Hello! As promised a couple of days ago, Chapter 26 is finally here, and it's got the long-overdue Jon/Jaime conversation, some fine Braime moments and a reckoning at the very end.

See you on the other side.

JAIME

We should've taken the road north.

The thought had become more and more insistent and tinged with a sense of anguished foreboding, a dull rumble in his veins that growled of desperation and catastrophe, as they rode farther south, through the wrecked land that once was the loveliest, most fertile part of the Riverlands.

Their initial plan had been quite different.

From Greywater Watch their party was supposed to travel to the nearest coastal town, and from there sail to the Three Sisters. In different weather conditions, it would have been the most sensible course of action. By boat, the journey to Dragonstone was shorter and less hazardous than riding their way through half the continent to Rook's Rest, but during winter the waters of the Shivering Sea were always shattered by violent squalls and hailstorms, and nobody with a sound mind in Sisterton, sailor, merchant or pirate might he be, would be stupid enough to risk both ship and life to circumnavigate the Fingers, no matter how absurdly obscene the reward was.

There was no alternative, but the prospect didn't really sit well with him.

The two crannogmen scouts Howland Reed had kindly provided to escort them safely out of the southernmost border of the Neck's swamp had silently nodded their goodbyes and left them to their own devices, disappearing back into the grey thicket five days past; the slight relief Jaime might have felt at seeing the sun again, despite the fact that its bleak beams didn't do much to warm him, was short-lived, as an oppressive atmosphere had started to weigh on them almost immediately. That same night, the Twins came into view.

The ancient seat of House Frey, the two identical stone castles which had overlooked the crossing of the Green Fork for hundreds of years, impervious and disdainful, had become a twisted, forsaken carcass of blackened stone and half-rotten timberwood covered in ice looming across the river, its blurry reflection stretching on the muddy waters below. Nobody dared utter a word as they crossed the open portcullis: as he spurred his mount to keep up with Jon Snow's garron, Jaime couldn't suppress a shudder. Everything was deadly still and quiet, as though frozen in time. Not a crow circling around the castles' spires. Not a soul to greet them.

A spectral silence walked with them all the way to the great hall. Only the sound of their boots, muffled by ash and dust, echoed in the empty, familiar place. Jaime could still see that same room decorated and tidied up - as tidied up as a Frey could be - for the feast to celebrate the end of the siege at Riverrun.

Nothing remained of the Freys' derelict opulence. What the fire set by Arya Stark didn't manage to mangle and pulverize had been pillaged by peasants and smallfolk, angry and desperate in equal measure: timber, stone, windowpanes, iron rods, brass chandeliers, copper and silver cutlery, even the dust-gathering ragged tapestry which had dangled morosely from the damp walls, frayed at the seams and already half-eaten by bugs... anything that could be made use of in masonry work, or burned to heat up a house, or sold to buy food and supplies, or trimmed and resewn into rags of warmer clothing... All gone.

Only the heavy chair of black oak with the two towers carved into its back had been spared: it was still there, overthrown, at the top of the stone dais whence the Lord of the Crossing would sneer down at his guests before killing them. A lonely mockery of a throne, with a rusty axe rammed into one of the armrests and a tangle of frosted cobwebs billowing in the dank drafts that moaned through the rafters.

The rest of the place looked and felt like an abandoned graveyard of unburied dead... Rubble, rats' droppings since long turned to dust, charred bones half-chewed by rabid dogs, uninviting ivy slithering through the cracks of the stone floor caked in grime and, everywhere, the unmistakable foul stench of burned bodies and spilled blood.

Jaime had heard the tales. And Arya pretty much confirmed the gist of it, in Winterfell.

Fire and poisoned wine. The same kind Joffrey drank at his wedding.

'I chose it intentionally,' the sullen girl had admitted, with a sweet, little smirk that had chilled him to the bone. 'I had half a mind to use it on you as well, when I was serving you at the feast.'

Jaime vaguely remembered a pretty lass with long, brown hair and a dimpling smile who made doe eyes at him and Bronn. She didn't look at all like Arya Stark, and he stopped long ago to try to understand how that was even possible.

He stood now in the same spot, with the weight of the blame for that bloody massacre pinning him down: the idea of spending the night there positively turned his stomach.

We should've taken the road north.

While Anguy and Podrick put the axe to good use and set out a perimeter to start a fire for the night, next to Jaime Brienne looked like she was going to be sick as well. Her pale face frozen in muted grief under the heavy, furry hood, she inspected the hall with round eyes brimming with tears of wrath. He knew she was thinking of her lady. How she had died a most ignoble death, by the hands of the very people who were bound to her and her family by sacred oath. Jaime ground his teeth, feeling pathetically powerless. That thrice-damned place had reopened the old wound: was she feeling guilty she didn't die with Cat? She wasn't with her because she was with me, at the time, Jaime sulked. To fulfil the vow she took when Lady Stark gave her leave.

