'Cersei!' Jaime roared, storming past the guards into his sister's solar, 'CERSEI!'

The Queen Regent looked palely beautiful behind her desk; her white silk gown glorious against her skin; her face set firmly in a hard, stern and glacial expression that was evidently intended to imitate their father. She looked at him with quiet amusement; a pen clasped in her hand and a number of thick wads of parchment imprisoned beneath her lovely fingers.

'Gods be good, but you do look pale, sweet brother,' Cersei observed serenely as he narrowly avoided stumbling down the stairs, 'shouldn't you be in bed?'

Jaime slammed his left hand down on her desk, making both the objects strewing its top and his own head lurch violently in response.

'The next person to tell me I should be in bed is going to come down with a terrible case of sword through bowels!' he growled.

'Will this take long?' Cersei droned impatiently, 'I have Seven Kingdoms to look after, and three of them are in open rebellion.'

'The black cells, Cersei?' Jaime plunged on, ignoring her, 'Really?'

'Your naivety is extraordinary, sweet brother,' she observed, a small, irritating smile marking her lips, 'what else did you imagine we were going to do with her?'

'Lock her up in a chamber, Cersei!'

His sister laughed at him as he continued; the morning light spinning strands of molten gold in her hair.

'You subjected a child,' Jaime exclaimed, 'only fifteen years old, to the fucking black cells?'

'And you threw a ten-year-old boy out of a window,' Cersei snapped in reply, 'which of us is more to blame?'

Jaime's blood swirled in his veins and seemed to rush, maelstrom-like, to one central point – his stump – and suddenly he could barely remember how he had managed to tear through the maze of stairs and corridors leading from his chambers to Cersei's; let alone how he had summoned the energy to shout at her, to raise his voice. Lightness and weakness, fucking weakness, were overpowering him, and the pain was spreading outwards from his phantom hand like lava, incinerating his mind. He suppressed the groan that was welling up inside him and closed his eyes, determined not to sit down; determined not to utter a single syllable that would show her how bad it was.

'My, how very soft you've become,' Cersei said, cheerfully ruining his plans, 'shall I fetch you some milk of the poppy? Grand Maester Pycelle tells me you're refusing to drink it.'

'I don't need any fucking milk of the poppy.'

Because I'd sooner die than have you think me weak.

Cersei smiled, as though he had spoken the words aloud, and disdainfully returned to the question at hand.

'Jaime, you speak of the little brat as though she were a total innocent. She threatened the life of my son. The king. I did what I did to protect him, to protect our family.'

'Cersei,' Jaime ventured, as jauntily as he could, breathing raggedly as he slowly brought the pain under control and wondered what had happened to her; wondered when she had torn her own words out of herself and put Father's there instead, 'I can easily picture Joffrey being stupid enough and frightened enough to lock a fifteen-year-old girl in the black cells. But not you. Never you.'

'Careful, brother.'

'And then, not content to risk the girl dying from either thirst or terror brought on by the gods only know the kind of nightmares she would have about her Father and his own delightful sojourn in that particular dungeon, you then allow your little shit of a son to humiliate her in front of the entire court?'

Cersei stared at him for a moment; then threw her head back and laughed. The sound was cold, harsh and mocking.

'Oh gods,' she choked merrily, wiping her eyes, 'this is a historic day.'

'Why?' Jaime asked impatiently.

'You're in love with her.' Cersei declared.

'Not at all,' Jaime replied after rather too long a pause, 'I prefer blondes.'

Cersei chuckled and leaned back in her chair, unconvinced.

'Very droll. But I'm afraid I know you better than that, brother. Why else should you care if the little barbarian has nightmares?'

'I happen to be an expert,' Jaime said, struggling to keep his voice level as his blood stirred and prepared to crash once again in a wave of agony and pain no please not now, 'on what an encumbrance they can be.'

'Oh; are we talking about wildfire again?' Cersei inquired dramatically, 'of our poor, tortured enemies with their poor, tortured skin melting off their bones?'

Burn them all, he kept saying. Burn them all; burn them in their homes, burn them in their beds. Burn them all. Burn them all. Burn them all.

'Jaime!' Cersei was exclaiming in alarm, and he was leaning forward and trying to support himself on the table; his phantom fingers clutching at its edge, his stump jolting and jarring it instead; and the shock spreading outwards to the rest of him, and his knees caving in beneath him and his back spasming roughly as he collapsed into a chair, Cersei's arms on his shoulders she pushed me back to stop me falling and the throbbing white hot pain melting his blood and sending water pouring involuntarily out of his eyes, stinging, I'm not crying, I am not crying, it's just too fucking painful, it's too

Cersei's arms were around him; her hair smelling of lavender, her skin of metal; and for a moment he remembered the day that he had told her what he had done, what Aerys had done, what being a kingslayer truly meant. She had listened, and held him, and told him he was better than the rest of them and always would be, even though knights weren't supposed to cry; and he had pulled up her skirts and fucked her and made her cry instead; made her cry out his name even though she was marrying Robert tomorrow and would never be completely his again.

