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in this kingdom by the sea

Summary:

When Jaime Ryswell, a soldier abruptly sent back to his homeland after an injury, is reassigned as personal guard to one of the contestants for the throne of the Crownlands, both he and the princess he's supposed to keep safe end up discovering more than they ever bargained for.

Notes:

Hello again, friends!
This fic has been thumbling around in my head for so long that I'm honestly just glad to have it out there; the concept has been thought and rethought about twenty times by now, so I have an outline, but as usual, the chapter count is inconclusive depending on how the writing goes. The title is taken from Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee. It's all a bit novel for me, given the genres it's going to combine, so I hope you guys enjoy it and, as always, feedback is most welcome!

Chapter Text

King’s Landing – the jewel of the Crownlands, according to many a tourist guide and almost none of its actual citizens – is particularly disgusting on the day Jaime gets the worst news of his life. It’s cloudy and stifling, the way it always is when it rains on an otherwise hot summer day and the air smells like fish and seawater and it’s all far, far too much for his already overburdened senses.

It’s home, and he’s never hated it more.

Ever since he’d been a child, he’d had this ritual; trying to freeze certain moments of his life into a perfect picture so that he can come back and look at them later. It had been solely reserved for any sliver of happiness he had been able to find, at first – a new toy, a good grade, the first time he’d rode a bike, the day he’d joined the army – but slowly, he had started incorporating it for different purposes, too. By now, it’s less about looking back at happiness and more about making sure that he can assess the emotion, no matter how exciting or devastating it is, once his head is clearer, and handle it before it destroys him.

It’s about to be one of those days, it seems; the kind he’d need to drown in amber in his mind to keep forever so that it can’t drown him in turn.

“I’m sorry, Jaime,” Tyrion, the closest he’s had to a friend ever since aging out of the country’s tender care and occupying too many positions in his life for Jaime to count, says for what has to be the thousandth time today. “Everyone says you’re going to make a complete recovery and I’m overjoyed to hear that, but there’s no way they’re going to let you go back to field work day in day out with a history of an injury like this.”

He’s fine, Jaime wants to insist, despite all the evidence that points otherwise. His arm had been out of its cast for days now and even though it still aches and he’s still tentative every time he tries to do anything more strenuous than holding a pen with it, he had hoped that eventually, he would put it all behind him. A shot directly through the palm of his hand would surely not be enough to stop what should have been a lifelong career in the only place he’d ever felt at home.

But this particular piece of news had been broken to him with varying degrees of gentleness countless times over the past week and when he snaps back, it’s as irritated as it’s hopeless. “You said that over the phone already. Why call me all the way here if there’s nothing more I can do?”

“Because I’m a social worker, not your carrier raven. And I do have something for you.” He taps at the screen of his tablet a few times, giving him yet another gauging look. From anyone else, it would have been exasperating, but this is Tyrion – the same Tyrion who always has an exit strategy in mind – and Jaime feels hope unfurl in him, bruised and reluctant but alive. “You mentioned to me years ago that if there had been a vacant spot, you might have gone for the Queen’s guard.”

Is there a vacant spot?” He had been in Essos for so long that a lot of the news back from Westeros – any country in Westeros, up to and including his own – had started slipping away eventually. As far as he remembers, the monarch’s sworn guards are in it for life – either their own or that of the monarch in question, whichever ends first. “Who died and made me an option?”

The stifled laugh that follows feels like a small victory, as any reaction from Tyrion’s general direction always does. “No one as of right now, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an interesting prospect there. The members of the Queen’s guard are burdened with the care of all of the castle’s inhabitants, even if they have their own protégés they’re assigned to, so no, it’s not the Queen herself I have in mind; it’s a Princess.” He leans in over his desk, lowering his voice as if there’s someone else around to overhear them. “It’s just a little too early for us to be able to tell for sure yet, but with a little luck, it’s the Princess.”

~.~

A long time ago – centuries ago, from what little Jaime remembers of his history classes back in school – the monarchy had been absolute and the country that the Crownlands is now had spanned the entire continent. An even longer time ago, every region of Westeros had been split into its own nation and the fragile union had lasted some three hundred years before cracking apart again. The North had been the first to separate itself from the rest, but over the decades, it had gradually become clear that each kingdom would be more efficient on its own. The trade deals and inter-continental routes had remained, but each of the seven regions had eventually returned to its independence. Somewhere along the line – before the split, even, perhaps – the king or queen of the Crownlands had started being an elected position rather than one handed down from a ruler to their direct offspring.

It had been a slow process, from what he knows, but in the end, it had resulted in a rather public, nation-wide election, with the potential future rulers being observed by both the monarch and their people for years on end before a choice could be made. When the current Queen had decided that it was time for her to start screening for her potential successor, Jaime had still been almost a child – as had the princes and princesses themselves. The majority of them don’t have the blood of the old nobility, so their titles are gifted to them by the Queen, one of his teachers had said, but they’re never just anyone either. She had been a good-natured woman and even then he had known that she hadn’t meant anything by it, but the message had been clear all the same. Don’t even think of trying.

Even back then, Jaime hadn’t been a particularly ambitious person, but even the most stubborn, goal-oriented of his fellow orphans had had no desire to have a go at something like this. To this day, the image of the children – twelve in total, six girls and six boys – waving their parents goodbye as they’d been herded into the Red Keep is stuck behind his eyelids every time he sees the Queen smiling benevolently through a screen. He’d lost his parents when he’d been too young to remember anything about them but a vague feeling of warmth followed by sudden terror and then everlasting loss, and the idea of sending a child – his own or any of the younger ones back at the big, crowded government-issued house he’d spent his childhood in – away so that they would be prepared for a position they had the tiniest chance of being chosen for is unthinkable; the idea of being in the rulers place and keeping them in the castle for years until they’d be ready to be chosen or sent away – even more so.

If he’s being entirely fair – which Jaime prefers not to be when it comes to any of the royal proceedings – the Red Keep, even if it doesn’t provide access to ultimate power, does at least serve as a great launch pad for its inhabitants. Unless they’d got themselves tangled up in a serious – and public – scandal, they would all end up with a comfortable position in the army, the court or the parliament, and few would go back to their regular lives from before. The fact that some of them had already been sent away and the choice had been narrowed down to only the best and more promising is yet another reminder of how long he’d spent shut off from this side of the world. He had thrown the last seven years of his life at war camps and battlegrounds and negotiations with every country that could potentially threaten the one he’d grown up in, and he had never even seen the face of the potential Queen he would sign his life away to.

“You haven’t missed as much as you think,” Tyrion says on their ride to the castle. In the relative privacy of the car, separated as they are from the driver, it’s easy to gear himself up for just how big this might end up being should he accept. “This is your charge – if you agree, that is. Cersei Hardwicke. Her father is the Lord of Sharp Point, so she’s got better ties to the royal family than any other contender; she was Her Majesty’s pet project long before she entered the castle, which meant that she would always end up within the final three. Now that the Queen is actively thinking of retiring as soon as she finds a replacement and the public opinion is starting to sway towards Miss Hardwicke, too, the chances of the nation suddenly losing her to an unexpected case of bullet through the skull have skyrocketed, so it’s been agreed upon that she requires personal protection. I’ve worked with the royal family before. When you told me you’d been discharged, I recommended you immediately. It’s not what you wanted,” he says and for all of a moment, Jaime feels eighteen again, fresh out of his home and sent out into a world he has no clue how to navigate, with Tyrion as his only guiding light. “I know. But it’s better than most places could offer you.”

“I know,” he echoes, forcing himself to look away from the kind, all-knowing green eyes he knows so well by now. Being read so easily still stings, even if the man in front of him is the only person capable of it. “Let me read that,” he says, reaching towards the tablet and the article on the Princess he’d apparently already been assigned to. “I want to see what I’m getting into.”

~.~

Tyrion leaves him in front of the castle.

"This is as far as I can take you," he says, almost in apology, but Jaime can see right through him - despite the fact that to him, it looks like he's being thrown to the wolves, his social worker slash only friend is excited for this. "From here on, the security is as tight as it can get. The Kingsguard will get you to the princess."

"All right." He still feels a little dazed, as if nothing of this is actually happening to him - for a few frantic moments, he thinks he's going to wake up back in Essosin the middle of the warzone he'd been evacuated from, with nothing to look forward to but another battle. The sudden, eerie calm that reigns right in front of the centuries-old gates of the Red keep is almost as disorienting as the transition back home had been. "Thank you, Tyrion."

"Keep me updated," he offers in lieu of a response and Jaime almost makes to leave before it occurs to him to ask what had been on his mind ever since he'd heard the announcement of his potential new position.

"Tyrion!"

He looks so innocently interested that Jaime can't help but be suspicious. "What is it?"

"Why me?" All he gets is a questioning look. "You must have other projects; why did you offer it to me?"

"Just an inkling." Tyrion pats his arm conspiratorially, like that's supposed to mean anything at all. "Trust me on that one."

And he does, of course. He does, like he always has.

~.~

The Red Keep is a ridiculous place.

Ever since he'd been a child, whenever the news they'd watched on TV had taken them to the royal palace, he had found it archaic and overly confusing, with its labyrinths and added buildings over the years; the flippantly modern new wing with its cutting edge technology and the old bits and pieces from a castle changed and destroyed and built a new time and time again, renovated year after year so that its original dubious glamour could be preserved, all mashed into a building that hadn't seemed to want to work with each other at all.

It's no different when he's on the inside looking out.

"The contestants for the crown are housed in the original western wing," one of the guards explains to him before mercifully pointing him down the corridor he needs to head down. "Their names are engraved on labels next to the doors. I'll let you get acquainted with your charge on your own."

"Thank you." He's not particularly grateful, but it's likely for the best - what kind of guard would need his own escort to meet the likely-to-be-crown princess?

The man flashes him an encouraging smile before turning on his heel. "Good luck."

I hope I don't need it, Jaime thinks fleetingly before he starts scanning the names written next to each door. It's all hopelessly impersonal, though not too different from the home he'd grown up in - state-issued, soulless rooms with little to no personality unless you decide to come in and see the life that the poor parentless fool inside had built for themselves. When he gets to the one he's likely going to spend the last few months guarding (Cersei Hardwicke, the label says in painstakingly perfect cursive) Jaime braces himself and takes a deep breath before finally knocking.

"Coming!"

Oh.

She sounds--familiar. Worse - she sounds familiar in a way no one ever had, with one exception; the same exception that had left him on the Red Keep's doors not half an hour ago.

The lock turns and the door flies open before he'd had the time to fully process anything about what is going to follow - whatever that is. He knows and doesn't know and the world layers itself time and time again before finally snapping back into focus, right as the princess faces him, looking about as overwhelmed as he suddenly feels.

"Hello," she breathes out, a tentative smile blooming on her face even when he doesn't move. She looks exactly like she had in her file - long blonde hair, braided out of the way at the top, eyes more startlingly green than any he's ever seen, slight built, black dress shirt tucked into an equally black skirt - and it's everything he had expected and nothing like the way he remembers her. When had he seen her last? It had to have been that footage of the contestants's first entrance in the Red Keep, but no, she'd been a child then. It feels like a more recent memory, somehow, than the one has of her as an adult. "Are they done with the background check already? Those usually take ages. I'm Cersei, but I suppose you know that already."

Oh, he knows all right. From what he can see, she must, too - he's a stranger to her, as she is to him, but there's an unmistakable familiarity in her eyes.

Why me? He had wondered. Tyrion's non-answer had been as frustrating as everything else since the day he'd returned to Westeros, but he understands now.

Just an inkling.

"Yes, I know." He holds out his hand and finally feels it; the way a soldier is supposed to when boarding off the plane back into their homeland. Home at last. "I'm Jaime." He clears his throat, doing his best to compose himself into what a princess would likely expect from a personal guard. “Jaime Ryswell. I’ve been assigned to you, starting today.”

He remembers this, too – the rare smile that blooms and lights up her entire face; the one he’d never seen before. “I know.” She waves him in with a grand gesture. “Welcome to the Red Keep, Jaime.”

Yes, this must be it, he thinks, still under the same spell that had taken over him ever since he’d heard her name for the first time today. Home.

