Disclaimer: I own nothing. All things recognizable are property of G.R.R. Martin, David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, & company, & the asoiaf wiki.

A/N: There is graphic violence and death.

A/N #2: Given the AU nature of the plot, characters may be ooc, but, a particular Jaime chapter in A Storm of Swords would not leave me alone.

Changed Circumstances

A gasp and a gurgle were all that Jaime heard before the sword in his hands hissed as it slid from the body it was thrust into. He watched frozen as the previously wide eyes of the man, the King, in front of him dim and the body fell in an undignified heap. Jaime could just stand silently. As he wiped the blood from his sword, multiple thoughts both swam and screamed in his head. The only thing he knew was he had not wanted to do it but that it had to be done and he did not have much time left. His father's forces were on their way.

"Oh".

At the low sound he spun around so quickly and raised his bloodied sword to defend himself. Seeing who it was he did not know if he should aim the sword higher or drop it entirely.

Aerys's dark-haired, good-daughter stood at the door of the Throne Room with a babe at her breast; in the dim light he could see the shape of her young daughter behind her skirts. He raises his head and he sees her lips parted in surprise though he can not decipher the other expressions flashing upon her face.

As much as he felt relief just moments before, now he feels dread and dismay.

She was not supposed to be here; neither were the children. He thought they were secured in the Holdfast. Why and how where they here? How much had she seen? He wondered if she would believe some sort of lie.

"Cover him." He almost dropped his sword. The abrupt and clear tone of her voice surprised him as much as the words she spoke. He had never heard that tone from her, not even when she was angry; not even after Harrenhal or when her husband left her here with his father for the love of another woman. She sees him standing above her good-father and those are the two words which fall from her lips. Whatever he expected, it was not this.

Jaime wondered that she did not seem angry now; or particularly upset that her good-father was dead at his feet. Looking at her he hopes that her lack of feeling on the matter is because she seems overly distracted. It does not escape his notice she stood at the doorway of the Throne Room but her gaze is primarily directed outside.

"What?" Distracted or not, there had to be more to what she said. He knows why he did what he did, but, he does not know why this does not seem to worry her.

She holds his gaze as she fully turns to look at him.

"My son is a sleep and far too young to notice, but, my daughter does not need to see that. Cover him with something, wrap him completely. This room has seen too much horror and blood as of late."

Jaime started. She is worried about blood on the floor, but, not what caused it. He was bewildered, but, he did was she asked all the same. Only once Aerys was wrapped securely did she move further into the room.

One more glance outward and she shut the door tightly, securing it behind her and her daughter. Though Elia directed the gaze of her young daughter away from Aerys, and that Jaime found that he moved to protect the girl from seeing the sight in front of her, it would not have mattered as the girl's eyes were almost closed due to the lateness of the hour.

Her face was hard as she turns towards him and as she motioned to the lax sword in his hands. "Am I to be next? My children?" Such directness from her is uncommon. Still, it is to be expected, even after so many years in King's Landing being Rhaegar's dutiful wife and Aerys's good-daughter it is easy to forget the woman in front of him was a Martell.

Jaime breathed deeply not knowing how to answer the question. That she does not look particularly fearful at the prospect of an affirmative answer, gives him pause. Knowing what they knew and seeing what they have seen these past few months, death was a reality for them both; one way or another. She knew what he had done and that makes her dangerous.

Still, killing the Mad King was one thing the woman in front of him and her children quite another. He broke his vows to protect his king, but, he was still a knight. The King had been no innocent. He broke one vow and even for good as it was, it pained him. There was no need to break more of them.

He did not speak, but, shook his head. He will dare much, but, not that.

She nodded, seemingly satisfied.

She moves towards a small chamber off to the side and bid her daughter to sit in one of the chairs sparsely littering the small room. He heard her speaking to Princess Rhaenys in her characteristic, soft and soothing tones. He had not moved; transfixed as he was with all of this. She stepped back into main chamber and walks towards him.

She looks about, considering. He wishes he knew what she was thinking of. Eventually he follows her gaze as it falls back to where Aerys lay.