That was the night they made Joffrey.

She had let go of him, and was standing leaning against her desk; no tenderness in her face, clearly thinking the same thing he was.

Then her mind was back with the wretched Stark girl and her allegiance.

'Locking the girl up has shown the world that Joffrey is not to be crossed,' Cersei said matter-of-factly, as though no break in the conversation had taken place, 'and humiliating her in front of the entire court has demonstrated that our family is not to be crossed.'

Jaime wanted to snort or laugh, but both would have hurt too much.

'I'm no politician, sister,' he pointed out hoarsely, combing his hair back from his face, 'but I am a soldier.'

'So what?' she snapped.

'So I understand fear; or the lack of it. And I can assure you that all you've shown the world is that a son of House Lannister is afraid of a little girl, and childish enough to want to humiliate her in revenge.'

'Humiliating her was the least of what Joff wanted to do to her, believe me.'

'Forgive me for not trembling in my boots,' Jaime replied with all the sarcasm he could muster, 'the boy is making a fool of himself. The rules are the same in politics as in warfare, I imagine: once people start laughing at you, you're finished.'

Cersei's green eyes flickered suddenly to the floor, and Jaime could see that he had struck a nerve.

'You need to put an end to this bullshit, Cersei,' he continued, 'before it ends in disaster.'

'Do you think I haven't tried reigning him in?' she spat, abruptly and bitterly, 'he doesn't listen to me.'

'Cut one of his ears off,' Jaime quipped, 'I've heard it helps with hearing.'

There was a frustration in her face; a helplessness; and a stringent, cruel denial that it was there at all. He saw it in the curve of her lips and the uncertain way she looked both at him and away from him.

He understood her desperation. Joffrey had once been hers. All hers. The last time Jaime had seen the boy, he had been tied so tightly to Cersei's skirts that he was incapable of turning left or right without asking her opinion. Before that fucking mess with Ned Stark, Joffrey had always been firmly in his mother's pocket.

Just like you.

And now the little shit had clawed his way out, exchanging one kind of foolishness for another.

Cersei pulled her mouth into an ugly expression of profound distaste, and swept regally back to her place behind her desk.

'I grow so very tired of you,' she declared, 'of you and Tyrion both. The entire world a great joke; neither of you taking it seriously. And with Father dead and you two prize specimens showing no sign of changing your ways, it falls to me to protect his legacy and his blood, even if you won't.'

'My dear, sweet sister. You and I both know that if Father had been present at this mummer's farce in the throne room, he would have sent both you and Joffrey packing in front of the entire court sooner than watch you subject the girl to such humiliation.'

'Because she's a so-called Lannister?' Cersei snorted.

'Yes,' Jaime agreed, 'and because Father loved the little barbarian far more than he ever loved you or me.'

Cersei went pale for a moment, then plunged on, her mask branding itself into her skin.

'That's not true.'

'Really? Then why didn't you tell me? Why did you keep it from me?'

'Make your point, Jaime.'

'You neglected to tell me about this little stunt because you were frightened that the girl has done to me whatever she did to Father, and that I would try to stop you.'

Cersei smiled with a kind of cruelty he had never before seen on her face.

'My poor, sweet Jaime,' she crooned, 'Simple as milk. I didn't tell you, because I feared that adding a cripple to the mummer's farce might be too much comedy in one day.'

Jaime stared at her.

I don't know who she is anymore.

He sat looking at her for a moment; at the face that had once been a reflection of himself; at the child he had pretended to be and that had pretended to be him; at the person he had donned the white cloak for, and the person that he would have married, somehow; even if he had to kill a thousand people to do it; the person that he had been and the person who had been him.

I would have loved you… forever, he thought.

But her face and her eyes were closed to him, and she was looking at him as she would at a stranger.

'When Father was dying,' Jaime said quietly, breaking the silence, 'he bade me ensure the Stark girl's safety and security. And that's what I intend to do, Cersei.'

His sister chuckled in amusement.

'Your little whore is a ward of the crown, brother –'

'She isn't a whore and she certainly isn't mine.'

'– and as such,' Cersei ploughed on, as though she had not heard him, 'the crown decides what to do with her.'

Jaime glared at her.

'Forgive me if I take Father's words a little more seriously than Joffrey's,' he growled.

Cersei picked up her pen again and pulled her papers towards her once more.

'You should learn to grow out of that, Jaime,' she said dismissively, bending her head over her work and not looking at him, 'Father is dead.'

'But "never fear, Cersei is here?"

She looked up at him again, and smiled.

'Not 'never fear', brother. I'd hate for that to happen.'