Chapter 2

Notes:

What can I say? These poor kids deserve a quick filler chapter of getting to know each other before I officially throw them off the deep end. Again.
Hope you guys enjoy it and feedback is most welcome!

Chapter Text

It's startlingly easy; getting used to life at the Red Keep.

At first, Jaime had been sceptical about it. After the years spent in overstuffed bedrooms, surrounded by people on all sides, first in the home he'd been assigned to and then in the army, he had never had the chance to get used to the unbearable stillness and quiet that the palace can offer him. There really aren't that many people here at all - there's the Small Council, the Queensguard and the Queen herself, all of them manning the state together from its administrative centre, but all their family - the royal family included - are scattered within the country, micromanaging other regions as they'd been assigned to. There are the princesses, too - all three of them, and all without their families - and their guards, as well as a skeleton crew of cleaners and ladies in waiting; all people who either do the housework or nothing at all, depending on how far within the inner hierarchy of this place they'd managed to move. Put together, there can't be more than about two dozen people in total in a castle that looks like it could house two hundred - and it had, once, from what he'd heard.

It's easier these days. Jaime's own world is even narrower than that - it's limited to his sleeping quarters and wherever the princess he'd been assigned to goes, which is rarely far. Her schedule had been easy to get used to - she gets up before sunrise, does who-knows-what for about two hours, calls for breakfast, attends the meetings of the Small Council, eats lunch, sorts through her correspondence for the good part of the afternoon with great care of the international relations that must be involved, participates in the evening briefing projected on every television screen in the Crownlands (and the rest of Westeros, likely, for all he knows - an elective monarchy with decades-long elections can be quite the show if you're not used to it, he supposes), takes her dinner and retreats back to her rooms early into the evening.

It's a routine like any other. Different from what he'd been used to before, but not too different - he's still dependent on others and his days never quite belong to him, but Jaime can't find it in him to protest. There's a curious kind of peace in this. In the long weeks of his recovery, he'd felt terribly aimless with no schedule whatsoever to follow and finally, there's a new base for him to build his life on, no matter how repetitive and limited it is. He'd been well aware of what he'd signed up for when he'd first agreed to this job.

It's in this exact lull - the false sense of security that Cersei's schedule had provided - that her first free day comes and shifts the still waters that his life seems to have become.

He notices it early in the morning, when he walks up to her door to summon her for breakfast and finds the numerous lock of her door still in place.

"Cersei?"

No answer. For a moment, he wonders if he's misspoken, but it can't be that - at the very beginning, she'd asked him to call her by her first day instead of picking one of the numerous honorifics he could have settled on instead.

The doubt is followed by a sharp stab of fear. It's irrational, as nothing can get past this lock, or they'd have assigned her a guard at a night shift, too - or there would have been signs of someone struggling to get in, if they'd managed it - and Jaime pushes it down as he rings the small bell by the door instead of calling out again.

This time, there's a response. "In a moment!"

It sounds less lively than she usually is by this time of the day, as if she'd only just woken up, and sure enough, less than five minutes later, the complicated cogs and wheels inside the door spring to life and the princess emerges with clothes more uncomplicated than anything he'd seen her in so far, hair pulled to the back in two braids tied to each other with a bow, and an woven picnic basket hanging on one forearm.

"Uh," he greets, less than prepared for the sight he'd been faced with. "Good morning?"

"It's my day off." She takes pity on him, closing and locking the door behind her back. Jaime follows her down the corridor towards, he assumes, the kitchens - she'd have to fill her empty luggage with something for them to eat, if this truly is meant to be a picture perfect rest, which he doesn't doubt about in the slightest. Everything the princesses do - on the clock or in their limited free time, doesn't really matter - is picture perfect, with every aspect of their lives being made an example of for anyone who watches. It makes sense, in a way, seeing as one of them is going to be the country's future leader, but it still feels altogether too invasive for his tastes. "This means I can either go out in the city and socialise or spend it in the gardens and do whatever I see fit. This time, it's going to be the latter."

He would rather die than say it out loud - he's too good at what he does to admit to any worry - but Jaime is quietly relieved at the news. He can guard her just fine outside in King's Landing, but it's far more comforting to know that there's not going to be any threat on her life today no matter what she chooses to do. It's strange, how quickly he'd come to associate the Red Keep with safety, but he welcomes the sensation with open arms. The sense of safety had been sorely missing from his life for too many years for him to count.

"So what is it going to be?" She throws him a questioning look over her shoulder as they enter the kitchens and Cersei waltzes past the staff, greeting them and snatching away anything she fancies at the same time. "What is it that you'll do in the gardens?"

"Read, likely." She'd brought no book, from what he can see, or any device at all, and she smiles back at his confusion. "Or socialise anyway. just not with my future subjects."

From anyone else's mouth, it might have sounded cocky or overconfident, but with Cersei, it feels like nothing but the truth. It's what she'd been born to do; Jaime knows it with the same certainty that has followed him through life, usually reserved only for the world's simplest, most obvious facts. The sky is blue, it snows in winter, and Cersei will be queen. It's part of the natural order of things, almost.

"I'm not following."

"You’d better." The play of words doesn't escape him and Jaime allows himself a snort, his heart stuttering over itself for a moment when she beams at him in response, smile much brighter than any he'd seen her offer during the briefings to the subjects in questions. "I'm about to show you the part of the palace you've never been to."

~.~

The food is good. It's better than what he usually has, but it's got nothing to do with the princesses receiving higher quality than the guards, he assumes, considering that Cersei had picked everything up seemingly haphazardly. It's either that her taste is better than the one of whoever it is that decides what the menu for the day is or that he's sitting on the grass by a fountain with the sun streaming over the both instead of the mess hall that he's already so used to.

They're alone. He supposes that this week, the other two competitors had picked King's Landing as an option, or perhaps they all have their hiding places, but what feels like hours has passed by the time Jaime realises that they haven't seen another living soul since they'd arrived here.

"It's an old place," Cersei shrugs when he asks, eyes straying away from the calm, endlessly cycling water in the fountain. "Something keeps drawing me to it. Ever since the first day I arrived, I felt as if I'd been here before. I hadn't, obviously - my family were close to the Queen since before I was born, but we'd never come to King's Landing before and I'd never seen the Red Keep from the inside, but it was still— I think you felt it too," she adds and suddenly, it's as if she's looking right Jaime and into some part of him that he hadn't even been aware had existed. "When you came to meet me. It's stupid and I can't explain it, but it happens."

"I know what you mean." Whatever it is, she's definitely not alone in it. He'd had glimpses of it before - their home's visits to the Riverlands when he'd been little, a little of Dorne when they'd passed through it during his deployment - but it had rarely been as intense as it had started being ever since he'd arrived in King's Landing. The fact that the Red Keep had started feeling like a home quite so quickly doesn't escape him. "It's called—"

"I know what it's called," she interrupts him with the same wounded tone she seems to adopt when she's being underestimated, "but it's stronger than that. I feel like something happened here, but I haven't been able to figure it out in the years I've lived here. I suppose there were records of the important meetings in the capital before Seven Kingdoms fell apart, but most of it burned down during the Targaryen attack all those years ago.” Her smile is back, this time a little more pensive. “Pity. My namesake was the one on the throne right before that; from what I’ve heard, she was diligent about paperwork. Or, well, what could be considered paperwork in the Middle Ages.”

“Figures.” When she raises her eyebrows in obvious question, Jaime does his best to backtrack. “That you’re named after a queen, that is. Typical for nobles.”

“You’re not counting yourself as a part of that group, then.” It’s a statement; not anywhere near as weighty as he would have expected it to be from someone as far up the food chain as she is.

“I’m an orphan, so no, definitely not. It’s fine,” he waves her off when he sees her delicate features crumple into the sort of distress he’s seen countless of times by now. He’s heard it enough and the sentiment is more than clear on her face. “It was a long time ago. I barely remember them.” It’s curious, the way that loss sometimes feels – curious and terribly lonely as if at some other point, a far longer time ago, he’d had someone to share that grief with. It’s there again; that same sensation that his princess had described just a while ago. I felt as if I'd been here before. So had he, even if it had been all so terrifyingly new and confusing to his four-year-old mind. “Your family sounds a lot more interesting.”

“My parents are devoted to history,” she concedes, one hand fidgeting with a clover while the other rummages in her basket for what little is still left. “And they’ve always been ambitious; my father started discussing whether they’d start preparing me for the crown when I was seven.” Another one of those fleeting grins. “Figures. I guess that’s why they picked her. She was the Queen, though; the first and the last on the Iron Throne. Didn’t have too good of an end, but then again, queens rarely do, do they?”

“I suppose not.” The conversation had taken a rather morbid turn altogether too quickly and Jaime steers it as gently as possible in a slightly less bleak direction. “But that’s what I’m here for. You can be one of the rare ones.”

“Funny you should mention that.” There’s nothing particularly funny about it, but Jaime refrains from saying so. “The Queen I was telling you about? The Lord Commander during her time—”

“Miss Hardwicke?”

They both whip around to look for the source of the interruption and Jaime squashes down the irritation that rises up in response. It’s the governess because it always fucking is, and he’s got the sneaking suspicion that she’d been watching them for a while. Even on days off, sitting in the gardens for hours on end unchaperoned with still relatively strange men is a less than appreciated activity. Talk about Middle Ages.

“Over here,” Cersei calls out, the ease draining out of her as easily as it had seemingly possessed her this morning. Just like that, with nothing but a name, the princess is back. “Stick around,” she says to him, smile still frozen in her other guardian’s general direction, and Jaime nearly laughs – even if he’d had any plans of pulling away, there’s little chance of anything of the sort now. “I’ll have to tell you about it later.”

Chapter 3

Notes:

Now we're getting somewhere! Well, sort of.
Hello, folks! Even though, as previously established, I am not very good at being a functional member of society outside of the efforts capitalism requires from me, I want to once again say how much I appreciate your kudos/comments/views and I genuinely hope this chapter doesn't disappoint! Was hoping to post this along with a one-shot tomorrow, but alas, it is once again the wee hours of the night.
Hope you guys enjoy it and, as always, feedback is most welcome!

Chapter Text

It had been a long day.

Being entirely on someone else’s schedule – particularly if that someone is a princess – means that Jaime doesn’t really have many uneventful days, but today had blown all of the last fortnight out of the water in terms of just how much of a disaster it had turned out to be. It hadn’t been Cersei’s fault, no more than it had been the fault of any of the other competitors or the Queen herself, but he can see it all weighing her down as she retreats towards her chambers anyway, an uncharacteristic slump to her usual perfect posture. She tries not to let it show – has been for hours – but it doesn’t make much of a difference, considering how well he knows her by now.

The meeting with the Dornish representatives had been less than stellar. If he looks back far enough – all the way into his military career – Jaime knows that deep down, everyone in that room had seen it coming from a mile away. The Crownlands’s endless assault on foreign territories to fight petty wars over resources that had, supposedly, belonged to them in the recent past, had been both deadly and wildly ineffectual when it had come to the state’s popularity on the continent, but the Queen had insisted on continuing what her predecessor had started. It’s more a matter of pride than anything else, as they can all see from a mile away – neither country could possibly be this passionate about a few inconsequential islands in the Narrow Sea – and the deep-seated realisation of the pointlessness of it all had made everyone twice as irritable as they usually would have been, hence the lack of any real conclusion, let alone an agreement on long-lasting peace.

Or so Jaime had thought. Usually, after meetings such as this one, Cersei would talk him through it for the rest of the day, offering her own perspective and opening his eyes to miniscule details that he hadn’t even thought to seek out as well as showing it all to him in a completely different light. It makes sense that she would be so much better at it than he had ever been – he’s a soldier, and she’s been prepared to do this for longer than she’d been able to realise what her family had had planned for her – and he’s more interested in hearing about it than he would have anticipated before coming in the Red Keep. It’s a small ritual, but it helps them both unwind from the tension that tends to build in war rooms and for that, he appreciates it.

She’s far too subdued for that today; more so than he’s ever seen her. It’s unexpected – this is far from the first time a diplomatic venture had taken a turn for the sour, but it’s a job like any other, or so she says. There’s a way out of everything, Cersei had assured him more than once, and just because the stakes are higher in her position doesn’t mean that there’s anything unsalvageable. The thought that there might be something more serious at play here – something he’d missed despite his best efforts – makes his heart sink.