"Do you think there is enough time?" Such an odd question for such an odd affair.

"Time for what, Princess?"

"Princess Regent."

"What?" He shakes his head; not understanding. He looks to her for answers, there is very little else for him to do. He already killed the King; now waiting is all there is and it seems she has thoughts of her own.

She smiles, though this is neither the soft smile he is accustomed to seeing on her face nor is it one filled with sadness or viciousness; it was a polite smile, the one she used at Court. More accurately, it was the one she used to use when there was something at Court to smile at. "Princess Regent, not just Princess. My son is too young to rule and my husband was never king even if he did die before his father, so it can not be Queen Regent. That is the way of things, is it not?" He stared at her.

"Not if Robert claims the throne for himself, if someone claims it for him, or someone else claims it for their own." Though he did not say it to be cruel, and while he thinks he would not rejoice if he was to see such a thing come to pass, no one knew the future and so he said it.

She smiled again, but, it was a smile of someone who tries to appear unaffected by what they heard, but, he thinks he sees the sadness in her face.

"No one can peacefully; not while my children and Viserys live and we are here. While I can not say I know Robert Baratheon well; he is not the type to kill a child himself or other men without good reason and Ned Stark and Jon Arryn seem far less so." Jaime's back stiffens slightly as she shrugs. That Robert Baratheon killed her husband goes unspoken.

He looks at her again, and smiles slightly. She was a clever thing, Elia of Dorne. And to think once he might have married her once. Perhaps if he had, this would not have happened. He shakes his head; the past is the past. It is the now that matters.

"And if he is; if they are?" He wants to know what she would do. He also wants to shake her of her calm. He can barely stand it when he feels the way he does. This was no time for anyone to be this composed.

Her lips twitch slightly; a gesture he had never seen her make. "That is why you are here are you not? To protect your King and his kin." She raises the baby in her hands. "You are sworn."

He laughs, because, otherwise he just might scream or cry; he knows not which would be worse. "I was." To stress the point, he motions towards where Aerys lays.

"One failing need not erase the rest of one's work." He raises an eyebrow. Aerys dead at his hands is more than a mere failing; but, she, too, knew what Aerys was. Aerys's failings were dangerous and many. He briefly wonders how she numbered her husband's failings. He shakes his head; Rhaegar is just as dead as Aerys and neither matter now. Still, he wants to believe what she says.

She smiles again; this one certain. "Neither I nor my children have committed their grandfather's or their father's wrongs and should not suffer for them; not when we have suffered for them in our own right".

He fights to keep the smile off of his face. He would have laughed in her face if the expression on hers was one of earnest hope. Blessedly, it was not.

This was a different Elia, but even before, she had been no fool that failed to see that men often suffer for the wrongs of others. Still, neither she nor her children were just anyone. He knows the truth in that. Robert Baratheon and the Starks have reason to hate Rhaegar and Jon Arryn has reason to hate Aerys, but, none of those three high lords have any reason to hate her or her children; let alone wish them dead. He wonders just how many Dornish spears would have happily joined with the Baratheon's forces if Aerys had not kept her here with him.

Robert Baratheon as hot blooded as he is would not harm a child himself and Ned Stark knew that if Rhaegar took his sister it was the expense of the woman in front of him. They who fight against Aerys would gain very little goodwill by killing her or her children with Rhaegar having perished in battle and Aerys dead. There was potential in that. Still, thinking of that will do him no good until those men arrive in King's Landing.

Her voice is clear; forceful even. "You are sworn, Ser Jaime, to protect the King and his family; not were sworn. Aerys was no king and he is dead. My son, his grandson, is not." He looks at her sharply; she knows how that came to be.

Evidently, that matters not to her as she continues, "I wish to see my children live and to do that my son needs to be the King. Aerys is gone and my husband dead before him. Even though these times are strange, my son should be king at my good-father and husband's deaths." He inhales a breath. Though her words are not sweet they are fundamentally correct. And for Jaime, they almost sound like absolution.

To give him time he remembers her question he left unanswered. "You were asking if there was time."