Had Brienne been there, she would have certainly been murdered with the lot. Would have gladly given a purpose to that huge, fierce body of hers, which she still believed was only worth for battle and blood, by offering it up to the traitors' blades.

He remembered how the news of the Red Wedding had reached them in Brindlewood. A fat knight from House Beesbury, excited to be the first to announce to Tywin Lannister's son that the king would soon be presented with a coat made of a magnificent direwolf pelt.

They came to know the details, and the true extent of the ignominy, only when he was finally granted audience with his lord father.

With a stony indifference in his glacial eyes and the same tone he would have used had he been reading an excerpt from the most boring page of the Seven-Pointed Star, Tywin had recounted how Roose Bolton's men had fed Catelyn's naked and abused corpse to the fish, while in the courtyard the Freys cheered and toasted to a King with a man's body and a direwolf's head.

Jaime hadn't been impressed.

Brienne didn't cry, when he told her, nor did she crumble. Not in front of him, anyway. For many days afterward, her body had simply inhabited the room inside the Red Keep she had been assigned to, barely breathing, eating even less, dull and detached, trying her utmost to slip through the cracks of Cersei's scrutiny... but Jaime had kept a close eye on her. Back then, her stolidity had addled and vexed him in equal measure, grating on his nerves without him realising why, until now.

I would have rather had her in tears, raging against me and my family, punching me in the face, he understood now, feeling a not small amount of shame at his own selfishness. Had she shown some vulnerability as she did in Harrenhal it would have been easy to unburden his soul. To tell her that no, he had nothing to do with that disgraceful butchering. It had seemed important at that time to get this point through her thick skull. To make her understand. And then it would have been easier still to cradle her in his arms, discarding her protests like a difficult child, and let her weep over his shoulder. To let him be the strong one, for once.

But she would never be like this, his Lady of Tarth.

Brienne was merciless in her private grief. Impenetrable and completely out of reach, and Jaime couldn't intrude into her thoughts then, not more than he could now.

The only thing I could do was sending her as far away from Cersei as humanly possible, with a new purpose... A clumsy yet loyal squire, an armour that matched her eyes, a sword to defend the innocent and the broken pieces of his own tattered honour, hoping she would know what to do with it better than he did.

"There's still light outside," he offered, gently, now.

Brienne started like a spooked deer and frowned at him as though she weren't really expecting to see him there.

"I'll tell the King we can ride another couple of miles farther south. We'll find somewhere else to make camp."

At his awkward attempt to comfort her, a recognition, a glimpse of unexpected tenderness Jaime by now had learned to distinguish, softened the dour expression in her blue eyes, and then, as fast as it came, it was gone again and the walls were back up.

"Don't be absurd," she glowered, parading her best pig-headed self. "The horses need rest. It's just for the night."

There was no point in arguing with her.

Later, when he volunteered to take the first watch with Thoros, the drunken priest merely shrugged: "It's not like any of us could sleep, in a place like this," and he shifted over to make him some space near the fire.

Wrapped up in his layers of wool and furs, Jaime shivered and waited, as the shadows around them danced on the discoloured walls. Rapt and unblinking, Thoros stared cross-legged at the flames as though they held all the answers to the mysteries of life and death.

"Do you see it?" he found himself asking. "The Red Wedding?"

"I don't choose what to see, Kingslayer. And if I could, I wouldn't want to witness even a second of it. I see only what scant, blurry vision the Lord of Light in his infinite wisdom grants me, the stupid, drunken fool that I am. As of late," he dropped his voice to a whisper, "I see him quite often." Jaime followed the sharp nod of the man's red-haired head to the black shadow of Jon Snow, stretched out over the bedroll across the fire, his back on them. Jaime could tell by the tension between his shoulder blades that he wasn't sleeping.

No wonder he can't find peace in this place, either: the floor is drenched in Stark blood.

"And sometimes - Thoros spoke again - I see you."

His eyebrows shot up.

"Me?"

"You were there, weren't you, couple of nights before the Twins fell? What did you two possibly talk about, you and the old fart?"

Jaime's mouth twisted into a grimace.

He remembered how the sweet Arbor Red had suddenly turned rotten, burning in his guts when Walder Frey had sat next to him, all sneering contempt and taunting smugness.

