Chapter Text
Brienne had spoken no more since he’d carried her from the tower. Her dead weight had made his arms ache, made his shoulders feel as if they were on fire but he had refused all help. The entirety of the long walk down the stairs and to his chambers he had held her as carefully as if she were a babe in arms.
Jaime was sure that someone had offered another room for her but his feet had led him down the most familiar path. He laid her with great care on the slightly dusty sheets of his bed, ignoring those who were clustering around him, bleating questions in his ears.
His hand was red where he’d held her, his shirt front streaked with the tower dirt and her blood.
He finally turned to face that small knot of people that had followed him in and singled out one in particular. Boros Blount seemed to shrink under his stare.
“Who was it?”
Jaime asked, wondering vaguely what was showing in his face to make the other man look so terrified. Even on the battlefield men had rarely cowered so pitifully before him.
“Qyburn is the only butcher here, my lord. He takes men down to the Black Cells and more often n’ naught they don’t come back up.”
There was a flash of pain in his phantom hand then, real or imagined he wasn’t sure.
Qyburn. Of course.
“Bring him to me. The rest of you get out.”
It was not quite the same as when his father died, when he had only been able to feel a queer blankness, an absence of any emotion. Now he could feel his anger and his grief swirling just out of reach, as if they belonged to another person but at any moment could break over him.
Maybe because Brienne was not yet dead.
Ser Boros hesitated as the others hastily retreated.
“The Queen is walking today, my lord. She’s confessed her sins to the High Septon and has been released until her trial.”
Confessed her sins? Jaime wondered vaguely which sins Cersei had laid claim too. Doubtful she would allow anything to threaten Tommen’s claim and no one had yet come to drag him away for treason, so she had probably given the High Septon only part of the truth if any at all.
Did she admit to torturing an innocent woman whose only blame lay in trusting me?
“Fetch me Grand Maester Pycelle, her wounds need attending.”
Boros looked as if he might have said more but he seemed think better off it and hurried out of the room. Now only Lord Selwyn remained, ashen faced as he pulled up a chair to his daughter’s bedside.
When Qyburn entered, he had Ser Boros on one side and Ser Balon on the other. He didn’t seem as if he was afraid, merely slightly hesitant.
He’s a fool then.
“Ah, Ser Jaime. How is your hand, my lord?”
He struck out at the little man, sending him flying backwards onto the stone floor. The blow would’ve been more devastating with his golden hand he was sure but it would have denied him the pleasure of feeling his fist collide with Qyburn’s flesh.
He moved to stand over him, watching the smaller man blink up at him with a look that was difficult to read.
“What did you think you were doing?”
“Carrying out the Queen’s orders, my lord. It was not my place to question her.” His voice was still calm, only sounding vaguely perturbed by this turn of events even with blood running freely down his face. His eyes were vaguely reproachful as if attempting to remind Jaime that he owed him what was left of his arm.
A poor prize if the price was Brienne’s life.
“You are a snivelling little weasel of a man and I will see that you receive justice for all you have done.”
He turned to speak to the two that had brought him up.
“I want this man locked in the cells. And where in the seven hells is Pycelle?”
They were quick enough to follow his orders but he found himself wondering which of them had assisted in Brienne’s torment. He was not fool enough to think one woman and a man of Qyburn’s limited stature would be enough to subdue her. No there would have been accomplices who held her down, who forced her from the tower and dragged her down the stair to the Black Cells…
When Pycelle finally came it was with two septas who tried to press Jaime into leaving the room. In the end a compromise was reached and he stood facing the wall, feeling vaguely like a chastised child, as they went about their business. When he was again allowed to turn he saw the Septas ferrying away blood stained rags and pails of pinkish water.
Their faces were grave.
“Will she recover?”
“It is….difficult to say,” Pycelle reached up absently to scratch at his face where his beard had once been “She has been badly hurt, starved, some of the wounds are infected…” he coughed, clearing his throat “…but she is strong, in her prime. She may yet surprise us all.”
“If she dies, make sure Qyburn dies too. Something suitable painful, if you please.”
His voice was dead and dull to his own ears, the fight from earlier gone from him.
Lord Selwyn had been spared the indignity of being made to face the wall, instead he’d remained seated at his daughter’s bedside, staring resolutely down at his hands. Now he levered himself from the chair, seemingly a far older man than the one who had stood with him in the courtyard before.
The other man’s eyes were wet when he turned to face him, something Jaime did his best to appear not to notice.
“I think I will go pay a visit to this Qyburn.”
Jaime nodded, watching as Brienne’s father took his leave, the man moving as if he carried half the Keep upon his shoulders.
He lit the fire, clumsily, with his remaining hand and then sat down on the bed. Carefully he reached out and took Brienne’s hand. It was cold in his, thin and skeletal. Her bones felt as if they would shatter should he tighten his grip.
The room seemed to echo with the sound of her breath as it rasped and rattled in her chest. Her imprisonment had hollowed out her cheeks, left deep bruise-coloured shadows beneath her eyes. One of the septa’s had bathed the layers of blood and dirt from her but all it had served to do was make her look more like a corpse.
Jaime sat, running this thumb absently over the parchment thin skin of her hand, staring into the guttering little fire until it had burned down to embers.
