of Lord Varys' balls, while a stronger smell of piss and raven shit lingers about Pycelle every day that the old cunt stays alive? Long hours, a short life, pretending I care about taxes and plotting and whispering? I can barely survive war council; what makes you think I'll fare any better on the small council? Tyrion was made for that sort of thing, Cersei. Tyrion. Not me.'
'Tyrion can join the Kingsguard if he likes,' she scoffed, her eyes alive and beautiful, 'I don't want Tyrion. I want you.'
He wanted to kiss her again. He needed to kiss her again.
'Come here,' he commanded.
'I will not,' Cersei spat in reply, 'that stump of yours is beginning to reek of death.'
'That's life you're smelling, sweet sister,' Jaime replied serenely, hoping she hadn't seen how much that previous remark had hurt him, 'death smells quite different, as you should know from this morning. Has poor Tommen recovered yet?'
Anger flashed momentarily across her face.
'There was nothing to recover from. The boy is an idiot.'
'I'm starting to think he didn't inherit his idiocy from Robert,' Jaime observed, hoping to hurt her, or provoke her at the very least, 'and for the last time, no. I won't be Hand of the King; I'd sooner fall on my own sword than be Hand of the King; I am not made for politics; and as you've just reminded me, I think I swore to remain in the Kingsguard for life.'
'Barristan Selmy bleated the same nonsense at me,' Cersei scoffed, her cheeks turning an angry and vengeful red, 'go and look for him now.'
'I'd rather not risk fucking with that old bastard, if it's all the same to you,' Jaime said, once he'd finished chuckling and scribbling a mental note to tell that one to Arya, 'he'd chop me in two with one hand while taking a piss with the other.'
'Have you taken vows of false modesty too?'
'Not at all. I get beaten rarely enough for me to know when it's in danger of happening.'
Except the last time. The girl bit you right in the arse, and her eyes were very grey.
'You've changed,' Cersei observed contemptuously, emeralds and beaten gold, beautiful.
'Have I?' Jaime replied breezily.
'You've become weak.'
'I've become prudent.'
'Prudence and weakness are the same thing, brother.'
'Now you're doing a worse job than me of imitating Father.'
Cersei straightened her back, the threat of queenliness rising from her bones to her face; a glorious face that could be flesh or iron.
'What if I commanded you to be Hand? What then?' she ventured softly.
'Command away,' Jaime replied flippantly, 'I won't give up my sword.'
'Are you planning on handling your sword any time soon?'
'I fail to see why not.'
'You scarcely survived this morning without collapsing. I hate to think what would happen to you if you ended up on a tourney ground.'
Something in her voice had changed; a spite; a shade; something that had not been there before; that he was sure had not been there before. And yet even from his place in the Great Sept of Baelor that morning, he had heard it as she simpered and snapped at mourners and growled at Tommen to be quiet. He had heard it through the clouds of incense that polluted the air and filled his lungs, through the singing and the chanting and the High Septon's blathering, through the thinness of his blood and the lightness of his head and his own fucking pathetic being and feeling weakness fucking weakness what am I what am I now what is the point of me. His thoughts waded, blundered and drowned through the deluges of blood that pulsed from his head to the place where his hand had been, his head spinning as it turned left and right in search of Arya, whom he could not find or feel.
'Did the Stark girl attend the funeral today?' Jaime enquired disinterestedly, 'I do not think I saw her.'
Cersei's face darkened.
'That girl will not attend anything apart from a tribunal until she swears allegiance to Joffrey.'
'Good luck with that,' Jaime said, almost smiling, 'nevertheless, it was cruel not to let her attend. She cared deeply for our father.'
'For our father's purse strings, you mean,' Cersei laughed.
'No, sister,' he replied testily, indignant, 'that is not what I mean.'
Cersei raised her eyebrows knowingly.
'At last. A little seriousness.'
Jaime coloured.
'The girl did save my life, Cersei.'
'Yes. Before trying to escape, spitting in my face and threatening to kill the king.'
'She does all three rather often. It's nothing personal.'
Cersei smirked at his words, and did not reply.
'But never mind her,' Jaime remarked, his head beginning to feel very heavy indeed, 'we were talking, before, of swords. And as soon as I can stand without the risk of falling over, I will pick one up again, and I will not rest till I can fight with it properly. Something you should have had your goldcloaks do instead of telling them to throw pots of fucking wildfire at the enemy.'
'Careful, brother,' she said, in a horribly high voice, 'if Tyrion hears you both misunderstanding and crediting me for his little trick, he'll get very cross.'
'A little trick he wouldn't have been able to perform had you not interfered with those fucking caches,' Jaime accused.
Had you not betrayed my trust.
Cersei's face was glacial with righteous indignation.
'You would have had me let Stannis raze this city to the ground just to spare your feelings?'
'I would have thought dying cleanly and honourably preferable to inflicting indescribable pain and suffering on thousands of people.'
'Oh, indescribable pain and suffering,' Cersei repeated in a tone of exquisite mockery, 'our enemy is at the gates, but we mustn't think of inflicting on him a fate that he would consign us to without a second thought? Fuck your feelings, Jaime. War is war.'
'What the fuck do you know about war?'
Cersei smiled at him as though he were the most melodramatic creature in existence.
'I think you need to rest, brother,' she said sweetly, 'your wits are gone along with your hand.'