He couldn't even pretend to ignore the miserable sod and go away inside, just like he used to do when reality became simply too much, and the only thing in his mind was Cersei, Cersei, Cersei - how long has it been since the memory of her brought him anything but poisonous resentment and cold fury? He had to bite his own tongue, swallow a far less diplomatic retort that might have started a new war, and bear with his usual Lannister grace the drinking and toasting and the amiable chat about family and reputation, and how the two of them were not so different, after all.

'Here we are now. Two Kingslayers. We don't mind, do we?'

Even now, his stomach coiled into tight knots at the mere recollection.

"We shared kingslaying stories," Jaime lashed out with a defiant sneer and angrily threw another piece of wood into the fire. Thoros burst into quiet sniggers, unimpressed. "Oh, you truly are a wonderful piece of work. But you're not fooling anyone." His glassy eyes burned into his, as crimson as the fire licking at their boots. Challenging. "I was there, when your father brought the Targaryen children before the Iron Throne. I saw your face. You were a little more than a child yourself, playing in a game way bigger than you."

I was already fucking my sister. I had just killed a king and helped make another, Jaime wanted to retort, but something telling in the priest's eyes gave him pause.

What does he know?

Thoros ignored his scowl and stoked the fire with the tip of his dagger. "Sometimes I think it's all my fault," he said after a while. "I was sent to the king to convert him to the Lord's Light. Perhaps if I had been able to sweet-talk Mad Aerys into devoting himself to another kind of fire... But a dragon can't be tamed, can it? A dragon recognizes no law but its own... and when the dragon wakes, a whole kingdom weeps."

His red eyes settled over Jon again, grievous and troubled. Jaime's hand twitched upon his sword's hilt, as panic, undefined yet deep-rooted, gnarled and twisted like a knife in his stomach.

He didn't like that look.

"Hard days lie ahead," Thoros said morosely. "I don't envy him the choices he will be called to make. He'll need wise counsel. Trusted allies. A strong hand to guide him."

"He's already got a strong Hand," Jaime muttered.

The priest's eyes gleamed up at him, condescending and patient like a maester teaching a particularly slow pupil. "You've done terrible deeds for love, Jaime Lannister. You've also done great things, out of duty. And yet, you still believe duty and love are two conflicting forces. Ice and fire. But is it really so? You don't understand yet. But you will." His expression turned sombre as he stared ahead of him, at something beyond Jaime's shoulders.

He turned.

Brienne lay a few paces from them, her face's skin taut and almost translucent in the fire's faint light.

"You'll see," warned the priest.

There was no more talking after that; Thoros quaffed down half the content of his goatskin and glared at the flames, every now and then waving a hand in front of him, batting the frosty air as though it were an irksome fly bothering him, until his hooded eyes fluttered close and his head lolled over his chest, and Jaime was left to wonder if it really was a god who spoke to him through the fire, who gave his words such unfaltering conviction, or perhaps the wine filling his belly and loosening his tongue.

Podrick came to relieve him an hour later, but Jaime knew he wouldn't be able to rest. Every time he shut his eyes, he saw ghosts dancing through these halls... Old Walder and his sons, the Young Wolf, his bride and his unborn child, Lady Catelyn and the many who paid with their lives the price of Tywin Lannister's ruthlessness... the price of his and Cersei's folly... So many debts we still need to pay...

Down the hall, in the still of the moonless night, he thought he heard the clear, sad sound of jingle bells.

For a sennight, they followed the Green Fork south, braving snow and treacherous ice and the occasional wild beast turned rabid from hunger and cold; by unspoken agreement, Jaime and Thoros had taken charge of their small group. After all, the red priest, with his controversial past as one of the leaders of the Brotherhood without banners, and he with his even more infamous experience as Commander of the Riverrun military campaign, were the ones who better knew the pattern of those hills, and forests and hidden caves around the Twins, Oldstones and Fairmarket.

The landscape had sensibly changed from the last time Jaime was there with Arya Stark. War and winter brought with them famine, disease and a terror too deep to even speak its name aloud.

Any small cottage, inn, tavern, shack, cove they encountered along the way were either barred or raided and despoiled. War had turned the smallfolk into untamed, terrified creatures ready to sink their teeth and claws into anyone who was perceived as a threat. The many horrors the Riverlands had suffered were the work of different masters, but the grieving smallfolk seeking revenge had no preference: Frey, Lannister, even Stark... they all looked the same after a week swinging from a tree.

The truth of it caught up with them just past Seagard, when the bodies started to drop: at the beginning only a few, scattered on the route or washed ashore like ghoulish leftovers of a retreating army, then dangling from pines and elms, their faces and extremities swollen where the ropes had bitten their flesh, and their skin black and blue, but otherwise perfectly preserved by the cold. And there weren't only men and soldiers.

