Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The salty sea air tickled Jaime’s nostrils as Egg tugged at his hair, in between giggles. Cersei had not made the trip down the mountain alongside them, but Egg had begged, cried, and screamed until she’d asked Jaime none too kindly to get him out of her sight. He’d spent the whole ride chattering away about horses, every third word meaningful, the rest music to Jaime’s ears. Egg had happily made faces at Brienne the whole way, breaking into song quite spectacularly when he grew too bored, and all Jaime could think, heart thrumming with anticipation, was that Tyrion would love him.

And here they were, standing in front of the docked boat, waiting for Tyrion to join his luggage on shore. How had he grown, in the last year? In how many ways was the Tyrion of his dreams different from the boy he’d see before him now? What if Tyrion was coming home simply out of obligation? What if Jaime should’ve left him well enough alone on Tarth? Was he asking too much, making Tyrion come back to a home that had held nothing but hatred and disdain from him?

After all, Tyrion was just a child, wasn’t he? Just as Jaime had been once. Just as Egg now was too.

“Who’s that?” Egg tugged at the neck of Jaime’s shirt. “That’s Uncle Tyrion?”

“No, sweetling, that’s not.” Jaime shook his head. “Uncle Tyrion looks just like you.”

“Like me?” Egg asked, awestruck.

“You’ll know him when you see him.” Brienne added. “He’s got the same smile as you, Egg.”

“That’s Uncle Tyrion?” Egg pointed to a man unloading crates.

“No, not him.” Jaime caught sight of a blur of motion on the deck, and his heart climbed into his throat as Tyrion came strolling down the dock, merrily whistling a tune, a bright smile on his face. So he was happy to see Jaime, at least, even if he might feel put upon for having to come home at all. “That’s Uncle Tyrion.”

“Oh.” Egg said, frowning. Either Cersei had not told him much about Tyrion, or he’d constructed a mental image that didn’t quite match reality. Given his age, it could be either or both. “Hello Uncle Tyrion.” He turned his face into Jaime’s neck when Tyrion approached, suddenly shy. “I’m scared, Uncle Jaime.”

“Oh, come off it, Egg.”

“I’m shy.” Egg insisted.

“Then you’re not truly shy if you can say it.” Jaime said, just as Tyrion held his hand out to shake. “Selwyn’s done magic on you. Look at him, Brienne. Trying to shake my hand.”

“A little lord.” Brienne smiled, and Tyrion pushed past Jaime to embrace her. “Where was that enthusiasm for your brother?”

“He’s found a replacement for me.” Tyrion sniffed. “He has no use for me any longer.”

“Egg is a child.” Jaime said, confused. “What?”

“I’m Egg.” Egg stage whispered. “I’m a child.”

“So this is the famous Aegon Targaryen.” Tyrion said. “Will you set him down, Jaime? I’d like to see my nephew’s face.”

“Will you stand if I put you down, Egg?” Jaime asked. When Egg nodded, then he set him down, as Tyrion had asked, and barely masked his surprise when Egg grabbed his left hand and held tight to it. “That’s a good boy.”

“May I call you Egg?” Tyrion asked. “It’s a very nice name for a very nice boy. Uncle Jaime has had only good things to say about you.”

Pride made Egg look like a trueborn Targaryen more than anything else. The razor sharp smile, the puffed out chest, it was all the image of Aerys. “Uncle Jaime’s the best.” He looked up at Jaime, grinning, and whatever resemblance Egg had shown to his grandfather was naught but a memory. “I love him.”

“Do you now?” Tyrion laughed. “I love Uncle Jaime as well. He’s very good for seeing tall things and using swords.”

“Auntie Brienne has a sword.” Egg whispered as if it were a secret. “She hit him with it. I didn’t tell Mumma.”

“Keeping secrets from your mother already, hm? You’ll be a Lannister yet.” Tyrion ruffled Egg’s hair. “I like him. When must we pass him back into the demon’s hands?”

“Never, if we can avoid it.” Jaime slapped Tyrion’s back. “Come on then, brother. Let’s go home.”

“It’s my nameday!” Egg roared directly into Jaime’s ear. Jaime’s eyes watered, but he smiled nonetheless, despite Tyrion’s barely suppressed giggles. “Uncle Jaime! It’s my nameday!”

“So it is.” Jaime said, trying to ignore Tyrion’s squeaks and snorts. “Congratulations, Egg, from myself and Aunt Brienne. We are so proud of you.” In his arms, Egg writhed and wiggled, a smile on his round face. Glee danced in his violet eyes as he laid smacking kisses on Jaime’s cheeks, trapping his uncle’s face between his chubby hands. “Egg, please--”

“I love you!” Egg hollered. “My nameday!”

“So you can say whatever you want, yes.” Jaime nodded. “You can definitely do that.” He put Egg down on the floor and he went shooting around the room like a boat with the wind at its back, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Can you believe he’s Cersei’s?”

“Not for a single moment.” Tyrion laughed. “She probably hates herself for it every day.”

“Uncle Jaime says I’m going to get a feast and a dance!” Egg shrieked at the top of his lungs before running at Tyrion, nearly bowling him over. “Uncle Tyrion, will you dance with me?”

“Of course, Egg.” Tyrion pinched Egg’s cheeks. “I’ll dance with you, Aunt Brienne will dance with you…”

“And then, after it’s all over, you’ll get your present.”

“A present?” Egg gasped. “What present?”

“Ah, that’d spoil the surprise.” Jaime winked. “After your feast and your dances.”

“But--”

“It’ll be so much fun if you wait for it, Egg.” Tyrion said, and it gave Egg pause. Ever since he’d met Tyrion, he’d been devoted to his uncle and had believed everything he was told by Tyrion unquestioningly.

“Yes.” Egg sighed despondently. “Later.” He crumpled to the floor in a display of dramatics that would not have seemed out of place on Tyrion. “Later.”

The main hall at Casterly Rock was alive with song and dance, the music floating outward through the corridors into the night air. The tables were piled high with food and drink, and in the center of it all, Egg reigned supreme, a king without the crown he was born to wear. He swayed slightly off-beat in his chair, eyes shut and lips curved in the sweetest smile, head swinging this way and that. Beside him, his mother picked at her food, and every so often he leaned over to her, tugging at her sleeve to get her attention before blowing her a kiss.

Jaime knew he was only seeing half of Egg’s antics, lost as he was in Brienne’s eyes. They’d hardly stopped dancing since they’d decided they’d had their fill of food, just enough distance between them to flirt with propriety. He spun her around, laughing far too loudly, and they came together again, his lips centimeters from her neck.

“Look at us, enjoying a child’s nameday feast.” Jaime laughed. “Perhaps more than Egg is.”

“Oh, he’ll have plenty to smile about when he sees our gift.” It had been Brienne’s idea to get Egg a cat, and her idea to name it on his behalf. She’d ranged the hills, valleys, and mountains of Tarth with a faithful little dog by her side, and had decided that a cat might suit Egg’s temperament better (and Cersei’s -- Jaime had no doubt she’d drown any puppy gifted to the boy). “Not that he’s short on joy at the moment. Look at him.”

She’d fallen for Egg as surely as he had, in the time since he’d come to live with them. The boy had entranced them all, most of all Tyrion, who seemed to be making good on his promise of a dance, Egg’s limbs all wrapped up in his uncle’s as they barreled about like a four armed, four legged missile.

“I’m glad he’s taken to Tyrion. They needed each other, I think.”

“Tyrion needs love. We all do.” Brienne said, as if she were reading it from a book. “Egg has much more free time on his hands than we do.”

“It’s funny. I feel like he would have made an excellent king, if circumstances had played out otherwise.”

“Quiet.” Brienne hissed. “You don’t know who’s listening.”

“Can an uncle not compliment his nephew?” Jaime knew it could be read as treason, but something in his heart hungered to say the words nonetheless. There were so many words he had wanted to say, to Myrcella, to Tommen, to even Joffrey. And with Egg, he could say them. He could believe them. He could look at the child before him and know that he was complimenting Egg’s true nature, not the tales Cersei spun about him for sympathy. “He has no claim, nor would I support it if he or his mother asked. He’s just a boy. Let him run about the mountains with his cat. It served his aunt well. She’s a knight, you know. Very strong. Could lift me with one arm.”

“One arm?” Brienne’s cheeks burned red. “That’s a bold statement.”

“Let’s test it.” Jaime whispered. “It might not be so bold--”

“Aunt Brienne!” Egg yelled. “Dance!”

Brienne hoisted Egg up into her arms, spinning and whirling about as the music changed. As the song drew to a close, she planted a kiss on his sweaty forehead, earning a giggle from Egg, who found her positively delightful.

“Uncle Jaime, Uncle Tyrion, and I have a surprise for you, sweetling.” She said, and Egg’s eyes lit up. “Would you like to see it?”

“Yes! Yes please!” Egg clapped his hands.

They snuck him out of the room and off into one of the many side hallways that wound around Casterly Rock like a labyrinth until they found Tyrion, with a squirming burlap sack in his arms.

“What’s in it?” Egg gasped. “It moves.”

“Well, Egg, welcome to pet ownership.” Tyrion put the sack onto the ground, and a little orange kitten stumbled out, meowing softly. “Uncle Jaime named him Ser Pounce, but you can give him a new name.”

“I love Toast.” Egg’s voice shook, tears in his eyes. “Toast is my favorite thing.”
“The cat or bread?” Brienne asked, trying to smother a laugh.

“Both.” Egg barrelled into her legs, hugging her tight. “This is the best!”

“Cersei’s going to hate this.” Tyrion’s eyes sparkled with glee.

“Absolutely.” Jaime grinned. “That’s why we did it.”

Chapter Text

“I told you so.” Cersei howled, emerald eyes bright with fever, as Jaime rocked her daughter in his arms, smiling down at her. “I told you she would be a daughter. You said there would be a son, you dullard. Will you ever doubt me again?”

“Sleep, Cersei.” Jaime said boredly. “The longer you yell at me, the less energy you’ll have to yell at everyone else. Actually, do continue, it might save everyone else some time.” He wormed his finger into his niece’s fist, bouncing her slightly. “Isn’t that right, sweetling?” His voice rose to a sickly sweet timbre, marked by the strange, particular inflection that characterized speaking to babies. “Isn’t your mother unreasonable? Isn’t she being rude?”

“Leave my daughter alone.” Cersei said weakly. “You seek to turn her against me, even on the day of her birth--”

“I seek to remind her that yelling at others does not breed fondness, despite how much you and Father seek to convince yourselves and each other that it does.” Jaime interrupted. “Honestly, Cersei, you’ve just given birth and you’re yelling at me instead of holding your own daughter. By the Seven, she doesn’t even have a name!”

“She does.” Cersei said, teeth gritted. “She has a name.”

“Then call her by it, please.” Jaime countered. “She is not a half of yourself, Cersei, she is her own person.” That brought fury into his sister like nothing else, the reminder that he was beyond her reach, the reminder that a man utterly resentful of her meddling was the closest thing to a father that her child would have. “She deserves her own name.”

“Joanna.” She said hesitantly. Her eyes looked much too large in her face, shining with tears. Jaime knew he should be ashamed of himself, but couldn’t muster anything but grim resignation. He had said what needed to be said, awful timing be damned. “I should like to name her Joanna. For Mother.”

“For Mother.” Jaime nodded slowly. “Joanna Targaryen. Father will not be pleased.”

“He is not here.” Perhaps it was not fever in Cersei’s eyes, but a thirst for vengeance. “Let him be displeased. Let him be angry. It is of no matter to me. She is my daughter. There will not be a Rhaenys Targaryen born of my womb, no matter how much Father should want it.”

As her child had grown within her, so had Cersei’s bitterness. The conviction she had held so dearly, that her child should carry their father’s name, their father’s history, alongside hers, had weakened and splintered, like wood eaten through by termites. Naming the child Joanna was her act of defiance. Jaime liked it very much, even if it had disrupted his own plans.

“I like it.” He said, a curious look came over Cersei. “The name. Mother would be happy, I think, if she had lived to see it.”

“If she had lived to see it, I would not be naming this child Joanna.” Cersei said, voice shaking. “I doubt I would have this child at all. She would have protected me.”

“We don’t know that.” Jaime said softly, though he and Cersei both knew the truth. Joanna Lannister would have never forgotten her children like her husband had. Joanna Lannister would’ve never let them all drown in their self-loathing and haunt each other like ghosts of what they could’ve been.