“It’s not that,” the princess assures him and, to Jaime’s surprise, it sounds convincing enough. “I’ve been feeling all out of sorts today.”

No one would blame her for that, all things considered, he wants to assure her, but bites it back. Out of sorts, from what he’d been able to tell, tends to mean sick rather than tired more often than not, even if it’s not necessarily in the physical sense.

“That’s understandable,” he says at last, still aware of how delicate he needs to be about this if he’s to help her remain even remotely collected, and yet, “You shouldn’t let them get to you. Getting a rise out of their opponents is what they do best.”

“This was more than just some petty fight-picking, Jaime.” Even now that she’s truly upset, she doesn’t raise her voice above the even, tense near-whisper that he had gradually become gradually used to whenever they were in public. “They hate us.”

“Everyone in Essos hates us,” he says, and it slips out so easily that he doesn’t quite realise the weight of what he’d declared to her until his charge turns to look back at him, appalled. “Politics-wise,” he amends in a feeble attempt to salvage the situation, unable to look at Cersei’s dismayed expression for much longer. “I doubt all of the regular people around there care about anyone past their own street, much like the regular people around here.” They’re still in the middle of the corridor and his eyes dart in both directions to find it empty before he takes the chance and reaches out for the hand that isn’t still reflexively clutching at her tablet. “The Westerosi and Essosi countries have been at each other’s throats for as long as the world’s been turning. No one is expecting you to fix it, let alone before you’ve got a crown on your head.”

“Then what is the use of me?” She doesn’t pull away, but does tug him along until they’re back in front of her rooms, the elaborate locks finally allowing them in after a series of clicks, Jaime’s mild surprise going mostly ignored in favour of the door being slammed behind his back. He misses the warmth of her hand in his as soon as she lets go and drops down in the chair by her desk, looking even more defeated than before. “This was a test. Everything they have me do is a test, of course, but international relations? These are the ones I can’t afford to fail.”

“You haven’t failed at anything.” This is the first time he’s been here. It’s a silly, childish thing to focus on, given Cersei’s current plight, but he can’t help himself – it feels altogether too personal, especially given how devastated she seems to be just now, and it’s hard not to wonder if she even realises what she’s done. The thought of her being reprimanded for it when all she’d wanted had been to talk the day’s struggles out with someone who might understand. “Taking a step back today was the right thing to do. What else could have you done? Give them an inch to make them think they can take a mile, then bomb some military base flat to let them know you aren’t fucking around? Our brave leaders have been doing that ever since bombing things flat first became an option. This is the norm.” Her green eyes are wide as saucers, as if she’s only now remembering who she’s talking to, and what kind of experience he’s speaking from. “If you want to do something to change the norm, then you’re on the right path.” Emboldened by his previous gesture, he nudges her again, both friendly and a bit challenging. “You were telling me about your namesake the other day. What would she have done?”

Seemingly despite herself, Cersei smiles, still somewhat brittle but far less affected than she initially had been. “She was fond of bombing things flat, I’m afraid.”

“Ah.” There’s not much he can say to that. “She was ahead of her time, then.”

The laugh that follows is the most unexpected part of today, loud and sincere and nothing like anything he had ever expected to bring out of her. “An example to us all,” she agrees, leaning back in her desk chair to grasp at something by her computer. It’s a history book, he sees as she starts thumbing thought it to find what she’s looking for, and it gives him the chance to look around the place without looking like he’s snooping. It’s covered in books, most of them on world politics, history, or even specific figures, but she’s not lacking in the fiction department either – there’s another impressively-sized shelf, far more colourful than the rest, nestled right between her expansive bed and what he assumes must be a walk-in closet.

“There used to be a small drawing room there before, for her to accept guests in when needed,” Cersei explains, apparently having followed his line of sight. “Or so I’ve been told. The governess that took care of us when I first came here thought it would be amusing to give me her chambers, and she told me everything about the place on my way in. She was a remarkable woman.”

“Your governess or Queen Cersei?” It’s somewhere between a joke and a honest question, but there’s an ulterior motive to it, too; one that Jaime wouldn’t so readily admit to – he wants to savour the words in that combination and let her hear them, see if that can improve her mood.

It does. She grins back, more restrained than before but no less honest. “Both. It was a more difficult time; savage, in a way. Warfare was way different then.” She gives him a rueful look, as if in recognition of a knowledge that she, thankfully, had had no first-hand experience with so far. “Or perhaps not so different, in its essence. I try not to draw inspiration from it.”

“I can see that.” Chances are, the people who have known her for the last decade should be able to see it even more easily, but there’s no knowing that for sure. There are people he’s known all his life without knowing them at all and, he thinks with a fond glance at his princess, there are people he’s known for weeks and for a lifetime, as well.

“It’s strange,” she says, almost echoing his line of thought. “It’s always something I’ve thought about, of course – how the results of negotiations would affect everyone actually on the ground, but it’s never occurred to me that I might need someone to advice me with an insider’s knowledge.”

For once, he can show off a smidge of the historical literacy that she tends to lord over him. “Back in the day, they had a Master of War for that.”

“They were on the right track.” Cersei rolls her eyes, looking almost disgusted for a moment. “Now we have a Minister of External Affairs, and he’s more useless than any of us, the contestants, when we were sixteen.” She peers back at him, smile bolder than before like she’s about to say something especially scandalous, only to offer something that Jaime, he now realises, has been thinking of for quite some time. “When I’m queen, you’ll be the one in charge of that, I think.”

There it is – the confidence she’d been sorely lacking after the meeting’s end. “I was thinking something more along the lines of Lord Commander of the Queensguard.”

“Really?” She seems almost mystified, as if that wouldn’t be the natural progression from being a member of the Queensguard, and the realisation makes his heart do an odd jump in his chest – she takes it as a given that he’s meant for something more. “How come?”

There’s really no way to explain it, other than what he himself had been told in the not so distant past. Jaime shrugs. “Just an inkling.”

~.~

It’s only when he realises that the screams are coming from somewhere other than his dream that Jaime finally startles awake.

Cersei. It has to be – his bedroom is right next to hers for a reason, and the castle is old – the stone does far less for muffling sounds than most of today’s building materials would, and between one breath and the next, he’s out of his room and getting through the complicated sequences of her door, cursing it for the cage that it makes. This, at least, is a small mercy – now he knows that no one has broken in. The balcony is still an option, but it’s too high up for anyone to even consider climbing without getting caught, so what could it possibly be?

“Cersei?” There’s no answer, and it vaguely occurs to him that he should likely be using a more appropriate form of address in the event that this is some kind of test, too, though he doubts she would do that to him. Nothing from inside the room sounds like struggle, but he does still hear several garbled words, suspiciously resembling begging, or at least prayer – two things he had never imagined the princess in his care doing.

And, apparently, she isn’t, he realises as he finally makes his way inside – she’s not even awake. Her face is contorted into a distressed grimace, almost as if she’s on the verge of tears, but she’s asleep, and so completely still that the barely visible tremors that shake her seem all the more obvious.

Relief washes over him, ridiculous in its enormity, but he doesn’t leave; steps closer instead, taking her by the shoulder as gently as he can and tries to shake her awake. “Cersei,” he hisses, now far more conscious of the effort to not make a spectacle out of this. “Wake up. Cersei!”

Finally, she does, and she has been crying, as it turns out – as soon as her eyes open, the tears slide down her cheeks, her breathing coming out shallow and irregular as residual sobs rack through her even as she takes in her surroundings and realisation sets in.

“Jaime?” It sounds more elated than he had ever imagined hearing it. Cersei’s arms wrap around her own body almost protectively and she looks down, perplexed, then back at him, face awash with something between intrigue, confusion and embarrassment of all things. “It was a dream,” she says, doubtlessly mostly to herself, but he nods anyway, sitting at the edge of the bed.

“Not the pleasant kind, I assume.”

“No.” Her laugh is feeble, but the sound of it relaxes him some all the same. “Puzzling, though.” A quick consultation with the grandfather clock on the other side of the room tells her what Jaime had already been able to tell by the greyish shade to the darkness outside – it’s nearing morning – and Cersei throws the covers off, stepping out of bed before heading for the balcony. “I think I need some air.”

It’s as much of an invitation as he’s going to get and he trails after her, unsure, faced with a sight stranger than anything tonight once he steps out – still in her nightgown that seems to be more of a dress, Cersei pours boiling water into two teacups before slamming them on the small table between them. The tea inside is black as night. Jaime suspects he might need it.

“They let you make your own food?”

“Not really, no.” With the same care she assigns to any of her royal duties, Cersei morosely adds a general helping of honey into her own tea and pushes it towards him. “But it is generally accepted that we might not always want to refer to the helping personnel in times of crisis of the personal variety.”

Is this a crisis of the personal variety?” He almost doesn’t dare to ask – almost. He’d read all of her files borderline religiously in his first days of service in the castle, as is always expected of everyone in the Queensguard, and she doesn’t really have any fears to speak of, barring one – one that he, through some cruel twist of fate or coincidence, he shares.

“I’m not sure,” she says, apt as always to whatever is going through his mind at the time. “I just know I needed to get out. I have—” She falters, clearly struggling with admitting to anything that might resemble a weakness, no matter how much she trusts him. “I’m—”

Time to put her out of her misery, then. “Claustrophobic,” Jaime finishes for her, doing his best impression of an encouraging smile when she nods, watching him carefully for any reaction. “Trust me, you’re not alone.”

It takes a moment for the veiled implication to dawn on her, but when it does, Cersei looks equal parts disbelieving and awed at the absurdity of it. “You too?”

“Me too.” Her laughter, when it comes again – a sound he’s growing worryingly attached to – is almost helplessly amused. “Did the dream have something to do with that?”

“In a way.” She still looks unsure of how much she wants to share, as if there’s something about it that still isn’t quite clicking, if the way she keeps stealing calculating glances at him is anything to go by, but Jaime lets it go. Time for a different approach.

“I have nightmares all the time. Had them back in the army and have them about the exact same things now.” It’s not likely something she can relate to, if this one had rattled her so much, but then again, that’s not much of a surprise – he doubts the life she’d led so far is anything to have nightmares about. “Focus on where you are now.” It’s his age-old technique once again and he feels altogether too happy to share that part of himself, if it’s her that it’s going to. “Focus on what is here and now. Imprint it into your mind.” He does it himself, almost subconsciously by now – the cool, refreshing sea breeze in his face, the warmth of the cup in his hand, the strong taste of the tea, the unbearably sweet scent of Cersei’s perfume clinging to everything in this room, the distant sound of the waves not too far from here. It’s his home by choice now, but it’s an age-old obligation, too; must feel especially so to his charge as she quietly absorbs the surroundings she knows so well. “This is here and now. This is what’s real.”

“Of course.” There’s something about her tone of voice that tells him it might be a while before she manages to break away from the nightmare’s – if it had been one at all – hold all the same. “Of course. It was just a dream.”

Chapter 4

Notes:

This story is getting to me, y'all. At first I wanted to wait and upload this chapter along with the rest of the stuff I wanted to post, but I'm already planning out the next one in my head and it's the first day of Camp NaNo, so I decided to treat myself! This is the longest chapter so far, too, by quite a lot, so I might as well move on to writing the next one. ;D
This is my inspiration for Cersei's dress. My inspiration for the rest of the chapter is my unquenchable thirst for tragedy and pain, as is the next one, likely. I've fully given up on the chapter count since whatever it is, it won't be six.
Hope you guys enjoy it and, as always, feedback is most welcome!

Chapter Text

“I can’t wear that colour,” Kaela Yarwyck proclaims, pushing aside yet another heap of fabric as Jaime watches on with dawning despair. It’s not the first time today he’s heard that, and it hasn’t been just Kaela that had said it, so if he’s exhausted, he can only imagine how the seamstress must feel. “It’s wearing me.”

“It looks fine,” Maya Sunglass offers in response, as if they don’t all know that fine isn’t good enough for this occasion – or for any occasion, when you’re a princess. “At least you won’t be dressed for a funeral.”