She blinks and he rejoices in that she can be shaken though she recovers quickly enough. Turning to look at Aerys turns dispassionately, she says, "Time enough for him to burn before someone comes".

He furrows his brow in alarm and confusion.

She looks at him questioningly. "Or would you rather be acknowledged as a kingslayer and an oathbreaker."

He flinches and she ignores it, raising an eyebrow but saying nothing. She does not condemn him for his actions; yet, that does not give him any relief. She has her own problems and he has his. He killed Aerys, he would be damned by both sides at war and as confident as she is, in times of war, many things can happen.

"And fire would serve to release me from those ill gotten titles?" For killing Aerys he should be seen as a hero, but, seeing her now, as kind as she usually is, she had not cried to be spared nor for good-father or her husband, and he knows his thoughts of glory gained for his actions had been foolish. It serves them all to see Aerys dead and they both would do what needs to be done, but, they would be expected to mourn who should not be and no one would applaud them for it.

"Aerys was mad, but, he was right in that fire has its uses." The both of them remember the men burned in front of them. Jaime remembers the men who could have burned had he not acted.

His choice his made, he goes towards an alcove and retrieves a jar filled with oil few know about and then grabs the nearest torch he sees. He already killed Aerys, how much more damning can burning his body be?

It is silent as he as he drops oil on a few parts of the dead king's body and touches the head of the torch to the dead king's face he exposed, where he put his sword through the man, and the covering he wrapped Aerys in. Even with so little oil the fire spreads quickly. He drops the torch on what is left of Aerys but puts the bowl of oil near enough to where Aerys burns.

Neither spoke as the flames rose higher and higher and the color brighter, as the smoke curled in tall tendrils rising up into the rafters of the hall, and as the as the crackle of the fire grew louder and faster. Soon enough, he decides to bank the flames with own cloak.

Finally with one more look at Aerys's charred remains he takes his blackened cloak and drapes it over what was left of the body. Princess Elia, the Princess Regent, he thinks, was right. There had been too many deaths and he does not wish to be responsible for more than he has to.

He looks up to see that while he was busy she settled the Princess Rhaenys who is now asleep near them and she waits holding Aegon, standing next to the Iron Throne; but, inexplicably, not moving to sit in it. He wonders what she waits for. He would not stop her from sitting there.

He walks towards her. He raises his chin. "Princess Regent." They look at each other and understanding passes through them before she smiles at him, once more. This time it is soft. Still, her smile is gone quickly as she sits down carefully on the barbed and cold, metal throne with him standing at her side.

They do not have to wait for long before the door is burst through and he sees his father, his uncle Kevan, the Maester, Aerys's spymaster Varys, and a few Lannister bannermen. At the commotion the Princess Rhaenys awakes and Jaime goes to collect her before returning to Elia's side.

Jaime can not tell what that look on his father's face, but, he likes to imagine that his father had not been expecting this.

Seeing the covered shape on the floor, the Maester cries out, "What happened? Where is the King?"

His eyes' never leaving his father's, Jaime says without much inflection, "King Aerys is dead. Long live King Aegon." His father stares at him while one of his men lifted some of the ruined cloak from the body, but, the man flinched and replaced it quickly enough.

Jaime notices his father's eyes flicker to where Elia sits with her son in her lap and then to where her daughter sits in his son's arms and Jaime can not help shifting his feet to step closer to Elia.

"That is truly King Aerys?" Jaime wants to laugh. The first thing his father says to him in years and it is that. "That was."

"How did that come to pass?" The poor Maester seemed to be in shock. That it was because Aerys was dead or the manner in which he was found; Jaime did not know or truly care.

Jaime does not need to answer the Maester's inquiry because Elia points to that burnt out torch and that jar of oil he left out and her voice just hold enough of something inscrutable as she speaks. "The fire spread quickly. Ser Jaime was able put out the flames but His Grace succumbed to his injuries."

Jaime ducks his head and bites into his cheek to stop him from laughing; half in hysteria half in humor, at the half truth.

He takes a breath and looks up to notice Varys, Aerys's foreign spymaster peering at him so intently that he fights not to flinch as he tries to stare right back. The silence is broken when Aegon lets out a cry and Elia adjusts the babe's placement in her lap and tries to quiet the child.