In his arms, Joanna Targaryen squalled, her hands balled into fists, her rosebud mouth open wide in a scream. A shock of white blond hair was plastered flat against her round head, a few strands shaking loose as she thrust her head backward.

Defiance, it seemed, was a heritable trait. Among the Lannisters, at least, it seemed to pass from mother to daughter.

“Nothing can truly be known like that.”

Each step Jaime took toward his father’s study was reluctant, echoing in his head like he’d once wished for the bells of the Sept of Baelor to. From the moment the baby had been born, the moment Joanna had been born, Jaime had been dreading this encounter. No news within Casterly Rock didn’t reach its Lord if he was in residence, and even if he wasn’t, great pains had to be taken to hide any secret. Jaime would know better than anyone -- he was hiding three in Lannisport.

The walk seemed longer than usual, the gilded halls of the Rock duller without Tyrion or Egg (or more often than not both, as they seemed to spend nearly every waking moment together) by his side. Tyrion would’ve made some quip about the history of a tapestry hanging on the wall, or Egg would have asked him to stop and see if Egg could fit more fingers in his mouth than Jaime could. Anything was preferable to the silence that filled Jaime’s ears and chest now, thick as candle wax, making it harder and harder to breathe.

Tywin Lannister would not be happy to hear his granddaughter’s name, and like all of Cersei’s decisions, in every world that Jaime had seen, Jaime would ultimately pay the price. Cersei should be glad she was bedbound, Jaime reasoned, as Tywin’s wrath would likely dull before it reached her. For all she claimed Jaime was their father’s favorite, she said it with the confidence of Tywin Lannister’s true inheritance -- his ruthless search for others’ weaknesses and his talent for saying what they wanted to hear most.

“Enter.”

In one word, Tywin Lannister packed so much derision.

Jaime had barely shut the door behind himself when Tywin slammed both his hands down on his desk. Jaime’s heart jumped in his chest. Suddenly, he was five years old again, and fearing a beating. What had he done wrong? Had he angered his father? Had he failed his reading lessons again? Had he--

“It is my understanding that your sister named Rhaegar’s child after your mother.” Tywin spat the words out like a curse. “A Targaryen, named for your mother. Aerys’ granddaughter, no less.”

“She did.” Jaime’s voice wobbled unsteadily. “She told me nothing of the name she’d chosen. When Rhaegar was still alive, she said they were planning to name her Rhaenys.” He swallowed hard. “I assume his death changed things.”

“This weakens the girl’s claim, should she need to have use of it--”

“Neither of them have a claim, Father, with all due respect!” Jaime interrupted. “That was given away to Robert when he sat the throne, and it’s only on Ned Stark’s word that we can trust the children will live to see adulthood.”

“Ned Stark’s word.” Tywin scoffed. “You’ll have me believe my grandchildren won’t be murdered in their beds because some Northern scoundrel said so? Ned Stark is in Robert Baratheon’s pocket. As far as we know, these children are the last of the Targaryens. Any distance from their name makes people forget who fathered them.”

“Joanna is a wonderful name.” Jaime said resolutely. “Mother would be proud, were she here to see it.”

“And how would you know that?” Tywin laughed mirthlessly. “You were hardly old enough to put yourself to bed when she passed.” A stormy darkness flashed in his eyes, and Jaime knew his father was thinking of Tyrion. “Not old enough to remember her, and certainly not old enough to know what she would want from either of you.” He shook his head. “Your mother would never--”

“And whose fault is that? That we never knew her?” Jaime challenged. “We waited for years for you to say anything, dug through her things just this summer to see if there was anything we might find familiar--”

“Her things?” Tywin’s voice was ice cold. “You presumed you had a right to her things?”

Jaime imagined hearing them was what pissing off the Wall might feel like.

“I presumed Cersei did.” Jaime corrected. “And that Tyrion did, and so did I, being her children. You kept our mother like a secret, and look at all the good that’s done us! So yes, if Cersei wishes to name a Targaryen Joanna, she is fully within her rights to do so, and I will defend her to you until the Stranger comes for both of us, if need be.”

“You have always been her dog.” Tywin sneered. “You do your sister’s dirty work with your tail between your legs. No lord behaves that way, only common wretches with no aspirations beyond a few coins for a whore and a drink.”

“I am no dog.” Jaime scowled. From the day Cersei had seen two dogs rutting in the yard, that was all he had been to her -- a loyal servant, a body to use. In this world, it was different. He was different. He was better. And perhaps that would make all the difference for Cersei, for Cersei's children, for his own, with Brienne, should there be any waiting among the stars. “I am a good brother. It’s no wonder you can’t see my actions for what they are.”

He thought of Aunt Gemma, who had been nothing but kind to them as children, and Uncle Tygett, who had wanted so badly to be noticed, Uncle Kevan, who had chosen strategy over substance, and Uncle Gerion, who hardly ever was at home to avoid even accidentally running into his oldest brother. His father could never understand how he poured his heart out for Cersei, no matter how she hurt him, and Tyrion. He had never done so himself.

Egg would learn from him how to love Joanna, and perhaps Lyanna’s baby as well, should it come to that. If he learned anything of love from Tywin Lannister, it would be worse than learning nothing at all.

“You embarrass me. Every single one of you are an embarrassment to the Lannister name, and your mother would be ashamed of you. A Targaryen bears her name, besmirches her name, and now you defend it? You defend your sister for naming the child so? Get out of my sight. I can hardly stand to look at you.”

“I’m happy to do so.” Jaime stomped out of the study, slamming the door behind him.

It would seem that he and his father were somehow unable to have a civil conversation, though Jaime had never been happier for it. He did not want to be civil with someone who had such violent emotions over a matter so simple as a child’s name, given with love or something of that nature.

“Lord Jaime! Lord Jaime!” Jaime turned away from Aegon for a moment to see Endrew, Elayne’s son, running toward him.

The boy was panting and out of breath, cheeks flushed red, his brown hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, but he stumbled to a stop before Jaime, holding out the letter in his sweaty hand like it was the most precious treasure.

“A letter from Lannisport. My mother told me to carry it.” He nearly toppled forward, face first, to the cobblestones, breathing heavily, stopped only by Jaime getting in the way just in time. “Sorry, m’lord, it’s just, I’m--”

“It’s no matter, Endrew.” Jaime ruffled his hair. “Go on and get yourself some water, and then, when you feel ready, ask the stables about a horse to ride back down the hill instead of walking.”

Endrew, who had been well appraised of the strange ways of Lord and Lady Lannister, nodded eagerly before disappearing into one of the many hallways that peppered Casterly Rock.

“Let’s see it, shall we, Egg?” Aegon nodded eagerly as Jaime tore through the wax seal of the letter to find the words he’d been waiting on as Cersei grew larger and larger, safe within the Rock. His heart had often wondered after Lyanna’s safety, after Elia’s happiness, as they waited for the child in a tiny apartment in Lannisport, attended to by Brienne’s handmaid.

But it seemed that the Stark heir had found their way into the world.

The third head of Rhaegar’s dragon was here.

Dear Jaime,

I am pleased to announce the birth of my son Jon, named for Jon Arryn, late last night. He is healthy and quite large for his age despite being born early. Elayne predicts he will be tall like his father, and already he shows signs of a strong resemblance to his Aunt Lyanna. I have sent word ahead to Brandon and Ned in King’s Landing by raven.

Your friend,
Elia Stark

“Hear that, Egg?” Jaime whispered. “You’ve got a new friend. His name’s Jon.”

“Jon!” Egg grinned. “A new friend? Can I see him?”

Jaime thanked the Seven that Jon, even as a newborn, seemed to already favor Lyanna. If he and Egg shared any features at all, Cersei would see Jon for the threat he was immediately.

“When he gets a little bigger, I think. Then Jon can come visit, and you can play with him and Joanna.” He hadn’t considered how similar their names were until he said them aloud now. Jon and Joanna. Rhaegar was likely rolling in his grave. “You’ll have a lot of practice with babies, from playing with Joanna, so Jon will like you very much.”

“I want him to love me.” Egg beamed. Did he know, in his heart of hearts, that Jon was his brother? “All the babies should love me.”

“And they will!” Jaime said. “You’re a good boy, Egg.”

Egg did a little dance, very pleased with himself. Jaime’s heart melted.

“I’m the best.” Egg said proudly. “In the whole world.”

Chapter Text

The dreary apartment of Lannisport still smelled slightly of the old iron scent of blood when Jaime and Brienne stepped through the door, as disguised as possible. It had been weeks since the boy was born, but the old, cheap wood didn’t give up stains or smells well, and it would be time, soon, for Lyanna and Elia to return to Casterly Rock and take their place among the nobility again.

Lyanna was abed, Jon at her breast, and Jaime turned away with a soft cough, unsure if he should be here at all, before either of the boy’s true fathers. Of course, Rhaegar was unavoidably detained in a permanent fashion, but was it right that Jaime see the boy before Brandon Stark, who would raise him? Was it right that the future Lord of Winterfell saw a Lannister’s face before his father’s?

“When Brienne has your brat, will you look away like that, Lannister?” Lyanna’s japes always hurt a little too much, her razor sharp words searching for the softest parts of you.

“Hopefully she will never have a brat.” Jaime said, steeling himself before looking right into Lyanna’s eyes, eyes the letter had said that the infant Jon shared. “If we are lucky, our children will be as gentle and honorable as their mother, and will have nothing of their father.”

“Would that there were more men like you, Jaime Lannister.” Elia laughed. She sat by Lyanna’s side, whispering to her goodsister as Jon drank his fill. The two of them chattered away as Cersei once had with Melara Hetherspoon and the little court of Westerlands girls she had surrounded herself with before she had moved to King’s Landing. Like friends. Like sisters, of blood and not marriage. “Then it would be much easier to find a husband, though I have been lucky in that regard. Or live with brothers.” She wrinkled her nose. “Oberyn is adamant that he sees Jon before my lord husband does.”

“Oberyn can ride as hard as he wants. It depends on when the summons from King’s Landing comes.” Jaime said softly, looking away from Lyanna. “If we leave before he arrives, there will be more travel ahead of him.” The mood in the room soured like fruit forgotten beneath a table. “But that’s unlikely. I’ve written to Ned and told him to keep Robert away from the topic.”

“Thank you.” Lyanna whispered as Jon drew back with a sneeze. She put him against her chest expertly, head over her shoulder, patting his back until he let out a loud burp. “It is selfish, I know, but I would like all the time with my-- with my Jon as I can get.” She bounced him softly in her arms, regret clear on her face. “Elia’s son. My nephew, Jon.” The words seemed foreign to her, as they should be, but she powered through them nonetheless. “He looks so like Brandon, don’t you think?”

It would have been a crime to say Jon resembled any Stark as strongly as he did Lyanna, his own mother, but Jaime nodded along, encouraged by the abject relief on Lyanna’s face.

“He has Brandon’s nose.” Jaime said, though all the Starks had the same nose, in his opinion. “He’ll grow into it.”

“Should we… should we find you a wet nurse?” Brienne said, as delicately as she could. “For when you come to the Rock?”

Lyanna looked down at Jon, cradled in her arms, and nodded slowly. His thick, black hair stuck out haphazardly in every direction possible, as indomitable as his mother’s will. “You should. I… I should like to keep him to myself, for another week or so. To say goodbye.” Her gaze skipped and jumped to Elia, who nodded, leaning toward her to place a kiss on her temple. “I will need to get used to Aunt Lyanna, I think. Before I come to the Rock.”

“Would it help, if we called you that?” Jaime asked hesitantly. “Jon’s Aunt Lyanna?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, a soft whimper slipping past her lips, but nodded. She couldn’t look at the boy in her arms for a few moments, so embroiled was she in her pain.

“It would.” Lyanna said, every word stronger than Valyrian Steel. “And you should, so we all leave the hurt here, in this room.” When she opened her eyes again, Jaime could see Ned in them, the same belligerent determination to do what needed to be done, no matter how high the price she would pay. “Someday, I will have children of my own with Robert.” Her voice faltered and she glanced down at Jon, who had dozed off. “And then I can be called Mother, but not by Jon. Not if we want him to see manhood with his own eyes.”

“I should like to see Winterfell.” Jaime’s voice breaks the gentle rhythm of hooves clopping against the uneven path up to Casterly Rock, and Brienne turns to him, a frown on her face. Her features stand stronger than usual when she looks angry, and it wakes something deep in his chest, fiery and fascinated, full to the brim of dreams that require an element of privacy that they won’t find under the embrace of the sky. “I’ve never been so far North.”