In the deserted backyard of a farm, a whole family of six was swaying from the burned branches of an oak tree.

They served the Freys, read the carved sign nailed on the boy's chest. He must have been no older than ten, eleven perhaps. It was difficult to tell, with his skull bashed in. And Jaime was suddenly reminded of other hanged corpses. The three tavern girls he and Brienne found near Stone Hedge, when she was still his sullen protector and he her brash, loudmouthed tormentor.

They lay with Lions.

The wench was staring up at the disfigured bodies with the same outraged look Jaime remembered from back then, when her righteousness, her strength had left him speechless and overwhelmed for the first time. He dismounted at the same moment she did, his body moving instinctively, as though in a haze, without needing to ask her what she meant to do, but before any of them could step in, Jon Snow had already unsheathed Longclaw and was silently cutting them down.

"Help me," he said to no one in particular and he sounded so lost that, unbidden, Jaime's heart gave a tug.

He won a single battle, but he has no idea of what it means being truly at war, Jaime thought as he watched him digging a grave through the hard frozen ground, sweat drops trailing down his cheeks like tears. The young king had been beyond the Wall, had fought wildlings and wights, had died and been brought back, but he had never travelled south of the Neck. He wasn't prepared for what lay ahead.

Despite everything, there still was an innocence about Jon Jaime wished to protect.

He worried for him. As they rode, they barely talked, and only of practical matters. Troops movements in the Crownlands and how many food supplies King's Landing had stored for winter (not enough). His answers were always considerate and wise, just as one should expect from a good leader, if not a bit hollow. But Jaime had been watching him. He felt like he had done well-nigh nothing else, since Greywater Watch.

There was no mistaking the sadness that seemed to plague him, that bone-deep grief which burdened his brow, cutting deep lines across his sallow face. Many a time, during the journey's short pauses, Jaime's eyes had caught his hand lingering upon the bundle of leather and rags strapped on his saddle's side which Howland Reed had given him the morning they left the swamp...

He didn't know what to make of it. He rode beside him, as stalwart as a shadow. He watched and worried, but kept his concerns to himself. In Winterfell's godswood he had offered to talk about Rhaegar, when Jon would be ready, but now even the confidence he felt while making that promise was shattering against his own guilt.

With what right could he speak about Rhaegar with Rhaegar's only son? He was terrible at comforting. He had never learned how, with his children.

So Jaime rode, and watched and worried and hesitated, trying to ignore the constant whispering in his head that sounded like Cersei's voice, calling him craven.

After a week of unceasing sleets, a bright and clear morning finally welcomed them at the Trident. Ahead of them, the ruby ford glistened pale under a thick layer of frost, its banks a slick, greyish sludge giving way to the brown and ruddy earth underneath.

The surprisingly good weather was only a small reprieve, everyone knew. Compacted snow still crunched and crackled under the horses' hooves, but at least the crisp breeze had cleansed the air of that overwhelming stench of decay that seemed to stick on their clothes ever since they entered the Riverlands. They carefully led the horses on the other side of the ford in a point where the waters were only partially frozen; a few paces from him, Brienne's mare swayed gently and with each movement the sun danced and quivered on Oathkeeper's hilt, playing tricks on his eyes.

The Dragon and the Stag had come together, locked in combat, there, and their ghosts had followed him here: on the river's banks, floating above the ice, the souls of the fallen wandered across the battlefield, still hungry for blood. Were they hearing still, even in death, the Warrior's screams inside their heads? that thundering song each soldier learned to listen to and trust in times of war which muffled and overcame everything else around them? The soft, mumbled prayers and the fearful wailing of the dying, calling their mothers, cursing the gods, yearning for home... the frenzied tumult of hundreds of hooves pounding at the ground... the blazing bellows of horns and trumpets and drums leading the charge... the wonderful, terrifying clash of steel against steel... the brittle sound of broken bones and flesh yielding to the kiss of a sword's edge... in his mind, Jaime could perfectly picture the battle along the crossing. And then, he saw them... one by one... Ser Lyn Corbray making his stand with Lady Forlorn, alone against Prince Lewyn's Dornish cavalry, and Barristan the Bold, still rallying the Targaryen forces for a last desperate attack, with one of his greaves pierced by an arrow from side to side, and his white armour streaked crimson by the spear wound on his left shoulder... Jonothor Darry cutting his way through warhorses, water, and a storm of shafts to reach his prince...

And above everything else, he heard Robert's booming voice, resounding like the Stranger's itself, calling Rhaegar in the shallows, calling him to his doom...