“You’re hilarious.” Cersei’s icy tone is bellied by the amused curl to her lips as she dutifully stands as more and more pins are vowed into the fabric of her own dress. “I changed it, didn’t I?”

She had, not without being nearly begged to do so by the poor woman in charge of everyone’s clothes, and the result is startling, after the borderline ascetic dark ensembles that Jaime had been used to so far.

The gown – still shaping up, but almost ready, even to Jaime’s not particularly educated eyes – is a work of art. It’s white, the skirt draping slightly behind her even with the stand she’d been given to step on, with pale blue flowers wrapping around her waist and off-shoulder sleeves, making her look as if she’d just emerged from the castle’s gardens; ever so subtly untouchable. Her golden hair falls in loose curls over her shoulders, braided back in her usual style, though he doubts he’s seeing the finished product. As it appears, they’ll need quite a while before they’re anywhere near prepared to face the public.

“You did,” Kaela says with one last scorned look towards the pink-reddish pile in front of her before delving back into the catalogue of her options. “So that’s blue for you and red for Maya. What’s left for me that isn’t boring?”

“Brown isn’t boring, just neutral,” Cersei offers diplomatically, but quickly relents. “Green could work. It’d suit your hair.”

The seamstress had pointed as much as soon as they had come in – red hair and green clothes are, apparently, are a rather popular colour combination – but the princess lights up as if she’d only just heard it for the first time. Must have been the stress of it all getting to them, Jaime imagines, though he doesn’t have much of an insight into the other competitors’s schedules. “Of course!” She grabs one of the samples and saunters away, doubtlessly towards one of the workers neither of the three of them had had the chance to involve in this project so far, and Jaime suppresses a smile despite how mystified he feels.

“Isn’t this a bit counterproductive?” He asks finally, leaning towards Stephan Osgrey, another one of the personal guards that had been assigned after Jaime’s own arrival, this time for Maya’s sake. “Helping each other out,” he clarifies at the man’s questioning glance. “They’re supposed to be competition, aren’t they?”

Stephan scoffs, as if he’d said something particularly ridiculous. “Sure are,” he allows, still a bit condescending, as if he knows that he’s passing on insight that he knows Jaime has never had any access to. “But this holiday has nothing to do with that. They’re not going to announce who the next queen will be on a damn ball. They’re competition, but they’re also each other’s only friends. I would know. I was in their shoes, a long time ago. Don’t think much has changed since then.”

“You were in the running?” He’s about Jaime’s age – and, therefore, the princesses’s, too – but it feels like such an alien concept, for someone quite so skilled at what they do. He would have assumed him to have been trained for a guardsman since an early age.

“A long time ago,” Stephan stresses again. “And I left long before I could be disqualified. We were attacked one day,” he elaborates when Jaime keeps quiet, waiting to hear more. “It was a protest, or a riot— I couldn’t tell you what it was about if you paid me. We were still kids, the lot of us; the Queensguard locked us into one of the old shelters in the castle. We were all terrified – well, apart from Cersei, but you could already guess that.” Jaime does laugh now, the image of his princess springing into action immediately, no matter of her age or the circumstances around her, all too easy to imagine. “And Maya was crying, so I went to comfort her, and the entire time I was thinking about how I would never manage to be a king. How would I keep my composure long enough to protect a nation when I could barely protect myself?”

“You were a child.” And that’s an understatement. There’s a memory lurking somewhere in the back of his mind about the riot he’d described, and it had really been a long time ago – they couldn’t have been more than fourteen. “No one could expect you to handle it.”

“A few of them did, though.” His eyes linger on Cersei again as she fusses with the laces of her gown. “Most of them aren’t here anymore. If they couldn’t make it, then I know that I definitely wouldn’t have. But back then, I was sure of one thing.” He turns to his own charge now, almost as if he doesn’t realise that he’s looking at her, and Jaime feels an uncomfortable twinge in his own chest. There’s a sentiment shining through his eyes that seems entirely too familiar, even if he himself hadn’t seen it on his own face. “I could barely protect myself, and I couldn’t protect a nation, but I would protect this one little girl. She’s not so little anymore, and I was being trained for the Queensguard for as long as I’ve been out of the running – my parents weren’t pleased, but I suppose it was the next best thing – but when it was decided that they would all be getting personal protection, I couldn’t pass on the chance.”

Jaime nods pensively, not entirely sure if he can fully understand any of it – he had led a far different life, after all – only to be further confused when the man speaks up again. “Honestly? I’m just waiting for all of this to be over. If she wants to be Queen, I’ll help her on her way to the throne, but I’d prefer it if she had nothing to do with it at all, even if she stays in a position of power.”

Now that is even more puzzling than the idea of the different competitors trying to help each other along. “Aren’t we supposed to support them in this?” He asks, hesitant if he’s missing a detail that he should have picked up somewhere along the way.

Stephan laughs, hearty and clearly genuinely amused at his fussing. This is the best thing about the Queensguard, Jaime had noticed – no matter how new he had been a first, none of them had ever made him feel inadequate.“I’m sure we are. But it’s not what I want for her, not that I would ever say that – even in the most peaceful centuries, queens live on borrowed time.”

~.~

He dreams of the earthquake again that night.

Somehow, without ever having asked, Jaime is sure that this is the same nightmare that had occasionally tormented Cersei over the last few weeks, and it always goes the same way. She’s always there, but it’s not quite her; more like the version of her he had thought he was supposed to see when he’d first met her – her hair shorter, her face sharper, more serious; complete in a way his Cersei doesn’t seem to be just yet. There isn’t any pain in dreams, though he had almost felt it this time, but he had been bleeding profusely, and doing his best to get to the clearing on the other side of the rubble as the ground beneath him – above him – keeps shaking.

I want our baby to live, Cersei had said, voice rising in pitch and in panic when he had failed to acknowledge her fear at first, evolving into a frenzied rage against their impending doom. Not like this, not like this—

Nothing else matters, he had assured her, holding her closer than he had ever dared in his actual life. There are memories of an entire other timeline melting into one another, flashing through his mind as he realises that this is it; the end of them. He had always known this would come, and that in one way or another, it would be like this – the two of them in each other’s arms, face to face with death, finally. The real him is there too, in a sense, Stephan’s words throwing a long shadow over the scene in his dream - queens live on borrowed time. Had they always ended up here? Had this even been the first time? He can’t be sure, but he does know what keeps it all connected, and his other self voices it just a moment later. Only us.

It always ends the exact same way as it had the other times – acceptance and darkness, and then blinding light.

It has to be the same. She’d been happy to see him back when he had woken her up, if somewhat embarrassed – it had been strange at the time, but not so much now. I want our baby to live. She’d looked so disoriented, so confused, but the way she’d sat wrapped around herself, protective of someone that isn’t there, had been proof enough. It makes sense that she had mentioned her claustrophobia too – the dream had certainly brought alone a spike of that for him as well.

There’s no way to ask, of course, so instead, he stands by the door as the princess endures a berating by the make-up artist that had apparently handled everyone in the royal family for at least as long as the princess in question had been alive.

“I’m sorry,” Cersei says, a twinge of dark humour in her voice. “I know dark circles are a bitch to cover.”

The woman opens her mouth, likely to chastise her on her language, too, but gives up soon enough. “It’s all right,” is what she settles for with a sigh, applying something shimmery along Cersei’s cheekbones with a brush about as wide as Jaime’s palm. “I just worry. Has anything been bothering you recently?”

“Just the usual.” There’s not a hint of lie to her tone, but he knows better – and so does the artist, if her grimace, followed by a suspicious glance in Jaime’s general direction is anything to go by. “The Queen will be making a decision soon, as I’m sure you know.”

“I don’t think that has ever caused you this kind of worry before.” Another look, and then the woman turns to him directly. “Can you wait outside, please?”

Despite himself, Jaime frowns. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.” From what he’s learnt so far, she happens to account for some of her clients’s other needs as well, especially when it comes to their mental wellbeing, but it still feels wrong to leave Cersei by herself, no matter how private the conversation happens to be. By now, he’s used to being treated as part of the scenery; when he’s in the presence of the Queen, he’s almost entirely sure that he’s as invisible to her as her own guards are.

But, “It’s all right, Jaime,” Cersei says, evidently resigned to her fate, studiously avoiding his eyes even as she reassures him. It’s ridiculous – he knows nothing can happen to her in this room and in this company, but that doesn’t seem to make it any easier to bear. He takes his position rather seriously, after all. “I’ll be done in a minute.”

It’s more than a minute, just like Jaime had expected, and by the time Cersei emerges, she seems to be equal parts annoyed and strangely uncomfortable, but she also looks determined as she stuffs whatever it is that she’d been given into her small bag. “Come on,” she gestures him after her, shoulders squared up as if she’s going into battle. In a way, Jaime supposes she must be – for her, this is what battles are. “It’s almost time to go.”

It really is and, as Jaime prepares himself for what he’s fervently hoping will prove to be an unusual outlier in his job, he tries to school his features into the same determination that she carries everywhere with her. Tonight, they’re both going to need it.

~.~

As painstaking as the princesses’s preparation for the masquerade had been, the Queensguard had gone through far worse. Jaime might be biased, he’d admit that much, but he’s also certain of it – after all, he’d stood witness to both.

It’s the nature of it that bothers him the most, really. The fact that it’s a masquerade makes his job all the more complicated, though the Lord Commander hadn’t seemed to think so – with so many carefully picked people stuffed into one room and without a clear idea of who is who, no one could possibly try to do anything to harm any member of the royal family – or their guests and contestants – without getting caught immediately. Treat this as a day off, he had said, nearly a dismissal of their collective worries, Gods know you don’t have many of them.

That’s true enough, Jaime supposes, and he would have loved to have a day free of worry, provided that he had made sure that Cersei would be adequately protected first, the masquerade feels like anything but.

“She’s all right,” Mata says, a smile blossoming under the blood red of her mask. “This place is packed full with some of the best soldiers alive, and she can handle herself. It’s not like you need to baby her night and day.”

“I’m not babying her,” Jaime protests immediately, even though he knows it’ll be met with doubt. “Who does that sound like something you’ve told someone before?” He chances a look around the room, automatically searching for his charge and holding back his laughter when he sees Stephan spinning her around the ballroom floor with the sort of practiced ease that only royal training could have given him. Jaime had been rushed through several lessons as well, but he feels nowhere near as comfortable here as his fellow guard apparently is.

“Because I have.” Unlike him, Maya doesn’t restrain herself, dark eyes glistening with the mischief of her laughter. “Half an hour ago, give or take. You’re all so neurotic about this.”

Not all of them, perhaps, Jaime thinks – Kaela’s guard had seemed rather relaxed about the prospect of this entire ordeal, so it must be easier when it’s just a job like any other. It isn’t to him, unfortunately and, from what he’s seen so far, that isn’t the case for Stephan either. I would protect this one little girl.

“Cersei is a wonderful dancer,” Maya says with a truly scandalous amount of careful nonchalance. “And she’s good at leading, too, if you’re worried about that. You shouldn’t be, by the way – you’re not half bad either – but she and I learnt together. I would know.”

Jaime keeps quiet for a moment, still absent-mindedly following the steps of the dance. It’s not really something he doesn’t know; given that he’s supposed to be as much of a guest to this even as anyone else here – but it’s her motives that puzzle him – or, rather, the cast that he can’t see any.

“And you’re telling me this because?”

She looks terribly serious for a moment. “Because I want you to know that you’re allowed.”

Jaime swallows heavily, almost missing the next beat. “To dance with her?”

She grins back. “That, too.”

He can’t help but smile back now. “You’re awfully bold for a princess.”

“Princesses should be bold.” The piece they’re dancing to comes to a dramatic end and she steps away, heading in the same direction that he knows he’s about to pick despite his best judgement. “But we do need the occasional push.” She curtsies, laughter still ringing in his ears as she turns her back on him. “Good luck, Mr Ryswell.”

~.~

As it turns out, Cersei really is a great dancer. She’s good enough that Jaime almost loses his footing while trying to follow, and they might be the most mobile couple in the entire ballroom – paintings of the kings and queens of bygone years breeze past them, and Jaime does his best not think about any of it.