“Do you want a child so badly that you would ride there to see Jon?” Brienne laughed freely for a second, but it petered off when Jaime took too long to respond. “Jaime.” The shape of his name in her mouth was marred by a nervousness he had never heard, not in any lifetime before this one. “Do you want an heir so badly?”

“I don’t want an heir.” Jaime mumbled. “Jon is different, that’s all. New. I have no need of a child of my own. I have Egg. And Joanna, now. They are more than enough for me.”

The words feel hollow, a flimsy barricade against the future threatening them at every step. Cersei is on her second child and well on her way to her second marriage, and Jaime, married not long after, has yet to make any progress toward an heir for the Rock.

His father will come knocking soon, demanding proof that he has been trying at all, and more than anything, Jaime would like to spare Brienne the worst of Tywin Lannister. Whatever he can do to take his father’s wrath onto himself, he will. He has lifetimes of experience wearing Tywin Lannister’s disapproval like a heavy fur cloak, allowing the weight of it to direct his steps. Whatever he can barter to buy her freedom for a little while longer, he will gladly sacrifice it for her.

“If they were, would you ask to travel so?” Brienne retorted, her words falling flat. She urges her horse further toward the mountainside, putting more distance between them. “Is it for Elia that you ask, then? Has she reminded you of something?”

“Hardly.” Jaime scowled. “Nothing that I don’t already have. That I didn’t already choose you for.” He gripped his reins tighter in both hands. “I just-- I worry for the boy. He will be safe in the North, but whispers can reach further than men can travel. Elia and Brandon may love and raise him well, but Lyanna… to be separated from the ones you love, from a child, is a burden I would never bear well.”

Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen’s faces haunted him more nights than not these days, ever since he’d seen whispers of Myrcella in little Joanna’s eyes. Perhaps it was because Myrcella was the only girl, and so was Joanna, following in the footsteps of a half-sister who never existed in this world. Joffrey had fit so perfectly in his arms, as an infant, and he had felt that same tug in his chest while holding Jon today.

Jon could not have looked less like Joffrey did -- dark haired, gray eyed, and strangely alert where Joffrey had been blond, green eyed, and drowsier than a cat in the sun -- but babies were all the same in the ways that mattered, soft and loving and smelling sweeter than a garden. Every little movement had entranced Jaime, the little twitches of Jon’s nose, the wriggling of his hands and feet, the slow blinks of his eyes. He could whet that appetite on Joanna -- and probably should, given Cersei’s track record raising children alone -- but Jon had warmed his heart.

“Your heart is too soft for that.” Brienne agreed. He didn’t look over at her, eyes focused on some arbitrary point near the skyline. The horse moved beneath him, but he felt it like a whisper against skin, a suggestion of the world spinning without him. “You could never leave your child and go.”

But he had. For so many years, he had. He had left Joffrey in Cersei’s clutches, let her run Myrcella and Tommen into the ground for the sake of her machinations, let her hurt his children to get her way. This Brienne knew nothing of the man he had been before the Stranger had sent him here, the dastardly, dangerous wretch that hadn’t realized what love truly was and had settled, instead, for pity.

“Everyone makes choices that go against what they believe.” Jaime hung his head. He had left those children to die over and over again, and in this life, had stopped them from being born at all. Was that cruelty or mercy? It seemed both wore the same face, sometimes. “For love, for duty, for honor, or perhaps for something less valuable. It depends on how one recovers. What is made out of the aftermath.”

“And you would like a change of scenery, for a little while. To visit an old friend as she moves to the North with her new son.” Brienne raised an eyebrow.

If she was assuming he was mired in thoughts of his involvement in the murder of Aerys Targaryen, he would let her do so. Ned Stark was, at last news, still in King’s Landing, and he hoped Ned could delay Stannis long enough to allow for Daenerys to be born. Even if Aerys had marked her life with suffering and sorrow, Rhaella Targaryen should be allowed some peace at the end of her days.

“Father won’t be Hand to Robert. He wants to be, but Robert won’t have it. It will be Ned Stark, or Jon Arryn, or someone else who stood with him from the beginning. Father’s grandfather to the Targaryen heir, anyhow. He’s dangerous. No one will trust him of acting in anything but Egg’s interests.” Jaime shuddered. “He had his time in King’s Landing. It is over now. That chapter has closed but he refuses to acknowledge it. His place is at the Rock now, and ours… ours is wherever we want to go. On whatever adventures we would like to have.”

When Viserys and Daenerys were chased off Dragonstone, would Egg inherit it? Would it be taken for the Crown? Stannis Baratheon had gotten it like a gift, a reward for chasing two innocent children away from the body of their dead mother like they were guilty of their father’s crimes. Cersei would lobby for him to get it, chasing the glory of hearing her son addressed as “Aegon Targaryen the Sixth, Lord of Dragonstone”, if not “King of the Andals, Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms”.

It would be a compromise, in Cersei’s eyes, security for her and Joanna, another boy’s life bartered away to further her plans.

Jaime would not let Egg become him, sold to the Kingsguard like cattle in the hopes that Cersei would love him truly, his dreams merged fully with her own, hanging on the drug of her praise. His nephew deserved better. His brand new niece deserved better. If Cersei tried anything, his father would kill him for naming a Targaryen heir presumptive to the Rock, but if it needed to be done, Jaime would do it.

“Adventures.” Brienne smiled. “I should like that. And the company couldn’t hurt, as Elia and Jon go back to Winterfell.”

“We have to face King’s Landing first.” Jaime said solemnly. “Brandon must see his son. Robert must see his bride.” The words soured in his mouth as he spoke them, his heart aching for Lyanna, who would watch her son grow up from the other side of the continent, desperately reading between the lines of letters. “It is a necessary evil.”

“A Lannister calling King’s Landing a necessary evil.” Brienne guffawed. “I chose the right one of you.”

“Tyrion might have been better.” Jaime japed, and they entered the gates of Casterly Rock with their mounts so close together that their legs brushed against each other with every step.

Lord Lannister,

The summons from King’s Landing that we discussed some weeks ago has come and gone. I requested a few more weeks with my goodsister, as I am quite attached to my little nephew, and will see him so infrequently once I am settled with my betrothed in King’s Landing. The traumatic ordeal of the kidnapping still pains me so, and little Jon is such a comfort to my heart.

Jon’s father and uncle are now with Stannis Baratheon’s army to chase the remaining Loyalists out of the Crownlands and Stormlands, and when they return to King’s Landing, Elia, Jon and I will travel to meet them so that Jon can meet his father. It seems that I will have another nephew before the year is out -- Ned’s wife Catelyn is expecting, though their boy will be younger than Jon by a few months.

I thank you for your support during the past few months, the lending of your wife’s handmaiden Elayne, and how readily you opened your home to my father and brothers. I look forward to seeing you again in a few days, when I return from Dorne with my goodsister and her son.

Your friend,
Lyanna Stark

Elia and Lyanna’s wheelhouse rattled up the road toward Jaime, Brienne, and Egg, who was nestled in his aunt’s arms, weaving her a story about his namesake, Aegon the Fifth, that bordered on slander. Cersei had convinced herself that he was old enough to begin his education, now that she had to attend to his younger sister, and had turned him over to a Maester and Septon at the first opportunity despite the objections of everyone involved, because of his age, except Tyrion. Cersei was shocked when she heard that the two of them were in agreement, mostly because it had never happened before, and Tyrion had quickly assured her that it would never happen again.

Now, most mealtimes were spent being regaled with little chunks of history spun together in a mixture of falsehoods, half-remembered facts, and figments of Egg’s imagination, which frustrated Tywin Lannister to no end. The servants laughed and giggled at the sound of their young lord’s stories, which Egg took as encouragement, despite his mother and grandfather’s disapproval, and Tyrion only lead him further and further astray with questions meant to take the story down side roads that did nothing but frustrate.

If Jaime didn’t know better, he would’ve said Cersei had chosen a new favorite child now. But he knew better. Cersei had always been annoyed by Egg’s exuberance because it reminded her of Rhaegar rather than herself, and his betrayal and death had only compounded it. Joanna was an infant, and therefore easy to project her feelings onto -- she could swear up, down, and sideways that Joanna was a Lannister through and through, strong, silent, and scheming, and face no opposition. With Egg, who bore a Targaryen name, Targaryen looks, and a decidedly Targaryen sense of humor, it was much harder to claim that he was hers and hers only.

It was funny, that both of Rhaegar’s newest children bore no resemblance to their father. It was as if his death had wiped his contribution from both of them, both children resembling their mothers overwhelmingly. It was for the best, that neither of the newest Targaryens inherited their father’s looks, and that only one of the two would ever bear his name. In most cases, a false name was a curse, a proof of wrongdoing. To Jon Stark, it would be a blessing. To Joanna Targaryen, the reminder of her father’s failures forever attached to her name, the truth might well be a curse.

“Is that Jon?” Egg said eagerly, as Lyanna held the door of the wheelhouse open for Elia, who exited, Jon in her arms. “Oh, Uncle Jaime, is that Jon?” He tried to wriggle free of Brienne’s grasp, eager to meet the new baby. “I want to see him! I want to see him!”

He scampered over to Elia the second Brienne put him down, tugging at her skirts until she held Jon low enough for him to see the baby's face. "Oh, he's so pretty! He's so sweet! Can I kiss him? Mother lets me kiss Joanna's forehead, but only gently." He stepped back to clap his hands, so excited he could barely contain himself. "Can I please? He's so little!"

"Of course, Aegon." Elia said softly, adjusting Jon in her arms so she could pinch Egg's cheek. "Say hello, then."

Egg leaned in and laid the softest whisper of a kiss against Jon's forehead. Jon's eyes found his brother's instantly, as if he knew what the adults had done their best to keep from them both, and Egg beamed, as if he had never seen anything better in his life.

"Aunt Brienne!" Egg said, awestruck. "The baby loves me!"

Lyanna eyed Egg with suspicion, which the boy instantly picked up on, complaining loudly that “the mean lady” was “looking at him angry” in the hopes that she would overhear him.

“Don’t bother trying to win her over, Egg. She hates children.” Jaime blurted out, and while it earned him an icy glare from Lyanna, it did the trick.

Egg kept his distance, following Jaime around like a shadow as the group walked deeper and deeper into the Rock, casting cautious glances at Lyanna every so often like he was afraid she might eat him alive. He tugged at the hem of Jaime’s shirt until Jaime hoisted him up into his arms, then lay his head down on Jaime’s shoulder, content. Every so often, he looked over at Elia and smiled, though Jaime could only infer it by her jubilant laughter.

Eventually, they reached the rooms in which Lyanna and Elia had stayed before Cersei had come to visit, and Jaime opened the door for them, allowing Elia to step in first with Jon, for whom a bassinet had been acquired, Lyanna trailing behind them. As Elia’s enthusiasm grew, Lyanna seemed to be more and more mournful, as if she was just now feeling the weight of her decisions. She would have to watch Jon be claimed by her sister-in-law for the rest of her life.

Had he resembled his true father, there might have been room for her in his story, but even fresh out of the womb, there was no denying Jon Stark was of the North.

Chapter Text

Jon lay on Jaime and Brienne’s bed beside his half-sister, but neither of them would guess at the fact that they shared a father. Joanna was as much a Lannister as Jon was a Stark. If one looked closely, they could see little touches of Rhaegar in their faces -- Jon’s cheekbones, the shape of Joanna’s eyes, the angle of their noses. But such things could just as easily be down to coincidence. The highborn houses of Westeros had intermarried often as a marker of their status, and few features could be said to belong to any one house. The Starks were the closest to maintaining their own identity, their own looks, every one of them more gloomy and forbidding than the last.

While the two looked as different as the sun and the moon, the same could not be said for their personalities. While Joanna had little in the way of one just yet, still looking around every room with eyes as wide as an owl’s, taking in every detail of her surroundings, it seemed almost guaranteed that she would soon develop her half-brother’s enthusiasm. Jon had also been observant, during his first few moons of life, watching for something, but had eventually mellowed into a cheerful, sweet infant that enjoyed being held. Elia and Lyanna sang his praises to the heavens, thanking the Old Gods of the North for his easy going nature, how quickly he was soothed, how little he wanted for.

Jaime thought of Egg, and how he had played for hours in the training yard the day before, running between a mud puddle and a bucket he’d stolen from the stables, trying to scoop water out of a pothole in the cobblestones with various objects he’d found on the ground. If any of Rhaegar had imparted itself to all of his children, it was his personality, which could be gravely dangerous or the greatest opportunity for joy that Westeros had had in centuries.