The bald man looks at the child and speaks for the first time. "It is quite fortunate, Ser, that you were here to try and stop the blaze from spreading." The words were spoken mildly, and though Jaime could never tell with Varys if any offence was truly meant, he heard the accusation all the same. Apparently, so did his father, who turns sharply to the other man.

Jaime puts the girl down and would have gone down there to quiet the man but halts when Elia coughs bringing everyone's attention on her. "My dear Varys, who amongst us did not know His Grace was fond of fires, even if they are difficult to control by most? No one could have foreseen any of it." She looks down at her children before looking up to smile warmly at him, before turning back to Varys with a slightly different smile.

"Ser Jaime did his best, however he could. And as you say, though my good-father was lost; not everyone is, not everything is."

Elia turns to his father, "Lord Tywin, I know these past years have been…difficult, but, circumstances being as they are…" She looks down at Aerys once more; they all do, before she looks back up at Tywin, "It comforts me that you are here. I, and though my son is young I am certain when he grows to be King in his own right, he would appreciate your help now when Lord Baratheon and his men make their way to King's Landing. We have all lost too much, but, I think there is potential for peace and for the future."

Jaime motions for the child king and she freely gives Aegon to him, but, Jaime only has eyes for his father whose chin lifts slightly at the gesture of trust. Speaking to Varys and his father, he says, his voice filled with regret he partially feels, "I do not deny I failed my duty King Aerys, nor do I deny it was far too late to help him, though I wished that I could have, but, the Princess Regent" all the men turn sharply look at him, but, his tone carries a shrug, "does have the right of it."

Jaime waited with baited breath as his father stared at the tableau in front of him, but, in the end he answered with just a nod. Pycelle exhaled a relieved breath at his father's reaction. If it was any other time or any other circumstance Jaime would have laughed. His father turns to his uncle Kevan to issue orders to safeguard the city and soon enough his uncle and the few Lannister men leave to do as his father bid. With one more look towards the Iron Throne with Elia sitting in it and Jaime beside her, the spymaster and the Maester follow the Lannister men out, after receiving a request from her to send a raven to her brother, the Prince of Dorne.

Once the group of them is alone, father and son stare at one another for some time before his father turns to Elia. "It is fortunate that you and your children are safe." His tone betrays no feelings to the contrary, but, Jaime does not know if his father was sincere.

She smiles softly and gestures to Jaime to return her son to her, which he does. "Thank you, Lord Tywin. I know this situation is fraught with difficulties and complications, but, I do hope you know how much I, and my son, would value your aid and your council." That Aerys had failed to do so in the recent years goes unacknowledged, before she speaks again. "Though it is early to early to tell what Lords Baratheon, Arryn, and Stark would say, but, it is my hope that you accept being my son's Hand."

He stares at her but nods his acceptance. "Thank you. If it is found they have no objections I will gladly accept." With one more look at the woman in the Iron Throne, boy in her lap, and the young girl staring up at him he turns to his son and requests a few words in private. They leave her to her children and her throne.

Once alone, his father spent a moment or two looking at him before speaking to him in a low voice. "I expected they would be in Maegor's Holdfast."

Jaime shrugs, "As did I, but, it seemed fate had other plans. This whole night was filled with the unexpected." His father was an intelligent man, but, he is certain his father cannot guess quite what he means by that. Still, the tilt of his father's head shows that his father suspects what he heard was not quite the complete story, but, in circumstances such as this, there are some things that are better left alone.

"I can not say I am displeased Aerys did not live, but, how is it that they still live when he does not?"

He stares at his father. Stepping closer to his father, in his ear, he whispers, "With Aerys and his son dead, his grandson is his heir. She loves her children and would see them to safety and whatever I am, I am sworn." His father's expression grows ugly, so he hotly protests in a fierce whisper, "Aerys's love of fires is well known. Accidents happen. A person may excuse one, but, not even the dimmest could ignore four and there are limits to everything."