“We have a mission,” Cersei says mid-turn, breaking him out of his reverie. He’s not quite sure if she can see his raised eyebrow through the mask, but she elaborates soon enough anyway. “Issued by the Queen herself – peace negotiation in Essos. The preparations start tomorrow.” Her lips curl into a smile, both inviting and challenging. “If you’re feeling up for it, that is.”

“Always.” Truth be told, he’s not too eager to get back to Essos all too soon now that it’s not part of his life in the way it had been before, but he’s not going back as a soldier; only a diplomat. It’s bound to be different that way, he bets. “Peace negotiations?”

“Sounds worse than it is, I think, but it’s not like I can say no.” She sighs with exaggerated ease, as if nonchalance will help with managing the doubtlessly anxiety-inducing prospect that she’d been faced with. It makes him angry, for a moment; that Her Royal Majesty hadn’t even managed to leave her alone just for tonight, so that she can enjoy herself like she had been meant to. “I’m sure between ourselves, we can handle it.”

“Anything,” Jaime nods vigorously, though as per usual with her, he’s not entirely aware of what he’s getting into just yet. “It’s not like we’re really going to be on our own out there. I’m sure we’ll be as safe as anyone could be.”

“Oh, definitely.” Cersei’s hand tightens around his again; a gesture they’d both grown fond of recently whenever one of them needs the support. It’s a small thing, but it’s all he needs to feel all the certainty she already feels when in his presence. “There’s a reason we’re both here, after all.”

There is, in theory – she’s there to learn how to protect the nation, and he’s there to protect her while she does it. The flash of half-dream, half-memory that had plagued him ever since the first time he’d had the nightmare that he’s so certain she shares grows stronger now – he hadn’t always managed to protect her, after all, had he – and he works twice as hard to ignore it.

He fails, just as he always would have – this is Cersei, and she’s alive and breathing in his arms, flushed with the exertion of several – rather energetic – waltzes back to back, smiling up at him whenever she catches his eye, the blue flowers on the edges of the white satin of her mask tangling in the strands of her golden hair every now and again when she spins around too quickly. She’s so alive, but he can’t get the image of the other her out of his mind, tear-streaked face and fear and love and all. Don’t let me die, Jaime, I don’t want to die.

He has to know. He has to. No one will hear him here, and it’s far easier to start this kind of conversation when neither of them can quite see the other and Cersei isn’t neck deep in her work, so absorbed by it that she refuses to acknowledge anything as unruly as a recurring, possibly shared nightmare would be.

“You dreamt of it again last night,” he says and promptly winces, hand tightening on hers when his princess tenses in his arms. She knows perfectly well what he’s referencing, non-sequitur or not. He could probably benefit from being a little less blunt from time to time, but he’d never really managed it. “Whatever it is.”

“I did,” she says, quieter than he’d expected. “You shouldn’t worry about it. It’s ridiculous.” She shakes her head, as if it would help her transfer her indignation onto her own unconscious mind. “I don’t know why it keeps happening.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange?” He hadn’t meant to push, but if this helps, then so be it. “That it happens so often?”

“Not really.” Had his usual behaviour been anything other than thorough for a personal guard, she might have asked him why he’d suddenly started caring so much; as it is, the only issue she seems to have is with dwelling into her own head for too long – which, now that he thinks about it, isn’t much better. “It’s just an unnerving dream. Everyone dreams of their own death every once in a while.” She’s trying so hard to play it off as something she would never let bother her that Jaime is almost tempted to let her, if only to indulge her for a moment. “I’m no different. And the dream itself... I’ve read the story about as many times as other people have felt the need to retell it for me. It only makes sense, considering.”

“Considering what?” There’s unease curling up in his stomach, heavy and unbearable.

Finally, she holds his gaze for more than a fleeting moment. “Considering the way she died.”

He doesn’t need to ask who. The queen she’s named after. “How did she die?”

“Jaime.” It sounds somewhere between a plea and a warning, but he doesn’t budge. Not this time.

“Cersei.” It’s still part of the question, in a way, as much as it’s him addressing her. “I could always find out myself, you know.”

“And that would help how exactly?” It’s a striking contrast – the ethereal costume mixed with her severe expression. “It will go away on its own eventually. There’s nothing to worry about.”

How, how could he possibly tell her that he’s been going through the same? Whatever he says, unless it’s a word-for-word retelling of what she herself had seen, is going to sound too strange to be true. “It would help,” he says at last in a final, futile attempt at wrestling the information out of her the easy way. “If it’s something that can be overcome—”

“Princess?”

They’ve been relatively still for a little too long, it would appear, and Jaime suppresses a sign as one of the Queen’s advisors breaks from the flock to interrupt them.

The princess in question has no such troubles – Cersei is, as always, the epitome of patience, as far as appearances go. “Yes?”

“Her Majesty would like a word.”

Cersei’s eyes stray to the centrepiece of the room, with the long table and the large, ornate chair in the middle where the Queen is seated. Her careful facade flickers for all of a moment; enough for Jaime to see the uncertainty seep through. “Now?”

“I’m afraid so.” He doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t need to – it’s less an invitation and more a command – and, with a nod from Cersei, they both head to the other end of the room. He’s not her guard tonight, but he needs to be there; he can sense it already.

“How convenient,” he mutters – the interruption had come at the precisely right time – and the princess turns to smile at him, nervous but teasing.

“It really rather was.” She reaches out, squeezing his hand in a quick reassurance somewhere between the flowing layers of her dress and his absurdly long sleeves, hidden from prying eyes. “We can talk later.”

~.~

They don’t, of course. Jaime had expected nothing less – Cersei is, apparently, less than eager to explore the topic. Instead, he does his own research.

The Red Keep’s library is so enormous that it’s intimidating, and so is its history section, but he doesn’t wander about for too long – he knows what he’s looking for, after all, given the small timeframe he’d been given for the existence of the queen he’s looking for. It couldn’t be too difficult, with Cersei’s description in mind. The first and the last on the Iron Throne. It must have been before the beginning of the end of the Westerosi unification, and when he reaches for the last volume of History of the Seven Kingdoms, he places the book on its face down on the table, and starts flipping backwards from the very last page.

And there she is, sure enough – Cersei I Lannister, followed by a list of titles. She had died during the Targaryen attack, just as his Cersei had alluded, but how?

Going through her history back to front turns out to be a somewhat difficult exercise – she’d been a controversial figure at her best and, reading about it upside down, Jaime grimaces at some of the things he’s glancing through, only stilling as another familiar name swims up to the front, more and more often.

Jaime Lannister, her twin brother and formerly the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, also saw his titles changed after she was crowned Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Now commander of her armies, he led the charge against Highgarden, which would eventually result in—

Funny you should mention that. Cersei’s voice rings in his memory again, and he grits his teeth. Yes, very funny. The only reason no one had brought it up to him directly yet, he suspects, is to avoid being the subject of their future queen’s wrath, and if she’s anything like her namesake, she’s bound to have lots of it. The Queen I was telling you about? The Lord Commander during her time—

The words blur in front of him and Jaime traces a finger over the page, as if it could do anything to help him get closer to the events described in such painstaking detail. Jaime Lannister. Her twin brother. Her lover, too, from what he had seen so far. Now far more attentive, Jaime flips to the start of the chapter and reads, enraptured, about the family that had managed to break apart a three-century long ceasefire between the Seven Kingdoms. And as the history follows any records that had been available from their times, his mind begins to fill in the blanks.

It’s not that he actually knows, of course – he couldn’t possibly. But here and there, he can guess, and that seems to be good enough, because the story is shaping up right in front of him, making more sense than the scarce details that the chroniclers of that time had offered. It’s only when he realises that he’s not going to learn more about their eventual faith here that he turns to a source he knows cannot fail him.

~.~

It takes him a while to get there – he’s not even in the Queensguard proper yet, implying anything else would be too arrogant even for him, and he suspects that the librarian only relents because of his obvious (and, this time, not entirely fabricated) enthusiasm over the history of the institution. He might have been less insistent at any other time, but this is different – for some bizarre reason, it feels as if his life depends on it, and this time, his life doesn’t feel like it’s solely his either.

He should have told Cersei. The guilt of doing this so blatantly behind her back nudges at his conscience every now and then as he goes through the motions of acquiring what he needs, but if he wants to get anywhere at all with it, he can’t have her scepticism stand in his way before he’s had the chance to prove his point to her, and so, Jaime reverently takes his precious cargo and retreats to a rarely visited sector of the library.

Over the years, the White Book had turned into more of a list of names than an individual page of each and every member of the Queensguard and their achievements, but if this man – Jaime Lannister – had lived around the time he supposedly had, it would be there, recorded in full. Whatever history books have deemed too obvious, or too common a knowledge, would have still found its way there – because it would have been written by one of his fellow guards, if any had survived.

And sure enough, it’s there, once he gets his hands on it, aware that he’s holding something unimaginably fragile as he makes his way through the life of a man he hadn’t realised had existed until several hours ago. Not all of it had been mentioned in the book he’d picked up, but then again, that part of it had been more focused on the monarchs rather than the warriors. Either way, he doesn’t mind an account that had been written in real time, and despite the several references that would definitely have to take further research, it’s the end of it that catches his eye – it is, after all, what he’d been looking for in the first place.

Died protecting his Queen. It’s a good note to end such a tale on, considering the life he had led, and it gives him no more information, other than a stray note about trying to save the city from destruction, which lines up with what he had found out already. There’s more to read if he wants the full picture, but for now, he doesn’t need it.

There are no more answers to seek, not on a superficial level, and Jaime closes down the book, more mystified than he had been to begin with, but now armed with knowledge that, in some way, he had already had.

There had been no earthquake, after all. It had been the end of the Seven Kingdoms as the people then had known them, and for some reason he can’t even begin to explain, Jaime almost remembers it all.

Chapter 5

Notes:

Super quick and rather unedited update directly from my notebook to my laptop, from what I wrote while out of town, with an appearance from a trope as old as time. ;D A bit of additonal sweetness before the drama hits.
Hope you guys enjoy it and, as always, feedback is most welcome!

Chapter Text

It all has to be one big coincidence, of course.

Really, Jaime thinks as he looks for anything he could have possibly forgotten when packing his luggage, there’s no way it isn’t. Whatever it is that he suspects he has discovered has got to be nothing more but the work of his consistently overactive imagination and nothing else. Any other explanations he had thought of so far range between the bizarre and the outright ridiculous, and he’s sure that Cersei would tell him as much too, if he were to ever confide any of this to her, nightmare or no nightmare, because she is precisely the rational, put-together person that everyone – including him – should strive to be. All of the stories of magic and dragons and strange snowy creatures are far behind them; this is now and the here and now is an entirely different place from the harrowing tale that he had followed despite his best efforts to keep himself in the dark. None of it is real in the world as they know it today, or someone would have known. It’s not particularly likely that a soldier with no prior foray into the occult had managed to rediscover something still present out of the realm of things that had disappeared hundreds of years ago, if they had ever existed at all.

So far, he had managed to find an explanation for almost every match of the story he had read to what he’s seeing in front of him here and now. Jaime is a frequent enough name even here in the Crownlands; the fact that he and the legendary hero share it is nothing strange at all. Cersei is the daughter of a Lord – and more specifically, a Lord who had planned to make a queen out of her when she had still been a child. The fact that she had been named after the first queen that had ever ruled independently in the Red Keep is as predictable as it gets. Cersei’s nightmare falls into the same category; she had said it herself – everyone had always brought up the queen in question around her, and it had stuck. He must have read the story before, if he’s able to dream of the same thing, and perhaps it had stuck in his then-childish mind without him realising it, too, only to come out to haunt him from the depths of his memory where it had stood long forgotten. The idea of the tragic death of royal pair of twins that had also happened to be lovers being told in a grade school’s history classes is a stretch, but there’s no other explanation, so he accepts it.

There’s just one little detail that keeps bothering him – one piece of this puzzle that he can find no conceivable place for, no matter how hard he tries.

Tyrion?”

And there he is, the final piece himself, sitting on one of the tables in the mess hall with a mountain of paperwork in front of him, Cersei going through a small fraction of it in the chair on the opposite side, as unaccompanied as she had been the day he’d first met her.