“Hello Joanna.” Jaime lay his finger in the center of her chubby palm and Joanna’s fingers curled over his tight, gripping him like he was a lifeline. She looked so like Myrcella had. It shouldn’t have been a comfort, but it was. “I’m your uncle Jaime. Do you remember me?”

“She doesn’t, Jaime.” Brienne said softly. “She’s still an infant.”

She carefully picked up Jon, cradling his head in the crook of her elbow like he was an infant still, and he stared up at her with a soft smile on his face. The muscles in her arm bulged against the constraints of her shirt, one of Jaime’s that she’d stolen for her own, and his mouth went dry for a second before he imagined her with their own child, a stocky little warrior with her straw blonde hair, tickling the child’s stomach as she was Jon’s.

Maybe she would show the same tenderness to their child that she had to him, the same redemptive love, the same grace. He hadn’t gotten to watch Brienne be a mother in his first life, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted it until those last moments, surrounded by gravel and rock and the finality of death staring him right in the face. The moment she was ready, here, he was waiting.

Jon cooed up at Brienne, thrashing his arms and legs, and Brienne smiled, whispering nonsense phrases to him.

Jaime’s heart swelled in his chest.

Dear Lyanna,

You have left your brothers in my company for too long. Ned may even develop a bad habit by the time I return him to you. Brandon speaks of nothing but his wife. One would never believe he and Elia were ever apart, given the number of letters they have exchanged. Have they killed a raven yet? I would think so. Ned tells me it is so because they have a young child, but I do not understand it. He’s hardly old enough to be interesting yet, though he is your nephew, so I imagine he has found some way to challenge his mother.

I hear the babe has been named for Jon Arryn, which the old man is delighted by. He will not stop telling Ned and I that Brandon must love him more truly than we do, and we fostered at the Vale with him. I fear I will never hear the end of it. Ned has named his child for me, can you believe it? I do not know if his letter has reached Casterly Rock, but if it hasn’t, please let him pretend you received his letter first. He would be devastated.

He and Jon will be great friends. It will be a great pleasure for your father to have two young boys in Winterfell again. He has had his fill of the battlefield. He has told us all, no less than once a day, that he is ready for quieter things. I suppose raising your nephews are what he means by “quieter things”, though I doubt Starks with Martell and Tully blood will be any quieter than the originals.

I have missed you dearly. I am bored by matters of state. All I can think of is how cleverly you would have told the maesters and the councilmembers off for their lifeless explanations. Being King is far more work than I anticipated (don’t laugh), but it will be easier to carry with you by my side. Please come to King’s Landing soon. I know you need your time, after what Rhaegar did, but I don’t care what happened to you. I still want you. I still love you. And I’ll have you as my queen if you have me as your king.

The realm needs a queen who cares about her people and is willing to fight the council, because their king has not shown great aptitude in that realm so far. It will be hard to find anyone else as perfect for the role as you.

Yours,
Robert

Dear Lyanna,

Catelyn has safely been delivered of a boy, Robb, at Riverrun. He favors his mother in looks, which is a kindness to us all, though she cautions me that he may change. There are many years ahead until Robb is a man grown and Catelyn has charged me with enjoying these first months rather than beginning to plan for his future. You can imagine how I am enjoying that.

He is a few moons younger than Jon, but Brandon insists they will get along famously despite the difference in age. I never imagined Brandon would meet my son before his own, but we live in a strange world.

We await your arrival in King’s Landing soon. Send my regards to Elia. Once we return to Winterfell, I will enjoy getting to know her more. If her brother’s word is to be trusted, she will light the halls of Winterfell again with ease.

Your brother,
Eddard Stark

Jaime stood in the doorway of Elia and Lyanna’s chambers for a few minutes, watching her play with Jon, before clearing his throat to announce his present. Still disheveled and sweaty from training with Brienne, he was aware he looked and smelled awful, but the way Jon kicked and cooed at the sight of a new person had him feeling a warmth that had nothing to do with exercise. Elia was nowhere to be found, likely fending off his father’s tantrum about not being invited to King’s Landing, and Lyanna was taking full advantage.

Jaime thought it good that she did. She would have precious few opportunities to play with Jon in the future, if she chose to marry Robert. He seemed to think the wedding was still on, though Lyanna had said nothing to confirm or deny it that Jaime knew of.

“Are you just going to stand there and stare at me, Lannister?” She tickled Jon under his chin and the boy kicked and wiggled, entranced. “Your wife won’t be happy to hear this.”

“Hear what? That your nephew is quite possibly the cutest baby since mine?” Jaime asked innocently.

“Is that a slight to Joanna?” Lyanna’s silver tongue leapt at the chance to wound mortally.

“She has less of her father’s looks than her brother does.” Jaime said carefully.

Lyanna had only seen Joanna for a short moment before a carefully planned diversion had played out. A few moons had passed since Joanna’s birth, but she resembled her mother more and more as time passed, wispy blond curls covering her head like down on a baby bird. Cersei’s eyes stared out at Jaime from her round face, with a solemnity that Jaime almost found unnerving.

“It’s for the best. It isn’t wise to bear your father’s looks, these days.” Lyanna said deftly, as Jon rolled from his back onto his stomach, looking utterly thrilled with himself. His dark hair and eyes protected him from any accusations that might be made against his paternity, and when he smiled, he was pure Lyanna.

Brandon Stark would have no trouble passing Jon off as his son.

“Do you mean to marry Robert still?” Jaime blurted out. “He does, I think. When you come to King’s Landing, I think he means to marry you. He’s ruled without a Queen this long, but you know Robert. Someone needs to hold him in check. And if it’s not you, the Council will need time to search for someone of, er, appropriate character.”

“I do mean to.” Lyanna said. There was pride in her eyes, in her voice, in the set of her jaw. Jaime hadn’t expected any other answer from her. It had been obvious, since she’d been liberated from the Tower of Joy, that Lyanna Stark was not returning North with her family. “So long as Jon’s safety is ensured.”

“Robert will, uh, expect things of you. As his wife. As his queen. Heirs.” Jaime said. “Are you… do you think you will be alright with that?”

“I can do more good ruling beside Robert than I will locking myself away in Winterfell because Rhaegar betrayed me.” She spat his name like a curse. “I left Robert for Rhaegar because I thought Rhaegar was different. I thought he loved me in a way Robert had never tried to. I thought he trusted me. I thought he understood me. But all men are the same. I prefer the devil I know to the one I don’t.”

“The devil you know.” Jaime repeated. “So he is the devil then, Robert?”

“Maybe not.” Lyanna said, rubbing Jon’s stomach as he squealed in delight. “But it is better to be prepared for the worst than to be duped by your own desires.” She leaned down to drop a kiss on his forehead. “I am tired of giving things up for people who will never understand how it hurts. For people who are just watching me sacrifice what I love and giving up nothing of their own.”

“I know how that feels.” Jaime said bitterly, thinking of Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen, thinking of a right hand that used to be missing, thinking of the Red Keep crumbling around him.

“I almost believe you.” Lyanna said, the ghost of a laugh on her features. “When you say it like that.”

Dear Robert,

Yes.

Chapter Text

“You understand why I called you here, don’t you?” Tywin Lannister paced the length of his study, glaring at Jaime every so often as if marking time by his annoyance at his son’s presence, though he had been the one to request it. “Or do I have to waste time explaining?”

Tywin Lannister had never been one to waste time. Not when Jaime and his siblings were children, and certainly not now. Even less so, now that his children were all either adults or too far away to be his own problem (not that they had ever been significant factors in his decision making) and the position of the Hand of the King was no longer his. His chance at greatness had passed with Rhaegar and Aerys and he was bristling at the bit for another taste of power, sweet as the summer breeze and just as intoxicating.

“I suppose it has something to do with the situation in King’s Landing.” Jaime knew which limits he could push and which he had no business bothering with, and calling Robert’s rule anything more than a situation was not a safe bet. “We leave in a moon’s time. Lyanna’s decided. She’s asked Brienne and I to join her.”

“The new king has not requested my presence.” Tywin spits the words out like they are nameless casualties of war, derision clear in his voice. “He does not seek my guidance. Instead he relies upon that doddering old fool Jon Arryn to secure the future of the Seven Kingdoms. What can Arryn do for him that I cannot?”

“Stand in for his father.” Jaime said, far too bravely for his own good. “He fostered with Arryn. He trusts the man. You were the Hand of the King he deposed. Father, you have to understand that he might not trust you. You may have helped him, but you spent years as Aerys’ hand. You’re Egg’s grandfather. That inspires a certain degree of suspicion.”

“He’s a child.” Tywin scowled. “He doesn’t mean--”

“Don’t you dare say he means nothing to you.” Jaime cut in, breathing heavily. He had heard the words from Tywin’s mouth too many times before to hear them again, even if they weren’t about him, this time. Even if they weren’t about Cersei, about Tyrion, about any of the tens of thousands of people that Tywin’s quest for power had left broken, bleeding, and begging for something better. “Don’t you dare.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.” Tywin scoffed. Of course he would. Of course, like every other time, he would brush aside Jaime’s pleas for him to be better, to be anything but what he was, and act as if he had done nothing wrong. Of course, he would act like he hadn’t wounded all three of his children so deeply with how he had grieved after losing Joanna. It was worst of all to think that Jaime wasn’t anywhere near the top of the list of people hurt the most by him -- Cersei and Tyrion claimed that prize ahead of him, by far. “What makes you think I would? What about me has led you to believe that I wouldn’t care about my own grandson? You and Cersei, always inventing these stories--”

“Tyrion has plenty to tell, if you’d ever bother to speak to him.” Jaime seethed. “But you don’t. You don’t listen to any of us unless it serves you. That’s what you’re concerned with, what serves you. You want to be Hand to the King because it’ll serve you. Because you won’t be cooped up in Casterly Rock with your family. Because you won’t have to acknowledge all the wrong you’ve done to us in the name of getting what you want.”

“Everything you are, you owe to me. I made you who you are. I paid all your tutors. I made sure Crakehall took you.” Tywin paced around his writing desk in tight, methodical circles, fury twisting his face into a caricature of humanity that might even make a dragon second guess his strength. “Now, now that you’ve made something of yourself, you want to tell me that I haven’t done enough for you. Now that you’ve made something of yourself thanks to all the resources I gave you, suddenly I am the villain. You would be nothing without me, Jaime. I made you.”

Jaime knew what kind of man Tywin Lannister had made him, a shell of a pathetic, lonely man that had died under the Red Keep with the sister who would never see him for who he had become instead of believing he deserved happiness, that he deserved to be loved and love in return. Jaime knew the kind of mindless soldier Tywin Lannister had made, the sort of man who wouldn’t blink an eye before charging at a dragon, a knight that would doom himself to a life of whispers behind his back by sitting down on some gods-damned chair of swords just to see what it might be like to hold the reins as his father did.

Jaime knew how Tyrion had bent himself into millions of shapes, trying vainly to please Tywin while knowing it was impossible, succumbing to the same tricks that Jaime had fallen for himself. Jaime knew how Cersei had died thinking she was their father’s true heir simply because she was the only one of their siblings brave enough to commit atrocities in broad daylight. But these were not his stories to tell -- he would never know the depth of their despair, only his own. But what he knew what horrifying enough, and left no chance for redemption for the man who stood before him, denying his culpability.

But Tywin couldn’t know those things -- they belonged to a world that was not his, and he would never recognize him. All this Tywin knew was the Jaime standing in front of him, the Jaime that had lived so many lives, and yet seemed so young, so innocent, so mindless to him. A Jaime that seemed like a pawn to him. A Jaime that wasn’t any kind of plaything anymore.

“How did you make me who I am? By abandoning your children for King’s Landing as soon as you could? By treating Tyrion like a foundling? By taking credit for everything I’ve done?” Jaime laughed like a hyena stalking his prey. “I made myself who I am despite you. If I had listened to you, I would be Cersei. I would be locked into plans greater than I am, desperately telling myself I had more power than I did. And look at what you’ve made her. She has two children, a dead husband, and no throne or land to promise her children. That is what you made, Father. Not me. Not Tyrion. And it’s Tyrion and I that are going to help her find her own path, not you.”

“You and your emotions.” Tywin grimaced. “I do not have time for your dithering, Jaime. All I ask is that you share your sources with me. You seem to have plenty of… connections, these days. I cannot know nothing of the state of the throne’s affairs, no matter how much King Robert seeks to keep me in the dark.”

“The dark would be too kind for the likes of you.” Jaime sneered. “The affairs of King’s Landing aren’t the only thing you’ll be in the dark about, if you keep going like this.”