Seeing that his father was set to protest, he says, "Certainly you do not think that I would kill women and children who have done me no harm and given who they are, I am sworn to protect. I would be cursed in all Westeros. It would dishonor my name and that of our house."

If anything, his father would seek to protect the family name and implications of regicide would not be regarded well, no matter how richly deserved the act was, even in times of war. Killing of innocents for no reason would be even more burdensome to the family legacy.

"That the boy lives and we throw our support towards her means Robert Baratheon will not be king; that Cersei cannot be offered as his potential queen." His father intended to give Cersei away as a reward for winning battles?

Just thinking about Cersei being anyone else's torments him. "Certainly you jest, Father."

His father frowns at him. He argues a different point. "Father, this started because Robert Baratheon's betrothed was taken. What makes you think he would accept any woman other than Lyanna Stark to be his queen, even if she is damaged goods? Lord Stark would consider it a paltry investment in his friendship if his kin first died and then for his sister to be tossed aside."

His father seemed to consider that, "And their living means we must bend to the Targaryen yoke. Do you think any of those men would accept it?"

"I do not know Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark, or Jon Arryn, but, they have no cause to hate her and to kill or depose her living child when the only reason the Dornish took Aerys's part was because she and her children were kept here. I know Elia Martell. She is not Aerys Targaryen and the boy is a boy. Children can be taught and we would be here to guide the child and the widow. When peace can be brokered with someone amenable and whose claim is stronger than the others, to replace them with some unknown hothead like Robert Baratheon is foolishness, Father. Now that Aerys is dead, there no reason to not offer her aid."

His father snorted, "She needs our aid more than we need her."

"Yes, but, she trusts me and she would be grateful to us. Her husband's foolishness and Aerys's caused this whole mess; she knows better. Upholding Rhaegar's dishonored widow's claims for her fatherless son's due rights rather than supporting a usurper does more credit to our house; particularly when there is very little to be gained by doing the latter."

His father relents, "There is merit to that argument, but, Princess Regent?" Jaime smiles inwardly.

"Why not? Who better than to name Regent than the boy's mother and she can not call her self, Queen, now can she?" His father considers that.

"As you say, at least she does not seem to be a dullard." With one sharp look to his son, "There is nothing more to be done for now, though, if she is amenable as you say, it could do very little harm to see if she is amenable enough to release you of your conscription." With that he turned and left Jaime silent in the hallway.

After a minute he opens the door to the Throne Room and walks towards her.

"Does he suspect?" She sounds partly anxious and partly curious.

"Possibly, but, he left it alone." Even if his father knew for certain, his father would admit it to no one. She nodded and she breathes out slowly.

"He did not seem particularly happy to see us together." Alive, is not what she says.

"He expected that you would be in the Holdfast."

"Varys had the same thought." That explains why she came here and Varys's reaction to Aerys's death.

"I see."

"I hope that does not displease you."

"It does not." He means it. He does not want her or her children dead. There has already been too much death.

"But, will your father support my son?"

"He will." His father may not be happy about the prospect, but, for now, given that Aerys was gone and with nothing truly lost, his father could not truly lament his choice in this matter. Still, she did not know what they spoke about and she does not need to know. Not yet, at least.

"Is there anything he wants, other than being Hand, I mean?" She truly wants to know. Jaime is grateful she is aware of just how precarious the situation is.

"He wants you to release me of my vows as a member of the Kingsguard."

She is not shocked, very few would be remembering Lord Tywin's actions at Harrenhal, but, it would be unprecedented. "That has never been done before."

He laughs, but, the sound that comes out of his mouth is hollow. "A member of the Kingsguard had not failed to save his king as I have."

She looks at him sharply, "No one could save a man from himself." He wonders briefly at her vehemence, but, Jaime reflects that if anyone knows what it is like to stand and watch as men sink their own futures without a care at the potential expense to others, it would be her.

In a softer tone she manages, "Do you want that?" She sounds hesitant, as if she does not want him to want that, but, if his father truly demands it, she should know.

"No." She sits back in relief though she is mindful of the dangerous seat she sits in. "As you say, I am sworn." For now, they rest.