“Jaime!” He narrows his eyes at the sudden burst of enthusiasm, but tentatively steps closer anyway. “Lovely of you to join us. Cersei here was just telling me how effective your plan for dealing with the peace negotiations is.”

“Mmhm. He’s been working on it ever since I told him.”

She’s still engrossed in her documents and he has about a million different questions he could be asking and about a million other things to say, but what really comes out once he draws in a breath is, “You know each other?”

Cersei does look up this time, smile as amicable and unassuming as it gets. “Most of the children of nobility do. I was more surprised to hear that he had sent you my way.” Her eyes dart towards Tyrion with something resembling admiration more closely than he had seen her display for anyone other than the Queen. “I remember you telling me about dabbling in social services, but I never expected you to handle cases around our age.”

Tyrion shrugs, dripping with the false modesty that Jaime knows and loves. “I’ve found that it’s easier that way. Children can be more complicated than one would expect, even in the simplest of cases.” He turns towards Jaime, motioning him towards the empty seat in the middle and he follows without protest, just like he always has. “Having some understanding of your client’s state of mind certainly helps.”

How someone who is – apparently – nobility could possibly relate to a whole lot of directionless orphans, Jaime isn’t entirely sure, but then again, perhaps it’s his case specifically that Tyrion had been drawn to. He desperately wants to ask, now that he knows what he knows, but it’s too risky with Cersei not only within hearing range, but right next to him – if he’s going to sound even remotely as insane as he fears he might, then it might be best to run it past his social worker first.

The social worker in question must have sensed that there is something amiss, because his gaze wanders between Jaime and the princess by his side, more knowing than it has any right to be, before he finally declares, “I think it’s time to let Miss Hardwicke return to her schedule. Her Majesty has been so kind to trust me with handling security, and there’s no better source of information that getting it firsthand.” He gives Jaime a tight smile as Cersei gets to her feet, gathering her small tower of paperwork and swiftly but tactfully attempting to flee the scene. “Cersei,” Tyrion calls out after her and she falters long enough for it to be obvious that he’d caught her attention. “I hope you consider what I told you. About Casterly Rock.”

She nods, somehow both perfectly polite and missing the warmth she’d seemed to hold for the man just a moment ago. “I certainly will.”

Neither of them speaks again until the door had closed behind her back and the clicking of her heels on the marble floors had become almost inaudible, but by the time it does, Jaime has already descended on the closest illusion of a friend he has with all the frustration that had been building up over the last few days.

“Did you set this up?” he asks before he can stop himself, quietly grateful that Cersei isn’t here to see this. It’s as bad a look as he had suspected it would be.

As always, Tyrion’s face is completely unreadable. “The peacemaking efforts? No. I don’t have this kind of power here. Even if I had, I would have thought it was a bad idea. In fact, I told Cersei that already, but she’s never been one to step away from a challenge.”

“I’m not talking about the diplomatic visit,” Jaime says. Had he been in a better mood, he would have been inclined to agree – it’s reckless and, given his own experiences in Essos, the chances of it bringing about any kind of real change are slim to none. “I mean all of this.  My position here. All of those girls need protection, but you sent me to her. Why?”

He has to give it to him – if Tyrion is playing a game of some sort, he’s excellent at it. The astonishment written all over his face seems to be entirely sincere. “Cersei and I have known each other for years,” he says, and it doesn’t sound as defensive as he himself would have been under the same circumstances. “Of course I worried about her safety. I decided to recommend you because were free and capable of doing the job the way it needs to be done. It appears that I was right – she’s had nothing but glowing praise to offer so far.”

“Yes, yes, you were right. You always are.” The smugness sneaking into Tyrion’s voice is unbearable even through the uncertain surprise reigning over his explanations. “And of course I’m good at what I do. That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what is it about, Jaime?” He sounds both exasperated and genuinely concerned and just like that, the words start pouring out – he tells him about the dreams, about the history he now knows, about the burden of a past that had never been his, and about the illogical, terrible conviction that this is all more than some strange coincidence.

To his credit, Tyrion listens through it all; doesn’t interrupt the waterfall of words that comes out of him, even if it’s likely more than he had ever heard from him before. Jaime isn’t a man of many words, usually, and this is all as unknown as it gets; so distant from anything he had ever experienced so far that he doesn’t quite have the ability to put it into words, especially given the scepticism that shines through despite his best efforts to appear neutral. It’s only when he’s on the cusp of voicing it that he runs out of patience.

“Jaime.” Tyrion raises a hand to stop him mid-sentence, and they both seem equally surprised when it works. “Is there a point to this?”

He laughs, but it comes out more joyless than amused. “I bet you can see it coming already. Before meeting her, I never even knew any of those people had ever existed. Now, I have all these dreams, and Cersei thinks it’s just a trick of her mind, because of course she does, but I just—I just want to know.”

“Know what?” The question is unexpectedly gentle, given the frustration Tyrion must feel by now if his confusion is genuine. “So far, it would appear that Cersei is right – she’s letting this all get to her head the closer she comes to the crown, and your arrival likely didn’t help. You could have read that story in school before and forgotten about it. What is it that strikes you as unusual?”

“You,” Jaime blurts out before he can stop himself and cringes when all he receives in response is a raised eyebrow. “They had another brother, you know. Tyrion, a Lannister, just like them.”

“I do know that.” If he’s at all disturbed, it doesn’t show, though it wouldn’t, Jaime supposes – he’s excellent at his job, after all. “I’m directly descended from the man, as far as I’, aware. How is this relevant?”

“The day I met Cersei – the day you sent me here – you told me that you had an inkling. I didn’t really understand there, but you were right – it was a perfect fit and—this Tyrion.” He falters, unsure. It sounds even more complicated out loud, but it’s too late to go back now. “He did everything in his power to keep his siblings safe. I don’t know. I kept thinking—”

“Jaime, I’m sorry, but let me see if I’ve got this right,” Tyrion starts again, and Jaime feels almost betrayed by his baffled tone, as if he had convinced himself that he would have all the answers. “Cersei – the likely heiress to the Throne, who has been prepared for it since birth, is named after a medieval queen. You’ve known me for years. I just happen to be named after my own ancestors and suddenly I’ve decided to, what? Set you up with some resurrected warrior queen because I think you were reborn alongside her?”

His first instinct is to say yes, but, “It sounds ridiculous when you put it this way.”

“Because it is.” It’s not unkind, but it is grounding in a way he hadn’t quite expected.  “Cersei and I have known each other almost our entire lives. A lot of what she does is exceptional, as is her mind, but she’s a perfectly ordinary girl.”

“There’s nothing ordinary about Cersei,” he retorts immediately, and feels his face grow hotter at Tyrion’s fond, exasperated sigh.

“Not to you, I’m sure. And if I know her at all, the sentiment is returned. Enjoy that.” He squeezes his hand in yet another show of support that he hadn’t seen coming. “It doesn’t have to be something larger than life to matter. You can love her as she is.”

~.~

By the time they’re out of the capital – and the Crownlands as a whole – on a private flight, and directly into the depths of the desert at some clearly politically significant spot in Nowhere, Essos, Jaime is as tense as he can get.

There is no chance of any of this going sour, Cersei had assured him a thousand times and really, he knows that well enough – he had dedicated quite a lot of his time over the last week making sure of that. They had figured out every angle, every possibility, no matter how unlikely, of things going haywire. She would be as protected as she could realistically get, not just by him, but by a number of soldiers sent along with them, looking as inconspicuous as possible as not to raise the already present tension, but they’re there. That should be enough, Cersei had said, and there’s no way she’s anywhere near important enough to be assassinated. Jaime hadn’t seen it as particularly funny, but they’d proceeded anyway – despite her dismissals, they both know that this is too crucial to miss.

Still, as they step off the plane and he takes in their surroundings – the world’s smallest airport, a hotel of similar size, and the bare bones of a town – he feels woefully unprepared. Cersei is fanning ineffectually at herself – with an actual fan, no less, decorated with elaborate lace to match the edges of her sleep, formal dress, in a stark white, and held together with a belt and too many buttons to withstand the Essosi heat. She couldn’t have been prepared, of course – despite all her experiences, she had never visited this part of the world before.

“This should be a quick one,” she declares valiantly despite that, tugging her small suitcase along, full of the determination he knows so well. “We’ll get to know the area so that we can make sure we have the biggest advantage possible tomorrow.” She throws him a fleeting smile. “Positioning in peace talks is almost as important as it is during war.”

Yes, Jaime thinks despite his best efforts to remain optimistic, because they could always devolve it into one. It’s happened countless of time before, and the idea of being present for it for once isn’t particularly appealing.

“Come on,” she urges as they leave their meagre belongings in the hands of a hotel employee rushing out to meet them. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

~.~

Surveying the site doesn’t take long, which, Jaime supposes, is to be expected – there’s nothing there, for now – and before he knows it, they’re back at the tiny semblance of a hotel and he only stops being distracted by every little thing in his way when he hears the familiar, irritated pitch of a Cersei plunged directly into strange waters.

“—was a crucial part of what we asked of the man on the phone,” she’s saying, clipped but still relatively civil. If he knows her at all, it won’t last much longer. “It was what was asked of me, and it’s what I asked of you. I had this confirmed three times. What exactly went wrong?”

“It’s just the online reservations, Lady Hardwicke,” the woman behind the counter says, looking about as frightened as anyone on the wrong end of Cersei’s collected anger should reasonably be. “Someone— Someone let it be booked twice without realising it. We have rooms available at the floor below; it would be enough to accommodate—”

“Absolutely not,” Jaime cuts in before she’d even had the chance to finish, having deduced what the dispute might be about even without an explanation. He had been the one to request a room right next to Cersei’s’ in order to continue the habit of being able to keep an eye on her at all times if needed; if she’s arguing about room placement, there is very little else it could be about. “We’re a package deal.”

It’s a bold statement to make, but Cersei doesn’t deny it; looks thoughtful instead, as if something new had suddenly occurred to her.

“And my room?” She asks at last. “What does that include?”

“It’s more of an apartment,” the woman shrugs, eyes straying between them as if to gauge what the reaction to her next words will be. “There is a queen-sized bed in the bedroom and a small living room; it has a futon, if—”

“I’ll take the damn futon, then.” He feels tired and overheated and wants nothing more than to play down and go to sleep, even if it’s right here, in this lobby forgotten by the gods. There’s no time for trying to bargain their way into something they clearly aren’t going to get. Jaime rips the keycard out of the receptionist’s hesitantly outstretched hand. “Give me that.”

~.~

Cersei disappears in the bathroom for a good half an hour after they find their room and emerges with her hair pulled back in a thick braid and the same nightgown that he had seen back the first time when he’d barged into her room, worried for her safety but instead being sent down a rabbit hole he should have probably left untouched, and heads for the bedroom without a second look at her discarded luggage, left there for her to doubtlessly overthink tomorrow when choosing the appropriate clothing for the occasion.

It takes her about as long to return as it takes Jaime to realise that he should probably ask for one of her extra pillows if he wants to be even remotely comfortable on the sad excuse of a futon that her living room offers.

“You’re not sleeping there,” Cersei declares before he can say a word, motioning him closer with a gesture commanding enough that he almost feels compelled to obey despite the absurdity of what he assumes she’s implying. “Tomorrow is going to be hell, Jaime,” she adds when he opens his mouth to protest. “You are not preparing for it on a couch.”

“I’ve prepared for worse while sleeping on the ground in an overcrowded tent,” he counters, one hand still lingering on his own suitcase, unsure how to proceed. “I’m not sure what Her Majesty tells you about the army’s working conditions when describing the country’s warfare, but, well—”

“If tomorrow goes well, she might just decide that I’m finally prepared enough to be left in charge of our great nation, so I’ll just have to put that on my agenda too, won’t I?” She doesn’t wait for a response. “For now, this is the best I can do,” she says, generously gesturing towards the room behind her, “It’s a queen-sized bed, and I’m not quite there yet.”