“You threaten me?” Tywin Lannister’s lip curled in disdain. Jaime had been on the receiving end of this particular look too many times for it to bowl him over anymore, but it still ached, an old wound festering in the depths of his heart. “With what power, Jaime? What power beyond what I have given you?”

“My own power.” Jaime said darkly. “And believe me, it bears no resemblance to yours. I prefer not to waste my time making enemies.”

“And what do you call this?” Tywin challenged. “Because you certainly are not making an ally.”

“I gave up on trying to make you an ally long ago, Father.” Jaime said. “It’s a pity you didn’t notice.”

He stormed from the room, heart beating so quickly he thought it might tear its way out of his chest. Each step carried him further from Tywin’s study, the load on his heart lightening with each new inch of distance.

“So I hear you yelled at Father, brother dearest.” Tyrion grinned cheekily. The sea wind whipped at his hair as they sat near the edge of the cliffs they used to play on as children. “The grapevines have been buzzing with news.”

Brienne was by Tyrion’s side, braiding some wildflowers together idly as she stared off into the sea. At the sound of Jaime’s voice, she perked up, a sweet smile on her face as she beckoned him toward her. “You did what?” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Jaime said, surprised to realize that he did feel fine. “He said he made me the man I am and I said no.”

“Just no?” Tyrion needled. “I know you said more than that.”

“Where are you hearing these things?” Jaime shoved him lightly and Tyrion giggled, shaking his head.

“My sources prefer to be anonymous.” He said, in between peals of riotous laughter. “I won’t give them up! Not even if you torture me!” He leaned into Brienne, who smiled fondly at his theatrics. “All you need to know is that everyone in the Rock now knows that you called Father a no good coward who ruined Cersei’s life.”

“I’ll stand by it.” Jaime shrugged. “It’s a fair assessment, given how he behaved.”

“How he behaved.” Tyrion’s eyes glittered with glee. “Tell me more! Where’s the drama of it all, brother dearest?”

“He yelled. Then I yelled. Then it was over, so I left and came here.” Jaime shrugged. He’d fought Tywin plenty of times, both in this world and the ones that had come before. Each further defiance of his father had dulled the ache in his heart that the original Tywin had left behind, the power he had been too cowardly to wield in his first life bursting out of him in angry, sputtering fits and starts. “It’s nothing important. He needed to be told off, and someone had to do it, so I did.”

“A noble cause.” Tyrion quipped. “Isn’t that right, Brienne?”

“A knight fights for what is good and right.” Brienne said, a touch of fondness seeping into her words as she stared openly at Jaime, love and desire wound into a sailor’s knot. “And my husband is quite the knight.”

Jaime found Cersei in a room that faced the Sunset Sea, watching the waves lap at the craggly rock shore while Joanna slept nestled at her chest, head pillowed against Cersei’s shoulder. She hummed a soft, lilting tune that felt as if it had been ripped from the black depths of Jaime’s own memories, from a time before he and Cersei had realized they could act alone. It was a simpler time, when they had looked at each other and seen only reflections of themselves, but Jaime knew better than to wish for that oblivion now.

He was too attached to this foundling version of himself, raising itself up onto its feet despite shaking, weak knees to fight another day. Cersei would call him a craven, had called him a craven time and time again, but Jaime had never been so happy with his own choices. He hadn’t realized peace would feel this good, earned by his own blood, sweat, tears, and secrets.

“I am to escort Brienne, Elia, Lyanna and Jon in King’s Landing.” Jaime said carefully. Cersei had likely heard the news from their father already, but it was one thing to hear it in Tywin’s voice and another entirely to hear it in her twin’s. “Are you comfortable staying alone with Father and the children?”

“Has anyone ever been comfortable around Father?” Cersei scoffed. She rubbed Joanna’s back, as the reedy snuffles of a baby nearing wakefulness rang out to fight back the silence. “He makes it his life’s mission to make sure discomfort is part and parcel with his presence.”

“Would you prefer the company of anyone specific?” Jaime asked. “I could write to Arthur Dayne. He is presently… unencumbered.” He tugged at his collar, leaving the specific details of Arthur Dayne’s decommissioning from the Kingsguard unsaid between them. It was not as if Cersei had mourned her father-in-law’s loss since returning home, not that most of his subjects had either. “Or if you had any ladies-in-waiting from your court that you might wish to see again, I could write to them. So you aren’t alone with him.”

“Oh, so you think of me now, after your plans are all made.” Cersei groused. “Rich of you, brother. Thank you for your kindness.” She made a mocking curtsey, face twisted into a caricature of gratitude. “Thank you for letting my name even cross your mind. I know how busy you are these days.” Her eyes drifted to his right hand, which hung limply by his side. “Plenty of swordfighting to do, and all that.”

“Plenty.” Jaime deadpanned. He felt possessed by the urge to wound her back, to return to their childish game of stabbing each other in the back for nothing more than the exhilaration of someone else’s fear. “I asked a question. You still haven’t answered it.”

“Would you abandon me like that?” She asked, an edge of desperation to her own words. “A babe at my breast and another clutching at my skirts? Are you such a cur that you would leave your twin’s children without a father?”

Cersei turned her chin up at him, looking down her nose like Jaime was nothing but a speck of dust in her path. She had always had this haughtiness in her, but it had become a protective shell when their mother had passed. She’d cloaked herself in mystery and dismissiveness as their father had in an attempt to evade grief’s searching claws, and paid the blood price. She had not looked at him like this since he’d left to take Riverrun, in that faraway echo of a life that hardly felt real anymore, save for the trainwreck of emotions and borrowed grief it had left behind, like he hardly mattered to her at all.

Like he was a means to an end.

It made him sick to his stomach, a fuzzy, nauseous feeling building in the center of his chest. After all he’d done to stop it, was this what she thought of him? Was he still just a pawn to play in her schemes? Would she ever realize he was capable of so much more than playing at heroics in her name?

“You were the one who promised to raise them alongside me, but now that it’s difficult, now that you have other opportunities, you’re running away from them just as their father did.” Her emerald eyes blazed with fury. She had been waiting for quite some time to unleash her wrath on someone, and Jaime, as usual, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. That pattern had been the story of their childhoods, in every life he’d lived, and it had stretched as far into his adult life as he had allowed it. “Explain to me how you are better, because I do not see it.”

Jaime had abandoned his nephews and niece once before, leaving his cuckoo children in Cersei and Robert’s royal nest, and he regretted it immensely with every breath he took. Egg and Joanna were beyond beloved to him, though he had known Joanna for a scant few weeks and Egg for only a couple months beyond that. They were dearer to him than his own soul, only beaten out by the children Jaime had watched die in his first life, one by one, picked off by enemies who they could not see.

“I am not running away.” He said calmly. It would serve no purpose but hers to have her feel provoked or caught out. “Just because I’m leaving for a time doesn’t mean I’m leaving forever. I won’t die, Cersei, nor will I decide not to return to Casterly Rock. Brienne and I have made a home here. When we bring our children into the world, to be cousins and friends to yours, I want them to grow up here. Because we can make it a better home for them than it was to us. But for that to happen, you have to trust me.”

“Trust you?” Cersei laughed. “You expect me to trust any man’s word now?”

“I do not.” Jaime said. “But I expect that I will prove my loyalty enough that you will decide against doubting me.”

Ser Arthur Dayne,

If you were amenable, it would please me greatly if you would arrange to visit Casterly Rock in my absence, as Brienne and I travel to King’s Landing to accompany Elia, Lyanna, and Jon Stark to the royal wedding. Cersei will be alone with the children and my father, and though she will have help with the first, there are no wet nurses for old men who like to intimidate women and children. I will be deeply in your debt, as I am forever, if you choose to.

Your brother in arms,
Jaime

Chapter Text

Dear Jaime,

If I will be welcome at the Rock, I should like to be there. Ashara is well and truly tired of me puttering around Starfall, “looking for trouble”, as she says, and a long ride would do me good. As much as being back in Dorne has been a blessing, it has been just as much of a curse. Starfall is much quieter than King’s Landing ever was. Robert knew what he was doing, when he sent me here. Without the white cloak, I feel like I’ve truly gone to rot.

Despite all that happened, and all that he did in the name of love, I do still count Rhaegar as a friend, and I should like to meet his children. If it is not objectionable, I would like to know his children as well as I once knew Rhaegar himself, though I assume that will be your sister’s decision more than yours. I have missed Egg and his japes dearly and would so love to meet Joanna.

Your brother in arms,
Ser Arthur Dayne
Lord of Starfall

“Arthur Dayne’s written me back.”

Cersei sniffed haughtily, turning away from him. In her arms, Joanna wailed for even a scrap of her mother’s attention, but Cersei was somewhere else far away. He knew the emptiness in her eyes well, had seen it hazily reflected in mirrors far too many times. That particular demon was one all three Lannister children shared, though Cersei and Tyrion were not so open about the scars their childhood had left behind.

Tyrion was young still, yet to develop any of the vices he’d cultivated in Jaime’s past lives, cheeks still flushed with the promise of a bright and shiny life just around the corner. If Tysha still caught Tyrion’s fancy here, Jaime wouldn’t take that joy from him. He had searched the records of servants for her name, but the letters had grown too confusing and he had taken to bed early with a headache. Tyrion deserved a true, unselfish love. He’d found it earlier than Jaime could’ve ever hoped for and held onto it as tightly as he could.

And instead of supporting him, Jaime had thrust the knife into Tyrion’s back himself.

Jaime knew what joy could come from disobeying his father now, how much power he had, how it was not only alright, but encouraged to say no when someone tried to force your hand against your will. Cersei had already broken him down, in that age old world, and Tywin had marched through the gates of his mind and sacked it like he had King’s Landing. There had been no fighting, at that point, but there could be now. He had allies in the woodwork all over Westeros -- the Daynes, the Starks, the Martells, and whoever they could rise -- and for all of Robert Baratheon’s faults, the man did hate Tywin Lannister with a burning passion.

He had been a shit brother-in-law, a pathetic addition to a rubbish excuse for a family, but at least they had all had that in common.

“He wishes to see you, and the children, but only if you are amenable.” Jaime said. “He wants to respect your wishes. He understands it may be painful, given how close he was to Rhaegar.”

Rhaegar’s name had been a forbidden word in the house, especially around Cersei, in the past few weeks. Her already sour mood had grown worse as Joanna grew, sprouting teeth as she grew out of the impossibly small clothes she’d worn after her birth. Without Jon at her side to make her seem small, Joanna looked halfway to walking already, round eyed and chubby cheeked but uncommonly aware as she searched the room for familiar faces while she caught her breath in between crying fits.

“Dayne wants to see us? Dishonored though he is? He thinks we will allow it?” Cersei scoffed. “Of course he wants to see the children.” She scowled. “Robert has disgraced him and now he thinks I will play the weak, pandering widow. Does he intend to steal my son away? Does he intend to murder my daughter? To betroth her to some piddling Dornish estate and ruin her chances at the throne? How do we know that he is not the sword arm of some nefarious plot?”

“Was Arthur not kind to you?” Jaime asked. He felt great anger on Arthur’s behalf, that someone he had protected would question his honor, but he knew there was a grain of truth to his sister’s paranoia.

Egg and Joanna’s safety was a matter of diplomacy. Robert Baratheon could order them slaughtered in a second’s notice, and rightly should have, to protect his own legitimacy. The only thing protecting Jaime’s niece and nephew was the dissolution of their parents’ marriage and the Lannister blood in their veins -- they were too despised to rule, now that their father was dead and their mother held the reins of their childhoods. There were Targaryen loyalists keeping their silence all over the Seven Kingdoms, but Jaime knew better than to rely on them. They would be too busy protecting Daenerys and Viserys to bother with Egg and Joanna, whose claims rested on the battered laurels of a deadbeat father who doubled as a Crown Prince.

“He was.” Cersei admitted, her voice wavering. “He was kind, though he had no reason to be.” Her eyes narrowed. “Only the weak are so kind. They do not realize there is danger in such vulnerability.”

“They do realize it.” Jaime said, thinking of Brienne and how readily she had taken to loving Tyrion like he was her own brother, of how she spoke so achingly fondly of the siblings that had left her behind to suffer life’s trials without any bitterness. “They have weighed the risks and benefits and found that life to be better than ours.” He smiled weakly as Cersei looked him over critically. “My lady wife is fond of telling me that we Lannisters are an overly pessimistic bunch. We do not see the good in ourselves or others until it is too late.”