Lord Selwyn re-entered the room some time later, looking tired but grimly satisfied. His shirt sleeves were stained with flecks of red here and there, visible even in the dim light of the fading fire.
“He’s alive,” was all he said.
Good, a quick death would be too merciful for what he’s done, but that snivelling little weasel cannot take all or even most of the blame for this.
Carefully he laid her hand back down on the blanket and got to his feet.
Lord Selwyn was watching him with grim eyes as he picked up Oathkeeper and buckled it with a little difficulty about his hips but the other man made no comment. Instead he just took up Jaime’s old position on the bed, gently holding his daughter’s hand.
Jaime hesitated by the door.
“I know you will take care of her, Lord Selwyn. And when she wakes…”
He paused, unable to put to words anything within him. What could he say to her that would make it any better?
Nothing. There was nothing.
“…tell I am sorry for all that has befallen her.”
An icy wind was howling round the Keep and making the corridors almost unbearably cold to walk, Jaime quickened his pace wishing he had thought to pick up his cloak.
How much colder would it have been in that tower with only a threadbare blanket? How many nights had she shivered herself to sleep still refusing to betray me?
He hadn’t deserved such devotion but he would find some way to make himself worthy of it.
Luck would have it that Boros Blount and Meryn Trant were those who were on guard outside of Cersei’s chambers. An idiot and a vicious brute to be sure, Jaime thought, but they are still more likely to let me pass than the Kettleblacks or any man the High Septon might have sent.
“The King has need of you.”
An easily disproved lie but it would buy him time. They hesitated and for a moment he wondered if they would stand against him, even someone like Blount could probably defeat him as he was currently, one-handed and exhausted.
“I am your Lord Commander and I command it. Go, I will guard the Queen.”
Without waiting to see if they obeyed he pushed open the door, the pale light spilling into the room and illuminating the slumbering figure on the bed.
Cersei was sleeping without a bed maid tonight, alone in the massed pile of blankets, maybe the Septons had taken them away to confirm or deny her confessions. Her stay in the Sept had done little to hollow the roundness of her cheeks, the High Septon had obviously been a more lenient jailor to her, but her golden hair was all gone. He remembered when he had shorn his own locks when he’d made his escape, stared at his reflection in the river and thought how she would dislike the fact they were no longer mirror images.
The door thumped shut behind him and he made his way slowly to her bedside, finding his way easily in the dim light from memory. How many nights had he slipped into her bedchamber like this? Sent away the guards on some pretence and crawled beneath her sheets to satisfy both their hunger?
There was an empty flagon beside her bed which did not surprise him greatly. Her lips were stained a slight purplish red from the wine.
He remembered watching her sleep that night before he left, watching how the light caught in her golden hair and on her smooth skin as he struggled with the idea that she could have had Brienne killed.
Who did you confess to fucking, sweet sister? How many were there that Tyrion did not know about?
Her eyes slid open.
“Jaime!”
Cersei’s hands were clenched on her bedclothes, drawing them slightly tighter about herself. He could not seem to take his eyes from them, still delicate and fine boned, the hands that held him tightly all those times, the fingernails that had scratched at his back in the throes of pleasure…
Brienne’s hands had once been strong and solid, designed more to hold the hilt of a sword than a lover close. Her confinement had transformed them to something almost as delicate as Cersei’s.
Her eyes flickered momentarily between his face and the hand resting on his sword pommel.
“You’re too craven,” she whispered “You won’t lay a hand on me.”
Jaime reached out a shaking hand, settling it gently on her smooth cheek. She seemed to take heart from it, voice becoming stronger.
“She was nothing more than a problem, Jaime. Death was the kindest thing for a creature like her, she did not belong in this world.”
But she is not yet dead, sweet sister.
The words would not leave his lips. His fingers drifted lower and she arched her neck into his touch, eyes closing in bliss.
“We can be together again, it can be how it was…”
His hand grasped her neck more firmly and he leant over her.
“No.”
The fragile skin of her neck gave a little as he pushed down, tightening his grip. Her fingers clawed frantically at his hands, drawing blood on one and long scrapes in the gold of the other. The sound she made was a wet, rasping gurgle and he was sure he would be hearing it till his own death day.
Tears streamed down his face as he pressed down, the heavy gold of the hand making indents in her pale white throat. His phantom hand seemed to join in, the sensations getting confused as he pushed down. Jaime imagined he could feel both hands tighten.
Her eyes were fixed on his, he found it impossible to look away. There was no horror and only a little betrayal in those eyes. There was really only a terrible, terrible anger. Her nails dug into the backs of his hand again, blood welling where she gripped, running down in small rivulets to stain her bedsheets.
This is Cersei, your other half, how can you do this?
But he remembered Brienne’s face… skeletal and gaunt and bloodied, remembered her shying away from his touch. Because of me, you destroyed her because of me, because you could not bear for me to have anything in my life outside of you…
I loved you, I loved you and you never loved me.
Her hands fell away from his slowly, blood-stained fingers coming to rest splayed on the bedsheets.
Her eyes were still open, glassy and unseeing. About her pale white neck was a necklace of bruises and there was blood on her lips turning the underlying blue to a deep rich red. He kissed them, once, a final time.
Jaime was pleased to see that his hands were not shaking as he pulled the blood-flecked sheet up to cover her face.
“Goodnight, sweet sister. May you fall into the deepest of the Seven Hells.”