As often as he accuses her of overanalysing every little bit of her life, Jaime does precisely that for the entirety of his preparation for bed; considers every word she’d said and everything he had said back as if his life depends on it. Had he been expected to refuse? Not likely, no – Cersei isn’t fond of mind games. Had he said something to provoke her into this? Not really, either – he hadn’t said anything before she’d come out with that idea. What, then? Had he just made her feel comfortable enough with his presence that this hadn’t felt like such a sacrifice? The thought warms him more than he would like it to – more than is probably safe where his heart is concerned – and Jaime sternly tries to get himself to enjoy it just a little less.

It doesn’t quite work. Cersei is the first thing he sees when he enters the bedroom, nestled in-between a pile of sheets too high for the current heat, but apparently just perfect for her. From what he can see, she’s asleep, and Jaime slips on the other side as quietly as he can, startled by how eerily familiar this feels, too – looking at her on the eve of a conflict of some kind, waiting with bated breath for a war that might or might not come. She looks as troubled in her sleep as she does while awake, endless schemes doubtlessly running through her mind, and Jaime grins to himself as he closes his eyes and tries his best to fall asleep, too. Tyrion does have the annoying tendency to be always right, but his assessment of the situation needs an amendment this time, it seems – this might just be a bit larger than life than he had expected, but he can love it – and her – all the same.

Chapter 6

Notes:

(Mild spoilers for the chapter in the notes) Well, I did warn that the burn isn't quite as slow as it could be by definition, but then again, I doubt I could ever beat my own best of having the characters meet for the first time 60k words in, so I'm just going with wherever this outline takes me. ;D
As always, I hope you guys enjoy it and feedback is most welcome!

Chapter Text

The sun is already up by the time Jaime wakes up - a rare occasion even on his most relaxed days - and he narrows his eyes at the open curtains as he stretches out in his bed, the realisation that he's not, in fact, as alone as he tends to be in mornings coming suddenly enough for him to flinch and almost dislodge Cersei from where she's propped on his arm.

Right. Their booking situation had found a not quite satisfactory resolution last night, after all, and he'd been too tired to argue the princess's questionable ideas of how to fix it and get them both the rest they would need to face this day, and it had brought him here, unceremoniously hogging more space than is likely appropriate on a bed meant for a future queen. Life had had its twists for him before, Jaime has to admit, but he had never really imagined that it would lead him here.

Cersei is still asleep, it seems, the nigh-permanent contemplative frown usually etched over her features now smoothed out in her rest. There had been no nightmares tonight for either of them, from what he can tell, and idly, Jaime wonders if perhaps the strange force sending that same vision through their minds again and again had been settled for at least a while by their proximity. He tries his best not to recall the tale again, but it slips in uninvited - the other Jaime must have shared the queen's bed often enough, given the relationship they'd had. Further research had brought him to several plays and short stories written for the two of them, as if it had all been awfully romantic. It's as good a fuel as any, he supposes - the secrets, the scandal, the blood and the war, all in the name of doomed love - but now that he's dreamt the man back into existence and had seen the horror on this other, stranger Cersei's face in the face of the inevitable, he doesn't find the concept quite as dangerously attractive. He'd much rather have her here, asleep on his already numb upper arm, with a country at her feet and a glorious future to look forward to, and nothing to worry about other than yet another task she had been handled on the way there. There are no dead men or dragons or stuff of legend; only the same atrociously boring politics that she'd been delving in since childhood. The threats he has to protect her from belong to the present, not the past, and by the time Jaime had managed to convince himself to let it go, if only for the time being - long enough to make sure that everything today goes according to plan, she's already awake, too.

They can talk about it later. She had never followed up on that particular promise, after all.

Jaime hastily closes his eyes, doing his best - but likely still not quite as convincing as he would have preferred - impression of having only woken up. She retreats as hastily as she can without making a scene out of it, but she doesn't look too bothered, and it's a small relief; knowing that she feels this comfortable in his presence despite how little they know each other still. Perhaps it's the same familiarity that plagues him that does it, or perhaps he's just trustworthy enough for her to allow herself to be as relaxed around him as she ever gets around anyone.

"Good morning," she drawls out, voice still heavy with sleep but a smile - not as tense as he would have expected, given the circumstances - brightening up her features. "Long day ahead."

"Mm," Jaime agrees, ready to elaborate with something a little more adequate, only for the doorbell to catch his attention instead. "That's our food, I'm guessing."

"Better be." Cersei throws a robe over her nightgown, and it's another half-remembered moment that Jaime can't afford to indulge in - he draws the covers over himself self-consciously, as if she could never possibly guess the effect she has on him, especially this early in the morning. It's improper to even consider any of the scenarios running through his mind just now, but then again, sleeping in her bed hadn't been particularly proper either. The best he can do is stave off the thought, but even that doesn't last long, as the princess re-emerges a moment later, carrying a plate so large that he's surprised when she lowers it to the bed successfully. Back in the Red Keep, he'd be wary of making a mess and having the cleaning personnel glare at him again, but then again, his charge outranks him even without a crown on her head.

"Breakfast for two," she shrugs at his startled expression, and promptly digs into the breakfast in question, eyes closing with a pleased smile as her lips close around the cherry she'd picked out from the elaborate spread in front of them.

Jaime swallows heavily. The food can wait, perhaps. "I think I'm going to take a shower first."

It might be a good thing they'd arrived in the middle of a heat wave, after all, because it's going to be a cold one, he thinks gloomily, and it's a better thing still that the princess is too preoccupied with this last bit of relaxation that they've been granted to pay much attention to his whims.

~.~

The hotel, ever since last night, had felt like a dream of its own, even if it's nothing like the nightmares - it had been a handful of moments suspended in time, a calm before a storm. He had been surprised that they'd managed to steal that away for themselves in the first place, so the realisation that they might as well be entering a warzone doesn't come as as much of a whiplash as it could have otherwise. This is what they're here for - if Cersei is to be believed this is what she's put in the world to do, as if some deity had bestowed it upon her before she'd even been born. It wouldn't be particularly strange if she thinks so, either - in the circles that she's grown up in, elections or not, the idea of the divine right of kings must be alive and well.

"We're here to negotiate with a terrorist group in all but name," she explains with an uncharacteristic sort of resignation when he asks about the sheer amount of soldiers from the Crownlands wandering around the place, not as inconspicuous as he would have made them if he'd been given the chance, considering that the other side of the conflict keeps eyeing them warily. "More specifically, it's an attempt at making them loosen their control over the cities around the border with Myr. They're not breaking international law - for now - but they are disturbing the local population and the trade between countries enough that an intervention is needed."

"From us?" He feels horribly inadequate, suddenly - despite all the effort thrown into making this the safest venture possible, Jaime hadn't really bothered to delve into the tensions of the region, assuming that he would be able to get by on what his years in Essosi wars had taught him. "Not Dorne?"

"The Disputed Lands are far more our problem than they are theirs." There is a man approaching them and Cersei's voice is so carefully neutral that he can't tell whether she's happy with that turn of events or not. "I suppose it's only fair, considering that we're the one drilling them for resources day and night." A moment later, her customary smile - civil, pleasant, and entirely vacant of any genuine emotion - is plastered all over her features. "And this would be our translator. Hello again, Mr Hotolis."

"Hello, Lady Hardwicke." There's none of the Miss that Jaime is used to; not here, out of the Crownlands and the Red Keep, where everyone is pretending that she's not any different from any other contender in order to humble her. The man is all smiles, and idly, he wonders if all of his desert-appropriate clothing is paid for by the crown so that he can do their bidding all the way out here. "It's a pleasure as always."

"Let's hope it is." Cersei's as tense as she can get, looking for all the world that she's both nailed to the ground and ready to make a run for it now that there's no feasible way for this to go anywhere but forward. "I think introductions are in order."

"Of course. Harlodos Nahirah, their leader," he starts, following in step as Cersei moves closer to her opponents, "has agreed to this meeting under pressure from his organisation, to discuss the Crownlands's influence over the region and the possibility of allowing them to overhaul the local ruling system to their benefit - so that the population would have a voice in the parliament all the way in King's Landing and have its demands heard better, eventually. A colonial power such as the ones you hail from, they believe, is in need of representatives of all its lands in the capital."

Something between confusion and discomfort passes over Cersei's face, but even to Jaime, following her like the silent shadow that he's supposed to be, it's barely noticeable. "We are not an empire," she says, and there's indignation slipping into her tone now, although her voice remains firm. Now she's facing the other side, speaking to them directly despite the language barrier. It's not like her to shy away from direct conflict when needed, so Jaime stifles the urge to do anything but remain in place. Remember what you're here to do. "I must admit, I'm not quite sure I understand. You say you're working in the public's best interest - wouldn't it be in their best interest to allow them to continue international trade until the matter with your representatives is settled. A transition like this takes time - rushing through it with the negotiations being fuelled by blackmail would be an unfortunate path to take towards it."

The translator launches into his introduction - Jaime hears her name somewhere along a string of unfamiliar works, so this is what it must be - and it's only when Cersei frowns that he realises that something is amiss.

"Excuse me," she says, firm but careful as ever before he's managed to switch to translating her opening words. "I'm afraid there's been a mistake. I'm not the Queen; I'm just a representative for the Her Majesty."

Each word is painstakingly chosen and, as Jaime looks around to take in their audience, it becomes clear why that is - among the soldiers, there are journalists on the prowl, too, each exchange and shift of expression carefully recorded for today's evening news. It's little more than a story for them, and he almost resents them for it, predictable as their presence is - on top of everything else, there's that to worry about, too.

Still, Hotolis is all smiles. "Apologies, Lady Hardwicke. The news always reach me last, as you can see." He raises an eyebrow at her with something that feels like it should be good-natured curiosity but doesn't really manage it. "I hadn't realised you spoke Valyrian."

"It's only a hobby," she assures, and she's not smiling now. "I certainly couldn't compete with a translator, but, as you can likely guess, I've heard the word for queen more than a few times in my life."

"I'm sure." If Hotolis had noticed that he's being reprimanded, he doesn't let it show, though his smile looks a little more pained now. "This should make the negotiations easier, then, shouldn't it?"

Cersei's scowl only deepens as he - evidently - goes on without correcting his previous translation, and suspicion starts to raise its ugly head somewhere deep in Jaime's chest as he tries to place the pieces together and doesn't find them quite fitting. A false announcement of a new queen being crowned wouldn't be something unusual - if the Crownlands's gossip magazines are to be trusted, there's a new monarch every time they need something new to speculate about and enchant readers with - but a queen would be received with much more fanfare, surely - and even more security than a princess would have been provided with. She would have certainly had the Queensguard in its entirety with her, too, or at least enough of them to be intimidating. She certainly wouldn't be standing all by herself in the middle of the desert with one bodyguard by her side.

"The local people could stand the discomfort for a time if it draws attention to a cause that the majority support, Mr Nahirah says," the man goes on anyway once he receives a response, undisturbed by the tension that Jaime knows he alone can feel. It's clear than no one other than the very inner circle of the scene set here can see that something has happened at all, and the lax attitude at his fellow soldiers might have frustrated him if he hadn't realised that a lot of his own assessments of the situation likely have more to do with the time he's spent in Cersei's presence, surrounded by politicians in a world where every word weights in its place in a specific way and where everything can go crumbling down as soon as someone steps out of line for even a moment. "But he's willing to reconsider if a deal to proceed with his offers is made here and now."

Offers. Jaime almost scoffs in response, but knows better than to react before the princess herself has. Demands, more like. He's known men like this before and, unfortunately, he's sure he's going to know them again in this line of work - whatever he's promised now, there won't be any stopping this unless Cersei offers an immediate solution - the sort that she's not permitted to make just yet. Anything less would be considered as inconsequential as any other empty promise made when it's time for a public figure to try and rise in rank.

Sure enough, Cersei had arrived to the same conclusion. "I'm not in a position to sign such a deal at the time." It's the closest she can say to an admission that she's quite sure she will be in the position in question the future while still sliding by on plausible deniability and still, Jaime can hear the cameras clicking in quick succession as the princess steps forward, extending her hand for a greeting. "I can, however, submit your case for the parliament's consideration at the earliest opportunity. I'm certain that we all would prefer to keep our borders safe from conflict - Myr is a trusted ally to us all."