He dragged his eyes away from Cersei, too nervous to see her reaction to his next words.

“She is right in how she sees us. The rest of Westeros is too.” He kicked at a curling edge of the elaborately woven carpet, patterned with fallen leaves dyed in bright, garish reds and golds surrounding a roaring lion’s crowned head. “I am trying to learn from her, so that I might break that cycle for Egg and Joanna and whatever children I may add to the next generation. So that they do not see the Rock as some sick monument to Mother’s memory and Lannister honor, as we do.”

“So that you might break the cycle.” Cersei smirked. “You believe yourself capable of cutting the misery out of our blood and bones? Father cut that part of us out and burned the wound, Jaime.”

“Perhaps he wasn’t so careful, with me.” Jaime said bravely. “Because I think myself capable, even if you do not. I have to be, for the sake of your children. For your sake.”

“What does she teach you, your lady wife?” Cersei asked. Now she was curious -- that particular light in her eyes didn’t surface too often these days. “Beyond how to sound like a herd of drunk elephants when you laugh.” Her eyes twinkled with good humor. It transformed her face, making her appear years younger. He had almost forgotten that in between all the suffering and manipulation and pulling each other’s strings in an attempt to chase freedom, they had shared plenty of laughter too. “Because that is one lesson at which she has succeeded teaching.”

“I will let her know you send your regards.” Jaime deadpanned. “She teaches me to consider my words, I suppose. To see the joy the world has lent me and enjoy it for that time. To think of the good in others first, instead of what evil they might be capable of. To assume the best of others, when it is safe. To assume the best of myself.” He trailed off, frowning. “That, I’ve been told I should do all the time.”

“I was beginning to think she had some sense until you said that.” Cersei sighed. “You were always chasing some dream, when we were children. It always fell to me to keep your wandering mind in check. To keep your goals realistic. Encouraging you is a fool’s game. Owning you serves a purpose.”

Jaime mourned the woman Cersei could have been, without their father’s machinations shaping her. Perhaps she could have developed Brienne’s optimism, or Tyrion’s wry humor, or any number of other traits. Instead, she had formed her whole personality around satisfying Tywin’s dreams of a son with a ruthless thirst for power, something neither of his sons could sustain for more than a few seconds. Cersei had struggled to keep up appearances for so long, and even now, she could not let herself rest -- the wheels were still turning, hatching new harebrained plans to get herself or her son on the throne, despite there being next to no chance it could happen.

“She is far too kind to me, for the trouble I cause her.” Jaime grinned. “She has more than enough sense for both of us and I bring nothing but trouble to her doorstep, yet she accepts it with grace. She accepts me with grace.” If he had been any braver, he would have said Cersei could learn from Brienne, but having a lion as a sigil did not automatically instill bravery nor teach a boy to buck the will of his favorite sister. There was still a hesitance in his heart, when it came to wounding Cersei’s pride, doubled and tripled by the sight of Joanna, a child named for the mother neither of them remembered clearly, in her arms.

“You were not wrong. Ser Arthur was kind.” Cersei repeated, after a comfortable pause. “When my dearly departed father-in-law was in his cups, Ser Arthur would help me bar my doors and entertain Viserys and Aegon. To distract them from the reality of who Aerys was. So they would know him as nothing but their King. Their father and grandfather. I would see Rhaella at the table in the morning and feel such shame. Her fate could so easily have been mine. Instead, I married a man with wandering eyes who had little interest in me once I had borne him a son to sit the throne. And now he never will, after all I have sacrificed for him.” She scoffed. “Rhaegar spared me none of his father’s cruelty in the end, though he never laid a hand on me in anger. If there is rot in the roots, there will be rot in the limbs.” She bit her lip, considering her next words. “I worry for Aegon. That he might fall prey to whatever base instinct drove them to madness. Whatever fault of character made them weak.” Her expression twisted into one of profound disgust. “Aegon is just as much Aerys’ get as his father, for all I have tried to change him.”

“I am relieved to hear that Rhaegar never laid a hand on you, sister.” Jaime breathed a sigh of relief, hoping he hadn’t extrapolated too far. Cersei had said that he had never laid a hand on her in anger, yet he’d left the words off the end of the sentence in hopes that nothing else had motivated the man. He hadn’t realized how much he had been worrying about the possibility until his twin had denied it, but new fears had been birthed from the carcass of the old, new heads of a Hydra springing up from a bleeding stump. “You do not understand how much peace that brings me.” He frowned. “I cannot say Aegon will not. But I cannot say he will. And living as though he is already lost to you does both you and him a disservice. It robs you of a relationship that we both would have killed for as children. Imagine how much less hurt we would have caused each other if we knew more of Mother’s love for us.”

“I am glad it brings you peace.” Cersei shook her head. “I know nothing of peace, these days. Every damn thing is a question with no answers. I am tired of finding nothing but empty platitudes.” She rocked Joanna gently in her arms, her lower lip wobbling before her expression settled into steady neutrality again, a practiced facade of formality. “I should like for Aegon and Joanna to see Ser Arthur. So that they may know something of their father.” She valiantly fought off a frown. “The children deserve to know Rhaegar. Who he was. What he did. To me. To them. To Westeros. All of it. How he died as well as how he lived. All the things we were never told about Mother and then some. I will not have them growing up in his shadow and thinking him a hero.”

“You have my word. And likely Ser Arthur’s as well, though I assume you would rather have him speak for himself.” Jaime nodded slowly. “Life is a series of choices, and Rhaegar made his own bed. You can love a cautionary tale, I suppose. Brienne does love me.”

“So she does.” Cersei said flatly. “Enjoy it for the miracle that it is.” She sounded weary in a way Jaime had never thought possible, more like a grieving Tyrion than the warlord sister of his memories. “Some of us are not so lucky.”

“So should I write to him again? Or will you?” Jaime asked, hoping to steer the conversation in a less dangerous direction. “To relay your thoughts?”

“I will write to him myself.” Cersei said. “You may run your wife’s errands, but I have no need for your intercedence. As you’ve said, you are not my knight.” She smiled weakly. “So I must do this myself.”

“Perhaps with Joanna’s help.” Jaime japed. Joanna had finally settled, soothed by the sound of her mother and uncle’s voices, not raised for once. “She seems quite eager to be of use.”

“Her letters will be neater than yours.” Cersei scoffed. In her arms, Joanna sneezed loudly, her whole body convulsing, before she settled against her mother’s chest. “She agrees.”

“It is a unique kind of relief, to see the people you suffered with again.” Jaime said softly. “I hope it will help you to see him. I know it has done much good for me. Perhaps he will become a friend we can share.”

“Perhaps.” Cersei said. “Or more likely you will cry like a stuck pig until you can keep him for your own.”

“I do not cry.” Jaime protested. “I am a man grown.”

“You cannot bear to lose anything.” Cersei laughed. “I used to take your toys simply because I knew you would go sobbing to the nursemaids about it.”

“Sobbing to the nursemaids-- that is an overstatement if I have ever seen one.” Jaime spluttered.

“It is so easy to upset you.” Cersei smirked. “One well placed word and your heart is fluttering like a hummingbird. And yet you play the game of thrones from afar like a kingmaker.”

“I have many talents.” Jaime shrugged. “Some I learned from you. While playing my fool’s game, as you said. Perhaps it is to my benefit that I dreamed so much. Imagination does do one quite a lot of service when scheming.”

“Then teach your nephew to scheme properly, instead of petty thievery from the kitchens.” Cersei smirked. “He may not have a father to teach him the ways of the court, but perhaps his uncles will do him some good.”

“Yes.” Jaime grinned. “Perhaps.”

“I am so tall. Look at me!” Egg sang, arms stretched out at his sides, as he walked along the top of one of the short stone walls bordering the path up the mountain to Casterly Rock. “See, Uncle Jaime? See, Uncle Tyrion?”

His hair whipped around his in the breeze, particularly long locks tickling his ears and nose. Cersei had let it grow long, claiming he looked better that way, but Jaime knew the truth of it -- the more he looked like his father and grandfather before him, the less she would feel responsible for the man he would become.

“We see you, Egg.” Tyrion chirped back. “Well done, nephew. You have quite the talent for acrobatics. Did they teach you in King’s Landing?”

Jaime frowned at Tyrion, who shrugged, looking rather pleased with himself. Broaching the subject of King’s Landing, Egg’s former home, to such a young child could never end well. As much as Tyrion was fond of the idea of treating Egg like a little adult, in some cases, it was hard to see it ending well. He was still a little boy who loved his straw stuffed dolls and ran around Casterly Rock pretending he was Balerion, risen from the dead to set the Westerlands aflame.

“No.” Egg said brightly. “All by myself.” He hopped off the wall before barreling into Tyrion, wrapping his arms tight around his uncle. “I’m so strong.”

Jaime laughed as Tyrion stumbled, only just maintaining his balance. “Egg, do be careful. We wouldn’t want to knock Uncle Tyrion off the mountain.”

Egg gasped, suddenly realizing that the wall he’d been balancing on was far more functional than decorative. “Maybe no more.”

“It’s no trouble, nephew. I would rather you run wild and I pay the consequences than have you worry.” Tyrion said fondly before tweaking Egg’s nose. “What do you remember of King’s Landing?”

Egg shrugged, before frowning. “Father.” He said quietly, looking far too morose for his own good. “He’s there.” He toyed with the leather belt around his waist, tapping at the buckle to hear the sharp sound of his fingernail against metal. In all the time Jaime had known him, he had never seen Egg stand still. “I love Father.”

Jaime had never asked how much Egg knew of his father’s death, afraid to hear what Cersei would have told a child so young, but this scared him more than anything else Egg could have said. She had set the same cogs that had churned Jaime, Tyrion, and herself to flecks of aching, longing dust in motion again. At least Tywin had had the decency to tell them their mother was dead. It seemed Cersei lacked even that.

“What’s your favorite thing about your father?” Tyrion asked gently, a storm brewing in his eyes. He shot a glance at Jaime, who nodded sharply. Tyrion had caught the other words Egg hadn’t known how to say too, the same as Jaime had. “Is there anything about him you miss?”

“Miss?” Egg frowned.

“When you used to have something, but you don’t anymore.” Jaime cut in, voice hoarse from disbelief. Egg was far too young to understand the finality of death, but to think that Rhaegar was waiting for him in King’s Landing would only hurt him. It was not as if Cersei could have taught him the truth in any way that stuck, not until he was older. He shook his head at Tyrion, who instantly nodded, scrunching up his nose in disgust. There were more than enough parenting decisions with frighteningly immediate consequences to fault Cersei for. This one could be left alone, for now. “Like how your uncles and your grandfather live with you now instead of your father.”

“Oh!” Egg said. “I miss his horses.” He frowned thoughtfully. “They made funny noises.”

“Like what?” Jaime teased, before badly imitating a bull’s snort. “I once had a horse that sounded like that.” He hadn’t, but if it made the child laugh, it would be well worth the trouble.

“That’s not a horse.” Egg said, unimpressed. For a moment, despite the white blonde hair and the purple eyes, he resembled Cersei perfectly, down to the bored tilt of his lips. “A horse says neigh.”

“Quite right.” Tyrion cackled. “A horse does say neigh. Would you and your Father ride together?”

Egg nodded, all traces of Cersei’s condescension gone, replaced by all consuming joy. “Very fast!” He smiled. “Father stole apples for me.” He said it like it was their little secret, like he had promised not to tell, like he could taste the juice of the apple in his mouth even now. “He said ‘our secret’.” His smile softened further, like butter melting in the sun, lighting up his whole face, before abruptly disappearing. “I… miss him?”

“It’s alright.” Jaime said gruffly. “To miss him sometimes. And to miss King’s Landing. And his horses. Maybe we can bring one back for you.” He knew, the second the words left his mouth, that he had opened the door to far too many questions. Egg was a notoriously perceptive child. There was no chance he wouldn’t realize Jaime and Tyrion were leaving for King’s Landing, and soon. “Or, uh, have your Uncle Viserys send one. Here. Because he is in King’s Landing.”

Tyrion rolled his eyes. “Well done, brother. I see why Cersei wanted us to stand in for Rhaegar now.” He chuckled. “For your sake and Brienne’s as well, I pray that a child only comes once you learn how to speak to one.”

“It seems continuing the Lannister name will be solely my responsibility, then.” Jaime shot back. “Seeing as knowing how to speak to a child seems to be a central part of it.”

“Be my guest.” Tyrion laughed. “I have no interest in such things.”