The group's leader couldn't have understood her, but apparently, her benevolent smile is a good enough reassurance - he joins her in the no man's land, one of his men following in what is almost a perfect mirror to Jaime himself, and it's only by the time they're shaking hands that the translator picks up her reply, Nahirah's expression souring as he goes on, just as Cersei breaks away so that she can turn to face the man, disbelief and doubt etched over her delicate features.

"Mr Hotolis, that is not—"

The world flips around on its head so abruptly that Jaime almost fails to react - almost.

By the time he'd drawn his gun out, Cersei had been spun around and towards him, another weapon pressed into her temple as Nahirah barks something in response that he can't understand. It doesn't make sense - she'd made a perfectly reasonable offer and if the translation had been right—

Only, of course, it hadn't been right. Only a hobby or not, Cersei had apparently learnt enough of the language to be able to tell.

He can't shoot without risking the possibility of hitting her - nor can anyone else around him, rifles and all - so Jaime goes for the next best thing instead.

"What did you say to him?" Hotolis just yelps in response as Jaime's own gun digs into his back, his left hand wrapped around his wrist to keep him in place. "You better tell him what she said, and you better do it now, or—"

"Or what?" Out of all the times he'd held someone at gunpoint, he can't recall a time he'd been taunted before, but even without a comparison, it's a weak effort - the translator's voice is trembling as he fights to keep his composure. It's a losing battle and he'll fold before long, but Cersei could easily be dead by then. As it appears, they both know it. "You'll kill me? It won't be enough to save her."

Despite himself, Jaime laughs; a tense, nearly hysterical sound, eyes still on Cersei as she tries to explain herself in hesitant Valyrian. Somewhere in the distance, he can hear the same insufferable clicking from before; camera after camera recording this newest delve into an adventure that the common man has no access to. For a single, wild instant, he wants them all dead. "I can do far worse to you than that."

He tightens his hand's hold and starts twisting, not stopping for the man's struggling - or for the voice coming from behind him. There's a rifle trained on the opposite side of the camp that he can spot somewhere in his peripheral vision, followed by a crisp, "Just give the order, sir."

"And have him shoot her before you can shoot him? Put that down," he snarls despite himself, nodding towards the princess when the soldier hesitates, and they both watch as Nahirah loosens his hold on her, weapon still firmly in his hand. "She's got this covered for now. You, on the other hand," he says, nudging the wrong end of his weapon into Hotolis's back, as if he'd need the reminder that he's the one being spoken to, "You will tell every single one of them to stand down before I blow your brains out."

"Do you think that this is as big as this gets?" There is it, again; that false bravado that makes him want to follow up on his threat right now and be done with it. "You couldn't even imagine—"

"I'm going to imagine it just fine when while you get your insides ripped out for information back in the Red Keep." It occurs to him, distantly, that he isn't making this easier, but the rage ruling over him just now is like nothing he's ever experienced before; like liquid fire running through his veins, finding home in the words as they spill out, unfortunate as they might be in the long run. "Now, if you want to actually live to see the end of that, tell them to withdraw. She's not the Queen, and she's nowhere near as important for your demands as you might think. You want to meet the woman in charge face to face?" He nods towards the group on the opposite side of the temporary construction set up for the negotiations to take place, where Cersei is still surrounded by both enemies and firearms, frantically trying to explain herself with a limited dictionary. "Tell them what the princess said to you. Make sure they let her go, and you'll get a private audience as soon as we land back in the Crownlands."

"Except that's not really your decision to make, is it?" Hotolis sounds even more desperate now, as if he knows that this is what he wants but that he isn't getting it anyway. "The Queen herself is untouchable. All we can do is draw her attention. Kill one of her little bitches and perhaps then—"

The gunshot echoes so loudly in the crowded space that, compared to it, the chaos that erupts in response feels almost like silence. Jaime is the first to move once again, pushing away the translator's body and stepping over him to get to the other side where his fellow soldiers had finally used the moment of shock to swarm into the enemy lines, pushing them away until Cersei is in clear view and he can tug her away from the stunned leader's general proximity and away from the camp, vaguely surprised when she follows suit. There are no more shots to be heard, so perhaps the situation is being deescalated somewhere behind them, but he doesn't turn to look. Only one thing matters now.

"What are you doing?" He doesn't answer and her voice is almost muted enough to unsettle him, but there's no time for that now. "Jaime, what did you do?"

My job, at last. "I'm getting you the fuck away from here."

"You killed him."

"Of course I killed him, he wanted you dead. Get out of my way or you'll be next!" he barks at yet another camera floating towards them. "The princess will have to release a statement later, I'm afraid."

It doesn't matter, anyway - he can already hear one of the soldiers closest to them explain the situation to a reporter, the woman nodding in horrified, puzzled understanding.

It's only back behind the hotel's front doors, past the cheery receptionist that hadn't been lucky enough to know of the commotion yet, and on their way to their room, that he takes a look at Cersei again - she's pale and wide-eyed, one suspiciously steady hand gripping a mirror for dear life as she fixes her hair and the upper half of her clothes back into place; touching up several spots around her eyes where her make-up had smeared, either from heat or sweat. There's still the same restless energy buzzing inside him, clouding any attempt at rational thought, and finally, his confusion bursts to the front. "Cersei, what the hell—"

"I have to speak to Her Majesty," she manages, voice still as frighteningly quiet. "She'll want to hear it from me first."

The door to the bedroom slams closed behind her.

~.~

It's some time before Cersei speaks again, even after she emerges. She's so subdued that he wants to shake her, but doesn't dare to - she's shaken enough as is, and it's at least partially his fault, and Jaime wonders if that's not part of it, on top of everything else. Perhaps this had evoked the same senseless need for violence in her, too, if the quiet fire in her eyes is any indication, only her method of handling it is to try and snuff it out instead of letting it loose like he had.

"You shouldn't threaten the press."

"Fuck the press."

"The Queen says you could stand to work on your temper."

"Fuck the Queen, too."

Finally, Cersei's own temper fires up and she's shooting daggers up at him - a much preferable alternative when compared to her quiet acceptance. "Is this your response for everything? You killed someone who could have been useful on a whim and now we know nothing! We don't know who he worked for, we don't know what they want, and most of all, we don't know why he decided to act now - all things that could have been very easily revealed in an interrogation. And what do you do instead? You shoot him in the head."

"I did warn him that I would do that," he shrugs, entirely unapologetic. "What else did you expect? He wanted to have you killed to draw the Queen's attention and she let you out here with minimal security and no promise of a safe return on something that was supposed to be a calculated risk, so yes, I don't have a better response than that. Fuck the press and whatever they decide to say about it, and fuck the Queen, too, for not coming all the way down here herself."

"Are you insane?" She doesn't require an answer to that one, apparently, because she goes on, her voice gaining pitch alongside with her anger. "A calculated risk is still a risk. This is nowhere near big enough for the Queen to get involved in herself, which is why I'm here."

"You're here because you're being tested." It's a shot in the dark, but he knows her well enough by now to know that it's aimed well. "You're here because when you are the Queen, you'll be everywhere at once if you can be. When you are Queen, the small issues will be your issues to handle, and you'll be there when you need to be instead of sending your protégés to handle it for you. As far as I'm aware, I've been hired to make sure you survive that long."

She bristles again, but it's far less scandalised now, as if hearing of herself as a queen as a prospect alone is more pleasant than she'd like to admit. "I'm not the only candidate," she says at last. "If they've got this far, that means they're just like me."

"They aren't, and everyone knows it. No, no one will say it," he says when she opens her mouth to protest, taking a step back as he takes a step forward, cornering her against the law of the living room where she can do nothing but look the truth in its eyes. "But they know it. That's what Tyrion said when he described the job to me. Did it never occur to you that there's a reason for you to be the first one to get personal security?" She doesn't look away, she wants to, he can see - she knows. "It's going to be you. You know it, they know it, the people know it, and if anyone gets any ideas about using that knowledge against the Crownlands by sacrificing you, then I'm here to stop them, no matter who it is. Some snivelling traitor in the Disputed Lands, another would-be queen, someone in parliament who doesn't like the ideas you put forward and who will like them less when you rule over them, doesn't matter. I'll kill them if I have to." He takes one of her hands in both of his, tracing mindless lines over her palm, as if to map out the future on her lifeline; show her what he means to do, and the mistakes he wants to correct. "Them, and anyone else who dares. I don't care what the country's priorities are; I know mine. And I'm not losing you again."

"Again?" Cersei echoes, but it's more a challenge than genuine confusion. Under different circumstances, he would have thought that it's finally a conversation that she's ready to have, but there's something else simmering under the surface - something in her eyes that he's only ever seen in the other version of her, the one from his dreams when the dreams in question aren't limited to the nightmare-memory he knows by heart by now. It's hungry and eager to get out past her endless, carefully constructed defences. “You can’t kill everyone who ever opposes me.”

Her breathing is heavy but quickened, as if she’s caught on to whatever it is that has taken over him, and Jaime intends to see it through.

"Yes, again. Anyone who dares," he repeats, crowding her even further against the wall, leaning forward to nuzzle against her temple where the gun had been pressed what feels like an eternity ago, delighted by the way her body moulds to his in response. "Of course I can, if it endangers you. I'm as untouchable as you, Cersei." He laughs despite her lingering anger, despite her berating, despite the memory of death still ringing in his ears. He'd learnt a long time ago that blood doesn't wash out of anyone's hands, no matter how invisible it becomes after a while; might as well embrace it, if it's for her. The knight whose name he'd somehow inherited had done just that, if the stories are to be believed, and what a life he'd lived. "You want that throne? You'll have it, and you'll keep it for as long as you like. We can make sure of that together, if you'd let me."

She yanks him back by the hair; doesn't speak a word other than everything that her starved, furious expression can tell him, and then her mouth is on his, hot and biting and accepting in a way no verbal surrender could have been, and it feels like a match meeting gasoline; like a rapid forest fire, spreading faster than anything he's ever seen, scorching everything in its path as it burns and rages and destroys, making room for something entirely new. Jaime growls as his arms wrap around her waist and he grabs at her like a drowning man would at his only salvation, bunching the paper-thin fabric of her dress in two greedy handfuls, pressing impossibly closer to her when he feels one of her thighs wrapping around his waist, her needle-thin heel digging into his skin, a punishment and a celebration all at once. He loves it. Of course he does, and of course she knows as much - she always would have known, he suspects. It's her, and he's been missing this through his entire miserable existence, and there's nothing he wants more than to take her apart right here and see what makes her tick; see if he can do to the same to her that she does to him.

Inevitably, the answer has to be yes, but he wants to know, wants to see, his hands on her back tightening as she arches into him and fuck, he had just known she'd fit this well against him. Her breathing hitches on a gasp against his mouth when he thrusts against her, desperate for friction despite the restriction his uniform provides, and he leaves a trail of wet, messy kisses down her neck instead, his arms around her the only thing keeping them both from toppling to the floor. Cersei pulls him up again, her tongue lapping at his lips as he grants her entrance, just as mindless in his wanting, and it feels so intolerably good; knowing that he's found her, at last.

When she breaks away, he almost follows for more, suddenly more needy than he's felt for most necessities in life, hesitating only when he feels her trembling under his touch, eyes wide, looking less like the Queen than she had moments ago - the Queen in his dreams, not the one currently on the throne, never her - and more like the Cersei he knows, ever so careful to not break something she thinks is valuable. It feels better than he'd ever admit, to be considered on the same level as she does international peace and every other thing dear to her heart, but more than a little frustrating, too, knowing how she likes to take her time with those things.

There's a time and a place, he reminds himself as he presses his forehead against her chest and feels her fingers tangle in his hair again, a caress more than a demand this time. A sigh breaks out of her just as he tries to calm his own breathing, and Jaime smiles despite his state of near-desperation - this might not be the time and the place, given everything she'd just been through, but at least he knows that they're in the same boat, now.

When he hears her voice again, she's surprisingly crestfallen, and it's a complete non-sequitur to anything he could have expected.

"I think Tyrion was right."

"He usually is," Jaime nods, still not looking up. If it's all the same to her, he could spend an eternity like this. "What about, exactly?"

He can almost feel the resignation fill her again as she responds, apparently having faced some revelation of her own that he's not allowed to be privy to just yet.

"We might need to pay Casterly Rock a visit."