“You’re a child yet.” Jaime shrugged. “It may come with time. It did for me.”

“Believe me when I say my mind has been made up for years.” Tyrion sighed. “You and Cersei will bring enough demons into this world. It will be my job to keep them busy enough that coup d’etats be less frequent than they could be. I am aiming for once every five years, but that might be a delusion of grandeur on my part, to think I could hold off Brienne or Cersei’s children for that long.”

“Will you go to my house?” Egg interrupted. “In King’s Landing?”

“What do you mean, Egg?” Jaime asked.

“My house. The red house.” Egg clarified. “Will you go?”

“Perhaps.” Tyrion said. “Although someone else lives there now, not you.”

“Do my toys live there?” Egg asked.

“Perhaps.” Jaime said. “We’ll have to see.”

“Can my toys live here? With me?” Egg asked. “And you and Mumma and Jo and Grandfather?”

“Of course.” Tyrion smiled. “We’ll see what we can do.”

“Can I come?” Egg asked, after a pause. “I want to see.”

“You’ll be staying home with your mother and Jo and Grandfather, Egg. Someone’s got to keep them busy.”

“Aunt Bee?” Egg asked hopefully.

Jaime and Tyrion looked over at each other, identical grins on their faces. Aunt Bee. Brienne would never live this down, not for the rest of her natural life or the lives of her descendants, for generations to come.

“We need a knight with us, sweetling.” Tyrion said. “So she must come with us. To keep us safe.”

“But Uncle Jaime’s a knight.” Egg protested. “No one wants to stay with me.” He was clearly fighting back tears. “Only Mumma stays with me ever! For the rest of my life!”

“I am a knight, Egg.” Jaime reached out toward him with his right hand, shaky and frail as it was, placing it upon his cheek so he could feel the way it rocked and twitched against Egg’s face, of its own volition. “Or, at least, I was. But I am not one any longer, so Aunt Bee must keep us company. And you will have Joanna to play with this time, not just your mother.”

“Yeah.” Egg said darkly. “I want to go home.”

“We’ll go back up the path then.” Jaime patted Egg’s shoulder. “It’s getting dark anyhow.”

“Not here.” Egg glowered at them both. He had never resembled Tywin before, but he did now, Aerys’ wildfire dancing in his eyes. “The red house. Home.”

Chapter Text

“I must say, Lady Brienne, I am surprised to see you here.” Tywin Lannister loomed over his desk like some kind of insect, bug eyed and sharp faced. He looked more and more villainous by the day, like the darkness in his soul was leaching into his bones, sinew and skin, like hatred was sandwiched between every layer of muscle and fat and bone. He was shot through with the disease of misery, both his own and those of anyone unfortunate enough to be cursed with his company, that he’d cultivated himself, grown from a seed and nourished with the pain he’d wrought in the world. “It is usually your husband that makes unannounced visits to my study.”

“He has as much to teach me as I have to teach him.” Brienne said calmly, taking a deep breath and feeling it filter down from her throat into her chest, from there into her fingers and toes, her whole being frighteningly cold. “I wanted to speak with you about Aegon. Egg, that is.” She cursed herself internally – of course Tywin Lannister wouldn’t make a habit of calling his grandson by a nickname – but forged forward. “I was wondering which maester would be assigned to his education.”

Was this that lightheaded sickness Jaime always described to her after these talks, curled up in her embrace in their bed? That sickening brush of power, that taste of the cruelty that Tywin so freely visited upon everyone who had the misfortune of knowing him? Or was it her own attempt to remove herself from the situation, blurring the connection between body and mind? Did her husband break himself down in similar ways before his father, pulling out all of the nails and screws that kept him standing upright to chase approval? Did he collapse in on himself at the sight of his father like a cathedral burning to the ground, shattered shards of stained glass wedged into the ground like they meant to grow roots?

“The same that taught Jaime and Cersei, I expect.” Tywin shrugged, looking far too world weary for a man who’d brought about his own destruction over and over and claimed bitterness for his lot in life as a result. “I’m sure they’re still here, somewhere.” He scowled. “Were my grandson still living in Red Keep, he would still have access to the best education the world has to offer. However, we have my son to thank for that.”

“You despised Aerys. You despised his wife and his children. You despise Robert Baratheon. And not a single one of them would’ve spared a thought for Cersei and Egg, while running to save themselves. Not a single one of them did.” Brienne said. “Do they mean anything to you? Or are they simply pawns in your game?”

“You forget who you’re speaking to, Ser Brienne.” Tywin said tersely. “I am your goodfather. I have power over you which you know nothing of.”

“What will you do?” Brienne challenged. “What can you do? Send me to Tarth? Your son would follow gladly. That would leave Casterly Rock to Tyrion, Egg, or your siblings’ children. Would you prefer any of them to Jaime?” She knew she had him when his lip curled in disgust. “Jaime says you don’t care about any of them, or the children, but I know better. You only care as far as you can use them, which is worse than not caring at all.”

“Any man has plans for his children’s future.” Tywin said. If she knew any less about him, she might think him worried, frenzied, searching for the upper hand. “Every man does, I would think. Mothers may be softer in their hearts and minds, but fathers are not. I found them the best tutors. I found them the best knights to foster with. I scoured Westeros for septas and maesters worthy of my children’s intellects, and they turn around and say that I cared nothing for them. Aegon and Joanna will have the same from me that my children did. Perhaps they will use it better.” He paused, grimacing, as if saying the name Joanna aloud brought him physical pain. “It is easy to claim your father has not done enough for you when he keeps you comfortable, when his mercy is all that keeps you fed, clothed, and housed. Your husband would do well to remember that.”

“He remembers it. So well that it sickens him in the few moments of peace he allows himself. So much that he fears any children we might have already. You are the reason there is no heir to the Rock. Not me, not my husband.” Brienne spat. “Men like you should not claim the title of father at all. All you do is scorch the earth you tilled and call yourself a farmer. He may have given up on calling you an ally, but I never even tried to consider you one.”

“Do you think any other goodfather would have tolerated your behavior? This sham of a knighthood, leaving your husband behind to be both lord and lady of the house?” Tywin guffawed. “If I speak against you, if I tell anyone that the reason he hasn’t gotten a child on you is that you have embarrassed him so thoroughly that he cannot even begin to consider raising your child, who will they believe? A little girl running around the countryside with a knife? Or me?”

“You don’t scare me.” Brienne said calmly. “I have met many men like you. You are frighteningly ordinary. Small minded. Pathetic. Clinging to a time when you were powerful. Jaime is different. He learned when I asked. He changed when I asked. And he’s gone on doing both without my prompting. You, however, are incapable of change. It will hurt you far more than anyone else around you, but forgive me for thinking you capable of remorse.”

“Are you done?” Tywin said sharply. He sounded almost bored. “I have pressing matters to attend to.”

“As do I. I have much better things to do with my time than talk to walls.” Brienne nodded sharply. “My husband is waiting. I should see to him.” She smirked. “He is so terribly anxious that we’re speaking. I suppose I too have a pressing matter to attend to.”

Tywin’s lips curled in disgust, and he waved toward the door dismissively, his distaste maturing into full blown derision, and as Brienne tried desperately to keep her steps measured, even, and confident on her way out of the study, she thanked the Seven that Jaime had managed to escape this household as early as he had. She couldn’t imagine being a child in this house, innocent and small and searching for love, and finding only this perpetual disdain in its place, drinking deeply from the font of Tywin’s resentment until no space remained for anything else.

“You’re back.” Jaime whined, from where he was ensconced in a pile of sheets. He had wrenched even the most stubbornly pinned sheets from the mattress. “I had to explain death to a child. And then I come back to our room, thinking I might talk about what’s going on, and Endrew says you’re speaking to my father? I can't imagine being that productive in one afternoon. You have my respect, Ser, for better or for worse.” He mimed toasting her with an invisible cup with an unnecessarily serious look on his face. "I am a lucky man, to be so well guarded by my love."

“Endrew is correct, for better or for worse.” Brienne threw herself down onto the bed, rolling strategically until she had stolen the warm spot Jaime had been lying in out from under him. He scowled playfully but didn’t push back, instead burrowing into her side with the tenacity of a direwolf. It had taken a long time for them to get to this level of intimacy, to understand each other’s needs on this level. It was almost magical, a taste of something sweeter than honey, rich and enveloping, swallowing them down into warmth and comfort. “What do you think about that? Come here and we’ll decide.”

As she shifted onto her side, Jaime lay himself out against her back like a particularly reticent blanket, throwing his right arm over her waist with reckless abandon. She found it hard to believe that there had once been a time when he'd hidden his right hand from her, too ashamed of its glitches and quirks to reveal his true self to her. He curled the fingers of his left hand around the back of her shoulder so delicately she thought she might cry. She never thought she would be held with such tenderness by a lover, let alone such a kind, gentle man. “He seeks an heir for the Rock from us, as always." She rolled her eyes, and he muffled a laugh against her shoulder blade. "Perhaps after we see a little more of the world. I hear Winterfell is beautiful this time of year, and between the two of us, we could think of a diplomatic cover for seeing our friends.” Her eyes twinkled with joy, and Jaime beamed up at her. “Do you agree?”

“The Seven are seven strong simply because one god was not enough to think all of the thoughts necessary for survival in this world.” Jaime shrugged. He frowned, tucking himself in tighter against Brienne’s body. “This isn’t… I didn’t force your hand, did I? I know I have been… enthusiastic, to say the least, about Jon and Joanna.” A chuckle burst out of him unbidden, and Jaime wiped his eyes as if he were expecting tears to spill forth. “If they ever find out they’ve got the same father and very nearly the same name, we’re all done for. We’d never survive the fallout.” His smile faltered. “This is your choice, Brienne. I’ll name Egg heir to the Rock today if you don’t want this. I know… I know you have your own worries to that end, and if you want no part of parenthood, then neither do I.” He nodded resolutely, the fierceness she had fallen for writ large over his features. His voice trembled when he spoke next. "This will change your life more than mine." He said quietly. "Or the world will expect that of us and the child. And I want no part in forcing you to be something you are not."

"Move." Brienne leaned back against Jaime, nudging him away from her. "I want to see your face. This is too serious a conversation to have, with my back to you."

"I should hope you want to see my face because it will bring you joy." Jaime joked, nervousness clear in his voice as Brienne shifted to face him. "But I always worry."

“I won't deny your enthusiasm played a role in my change of heart.” Brienne admitted, and Jaime’s face fell, sorrow clear in his eyes. “Not-- not by forcing my hand, not by making a choice for me. Simply by shifting my perspective. I am more able to see the Rock through your eyes as time passes, I suppose. Through Egg’s as well. For all your father went about it in the worst way possible, the Rock needs children. It needs life. It craves more and more instead of being content with what it has, just like the lions who inhabit it.” She gently tapped the tip of his nose, bringing a smile to his face. “I would like a child at the Rock who does not have to leave, I think. That’s the root of it all.” She held Jaime tighter, her fingers digging into his skin. “Aegon and Joanna will leave us someday, whether by marriage or the passage of time. After tonight, Jon may never return here, though I hope he does. I thought it might be nice, if I could return from ranging to a husband and a child of my own.”

“I will hold the Rock until your return every time.” Jaime promised earnestly. “Raising a child is easy so long as there’s only one knight in the family.” He snorted. “Though neither of my parents particularly sought out battlefields, they found plenty.”

“One could argue your father makes everywhere he is a battlefield.” Brienne quipped. "As much as our child would be loved by us both, and as much as it would be born from and raised in our love, I cannot deny that your father's tendency to perceive proper parenting as a personal insult would bring me great joy."

“And whoever argued that point would be correct.” Jaime scoffed. “I hope I am not driven by the same mad thirst for power, but I cannot say. I only know what I can see, and, well.” He waved his hands in front of his own face and Brienne whined softly at the loss of contact. It must have tugged at Jaime's heartstrings, because he held her even tighter in response. “Limited by my own perspective, I suppose. I’m glad my perspective is serving you well, on its sojourn away from me. That’s the greatest gift I can ask for.”

“Do you feel your time as a knight has ended?” Brienne asked gently. She knew knighthood was still a tender subject for Jaime, and when he momentarily stiffened in her arms, she held him through it. “You speak of knighthood as if it were solely my domain. My kingdom, as it were.”

“I miss it.” Jaime said, after a period of silence. “But I feel I’ve outgrown what it could give me. I feel no pull to go ranging afield, as you do, or to champion a cause on a battlefield, as I once did. Or even to guard the King, or any other honor that might be bestowed upon a knight for maintaining his honor. Not because I fear I have none, but because I have found fulfillment in other ways.” He shrugged. “I became a knight to protect Cersei and Tyrion from harm. I have found other ways to do so that aren’t entirely dependent on my ability to wield a sword, options which I enjoy, so I am happy without the mantle of knighthood upon my shoulders, these days. Happier still that you are by my side despite my choices. So long as that does not change, I will be the happiest man in the world to raise your children, Brienne of Tarth.”

“They will be your children as well, dear heart.” Brienne flicked his forehead. “Do not forget that. I imagine we will be too busy holding hands to hold swords, if they are anything like their cousin. My father did not leave me to my mother and the servants to raise, no matter how busy he was, and I will not do the same to you.”

“I am sure they will never let me forget.” Jaime chuckled. “And neither will you.” He gazed dreamily up into her eyes, as if he were witnessing the enormity of the universe all at once, the vastness of the world visited upon him like a hurricane. “It would be an honor, Brienne.”

“It would be an honor, Jaime.” Brienne said softly. “To love our children as much as I love you.”

Chapter Text

The steady rhythm of the horse’s hooves against the Goldroad soothed Jaime into a relaxed half-sleep. His eyes were open, but his heart was at rest, the familiar pangs of anxiety too far away for him to feel. Brienne rode beside him, head held high and a proud smile upon her face, occasionally casting a fond glance his way. She had buckled his braces onto his arm when they rose in the morning, earlier than they were meant to, to enjoy a few more stolen hours before the road swallowed them whole.

Jon was cradled safely in Elia’s arms in the wheelhouse, babbling away at her with his bright eyes fixed on her face, and Lyanna sat sullenly across from them. Tyrion was asleep on the seat beside her, using a particularly thick book he had begged to bring along as a pillow. Jaime had offered Lyanna a horse, hoping that the ability to ride might coax a smile out of her, but she had declined, wanting to spend these last few days drinking in every last detail of Jon’s face. Jaime was reminded, quite darkly, of standing at a distance behind Joffrey’s throne, watching the child he could only call son in the darkest corners of his heart run headlong toward a life that he had no say in. Lyanna’s time was running out, and she knew it as well as they did.

“For this last ride”, she’d said, voice shaking, after Jaime had secreted her away into a corner where they would not be overheard, “I can pretend to be his mother still. I can pretend that I’ll be something more than Aunt Lyanna, if I am lucky enough to ever see him again. That he and I might run away together somewhere warm, that his father might still--” She had closed herself off then, the raw, bleeding grief in her expression crumbling away to a terrifying blankness. “It is a painful thing to choose. But I have chosen it. And you get no say, Lannister, no matter how much you might want one.”

“All I have done is serve as a guard for you, Lyanna, and him. I am not such a fool to think of myself as any more.” Jaime had said firmly. “I would never tell you how to love him. You and Elia can work that out between yourselves. I have no interest in Stark children. In some years, when he is old enough to foster, I may take an interest then, so the boy might see the port where he was born once again, but until then, he belongs to his parents. All of them, alive or dead, a number among which neither I nor Brienne count ourselves.”

Lyanna had smiled wanly, and that had been the last of it until he had helped the three of them into the wagon. As her feet left the ground, Lyanna had let out the softest choked sound, as if someone had punched it out of her, and that had been the end of it. She had slipped into one of the sullen, quiet Stark moods that her brothers were famous throughout the continent for and hadn’t emerged since, save for moments of showering almost obsessive kindness over Jon, who was quite happy and easily occupied.

Whispers had already begun about how the boy seemed to bear no resemblance to his relatives to the South, pure Stark through and through, and Jaime thanked every one of the Seven that no trace of Rhaegar’s blood showed in the boy even now. It was odd, to think of him as Egg and Joanna’s brother, as infrequently as the thought came these days. As Jon grew, he clung to his staunchly Northern roots even more, the few ambiguous points of resemblance between himself and his half-siblings disappearing.

The riders whispered about how he had none of the Martell’s coloring, or their pride, that the months old infant was too easily excitable to be a Stark in truth. Elia had brushed off the rumors with brutal efficiency, declaring just loudly enough to be overheard that it was odd to think a boy must resemble anyone other than his father for his parentage to not be in doubt, that Jon was his father in miniature and she thanked the Seven above for it.

“His looks will serve him well in the North”, she had said, with a sideways smirk to Lyanna, to resemble his father. “The Warden of the North must be of his people, must he not?”

“Aye.” Lyanna had said, voice sharp as steel. “He must. They will trust Jon in a way they would not have trusted a green Southron boy. He is theirs, quite clearly.”

Tyrion had watched the exchange with undisguised glee, eyes flickering between Elia and Lyanna, and Jaime had had the unnerving feeling that the boy was taking notes for future escapades. He would deal with that later. For now, Tyrion’s talents for mischief were the least of his worries.

At that, Elia had drawn the curtains in the wheelhouse, to afford her and Lyanna some privacy, and Jaime had gone back to looking toward King’s Landing, their dreadful silence settling into his bones. The Blackwater Rush, painted with Rhaegar’s blood, was still far ahead, but if Lyanna was grieving so already, he had no idea how she would survive it.

The caravan paused at an inn for the night, and Jaime and Brienne led Elia, Lyanna, and Jon to their room before walking toward the door, hand in hand.

“Stop.” Lyanna said, voice shaking, and they turned in unison, identical looks of confusion on their faces. She smiled at that, finally, a genuine smile, though it was strained. “Stay awhile. Jon does love company.” The boy was asleep in Elia’s arms, but it was obvious to them both that she spoke of herself, not him. “He may not see you for some time, after the wedding.”

“I would not be so sure of that.” Brienne said. “With my goodfather seated at Casterly Rock again, Jaime and I are afforded some freedoms. I have never seen the North, and Tyrion wishes to see the Wall, someday. I would much rather know the lay of the land for myself before allowing Tyrion to run roughshod over it.”

“Ever the strategist.” Jaime quipped. “You are correct, as always. Tyrion is not the sort of boy who can be allowed to run wild. Your father kept him on a tight leash, and look at the good it has done him.”

He had left Tyrion, temporarily, in the care of a trusted lieutenant, knowing that this would be a hard moment for Lyanna and Elia both, and had grinned at the sound of him chattering away to any adult who would listen about the various military offensives that had occurred in the area, and the history of the surrounding towns and their trade exports.

“A tight leash is not always a strict one.” Brienne said softly, her hand landing on Jaime’s right shoulder, thumb working at the stiff muscles of his neck. “Tyrion has thrived all on his own.”

“So you will visit us?” Elia cut in, looking rather excited. “I should like to see some familiar faces. I have seen my husband’s family with such infrequency, save for dear Lyanna, and in her absence…” She trailed off, holding Jon a little closer, before looking to Lyanna, who was staring at Jon with open jealousy. “Would you like to hold him?”

Lyanna stared at her goodsister open mouthed, almost unbelieving, before nodding slowly. When Elia carefully transferred him into her arms, she held him like the most precious treasure, rocking him gently when he seemed to claw his way toward wakefulness, rising up through the waters of sleep. Her teeth dug into her bottom lip deep enough to draw blood, evidence of the pain in her heart, but still she clung to Jon like he was a raft in a stormy ocean, the last thing ensuring her survival.

Elia did nothing to disguise the grief she felt on Lyanna’s behalf, and Jaime glanced sideway at Brienne as the sisters finally let down their guard, after a long day on the Goldroad. There would only be so many more secret nights like this before they left King’s Landing, and the lie became Jon’s reality.

At Deep Den, they left the mountains behind them for good. The rest of the way toward King’s Landing was flat, or flat enough, and the wheelhouse was at less risk of collapse.

Jaime kept glancing toward it with some nasty, dark feeling roiling in his stomach, the longer they rode, as if he wanted to turn back toward Casterly Rock and retreat to the relative safety of the last few months. He hadn’t expected this delivery of Lyanna to her future to evoke the feelings it did, to remind him of the children, as cursed as they were by the nature of their birth, that he had left behind in that lonely first world, with the right hand with which he had paid the price for their birth.

He hadn’t thought of Tommen’s smile in many months, nor Myrcella’s easy laughter, nor Joffrey’s determined stare, but now they haunted him. What would he do if a child of his bore little flashes of those children in this world? What would he do if Brienne bore a daughter with Tommen’s gleaming eyes, or a son with Myrcella’s tendency to embellish her stories? What if Brienne bore a child with Joffrey’s quick, clever hands, who stole sweets from the kitchens and blamed it on their siblings?

Would Jon have siblings? From what Elia said, it seemed as if she and Brandon were eager to have a big family of their own, each having grown up surrounded by siblings. Would he notice when they all looked alike and he did not? Would he resemble the Starks enough, as a child, as a stripling of a man, that it wouldn’t matter? Would Elia tell him he resembled his aunt with pride?

He could hardly remember the lies that Cersei had told Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen about their looks, the insidious ways she had excused the way that they bore no resemblance to their father, their uncles, to Shireen. Myrcella especially had been aggrieved that she and her cousin, who she treated as a sister, had no features in common, and Jaime had had to bite back a laugh on several occasions until Myrcella herself had puzzled out the answer.

“What is on your mind, dear heart?” Brienne muttered, egging her horse on until they rode aside each other. “Whatever you are carrying looks far too heavy for you to bear alone.”

“It is.” Jaime said softly. “But it is mine to bear.” He smiled weakly. “The war was not kind to any of us, was it?” He didn’t know which war he spoke of, the ones this Brienne knew of or the ones she didn’t, but Brienne, to her credit, recognized that he was not ready to speak, and nodded. “I dream every day of those we lost before their time. As we march toward King’s Landing, it feels…”

“As if they are dying again.” Brienne said, tearing the words from the hollow of his chest and speaking them into life. “As if they are slipping through your fingers again.” Her head tips forward slightly as she falls into a momentary silence, charged and painful, before she speaks again. “I feel that way often about Galladon.”

“Do you?” Jaime asked curiously. “How so?”

“As we build our lives together, I often think that… he should have children by now, on Tarth. We should be visiting them, spoiling them, teaching them to fight and train, and annoy my brother and his lady wife.” Brienne sounded nervous, as if disclosing these things on the open road, where they could be overheard, was so desperately different from whispering them to Jaime behind closed doors. “And sometimes I wonder if the waters took him before he could feel the pain that Lyanna is feeling.” Her mouth was set in a grim, stiff line. “I wonder if it was a kindness.”

“Our children will not feel any grief, so long as we have a say over how they live their lives.” Jaime said, unused to playing the comforting role. “With your father for a grandfather, they will thrive.”

“With your father for a grandfather, will they?” Brienne looked him square in the eye.

“With you as a mother, they will be able to face any danger with pride.” Jaime said, allowing a little of the Lannister pride to seep into his words. He fought it back more often not, but now, it had been earned. A lion’s duty was to his family, and Brienne was his family, as much as the future cubs that were to come. “And the battles that they cannot fight, we will fight for them. So long as we trust each other, so long as we are willing to work together for them, neither of us will ride a journey like this again.”

“But fate still steals the young from their parents.” She muttered. “I lost two sisters and a mother. How would you fight that battle?” She looked up at the darkening sky. “It will be dark soon. We should begin thinking about where to set up camp.”

“I might not fight it perfectly.” Jaime cut in. “But I will fight it for them. Not for myself.” He exhaled deeply, frowning. “My father-- when my mother died, he lived only for himself. To suit his needs. To distract himself from his own grief. As a child, I would often tell myself that if he had cared one whit for me, for my siblings, that I could be better. But the truth was that I was capable of bettering myself, whether he gave me an example or not, even if his help would have eased the road. I would ease the road for our children, should the worst ever come to pass, and I do not doubt at all that you would do the same for them.”

Brienne looked at him with undisguised love, gentle and overwhelming and warmer than a fire in midsummer. “Do you really think so?”

“I do.” Jaime said, the words feeling inadequate to sum up the burgeoning fire in his chest. “There is no king for whom I would sacrifice our family. I do not serve Robert as my father served Aerys. I use what I hear in service of others. Not myself. And I don’t imagine I will fight any wars anymore, whether they knock at my doorstep or not. I have given enough, I think, in service of the crown.”

“I have been waiting for you to say that.” Brienne smiled, before kicking her horse sharply so it raced ahead.

Jaime laughed in surprise before following her lead, not caring for a second how unseemly their behavior was, or how Tywin, undoubtedly having scattered spies among the caravan, would receive this news. For now, he was happy, and that was all that mattered.