Next to him, Jon pulled his horse's reins to a halt and swung down off his saddle, his gaze scanning the bed of the river as if searching for something.

Does he see them, too?

Jaime didn't try to stop him. He saw him marching, lost in thought, on the spot where his father found his fate and kneel as though in prayer before an altar, his brow wrinkling in concentration as he stared intently at the icy water under his feet.

Davos Seaworth trotted beside them.

"What is he up to?"

Jaime caught Brienne's eyes. She shrugged and gave a slight shake of her head, just as baffled as he was.

He tossed the reins to the old knight and followed the king to the frozen stream.

"Is something wrong?"

Jon narrowed his eyes.

"I'm not sure."

He removed one of his gloves and drew out his sword. The layer of ice was thinner there, and shattered easily when Jon struck it with Longclaw's wolf-shaped pommel; and then he was plunging his naked hand in the Trident, almost to the elbow, and Jaime held his breath. When the hand surfaced, among small pebbles, brown weed and mud trickling through his fingers, glittering in his open palm like a drop of blood in the sun, Jon Snow held a ruby.

They rode hard, that day, pressing on through the lands that once belonged to House Darry: a desolate string of open, fallow fields interspersed with enclosed forests of sombre soldier pines and rocky hills lashed by roaring winds and angry downpours that soon sloped down toward the Gods Eye.

Harrenhal was near.

Once they reached the shorelines of the great lake, with the moon a pale sickle already risen high in the sky, Jon commanded them to make camp, and soon Jaime found himself tucked between Brienne and Davos, ravenously chowing down the delicious roasted tench Thoros and Quent had caught in the muddy waters and listening to the men enumerate the things they loved about summer.

It was a familiar game, by now, which they played especially when they happened to sleep in the open, to keep the cold and the nightmares at bay.

But when Pod started prattling with his mouth half-full about the many virtues of pretty Ashlynn of Tarth, Jaime stifled a burst of laughter behind his wineskin and caught even Brienne rolling her eyes in fond annoyance. Abiding by the Evenstar's orders, the girl had reluctantly stayed in Winterfell, in attendance to Lady Sansa, and Pod had been inconsolable ever since: like an ardent lover who believed his beloved made the sun rise everyday, the young knight had been unremitting in singing her praises since they took to the road. They all had enough, to be quite honest, but no one had the heart to tell him.

"...And come spring I promised her to bring her back to Tarth. She said she would love to show me the meadows." He halted abruptly, a blush creeping up behind his ears, when he caught the wench's eyes, and hurriedly added: "If it please m'lady, of course."

Oathkeeper laid out across her lap and oilcloth in hand, she spared a moment to give the boy a fleeting smile, half consent half amused exasperation.

"Of course," parroted Bronn, screwing up his face in exaggerated disgust. "Look at you. You've turned soft! You were a legend in King's Landing! A true legend! I'm not even joking: there are songs about his fuckin' cock, allright?" he insisted when the others started snickering. "And now all you do is blathering on and on about the pretty, lush mounds of Tarth! Wasted talent if ever I've seen one!"

"The boy's in love, Bronn. Leave him be!" Davos said, patting a paternal hand on Pod's reddening cheek.

Bronn scoffed.

"In love. Bugger that." He pointed an accusatory finger at Brienne. "This is on you!"

Her head popped up at this. "Me? What do I have to do with it?" she protested with a scandalized chuckle.

"This would've never happened, had he stayed with me in the capital, after Tyrion got arrested!"

"Certainly not," the wench conceded, innocently, her chin high and her eyes a vibrant flame burning blue and bold. "If he stayed with you, he would've learned all the best ways to catch the pox while frolicking around, and die happily from it."

Anguy snorted wine through his nose at this, and even Jon, who was sitting on a stump on the far side of the fire nibbling at his fish without much conviction and hadn't said three sentences in the whole evening, had to laugh out loud.

Despite Pod's heated protestations, Bronn sent him to chop some other wood for the campfire deeper in the grove of sentinel trees which surrounded the edge of the lake, while the others set up the small tents and bedrolls for the night.

The wind brought the echo of wolves howling in the far distance.

Could it be Ghost? No, that white beast never makes a sound, Jaime mulled as he helped Davos unsaddle and water the horses. Another pack, then. But many times, these past few nights, he had the strangest feeling of being watched and followed. Jon had heard the calling, too, and slipped off past the sentries into the woods, quiet as a shadow.

"You should go after him," Davos chided. Jaime pursed his lips and removed bridle and bit from his gelding's head, wishing the old man would take the hint and not pursue the argument any further.

"It is not my place," he replied curtly.

The Onion Knight snatched the harness from his hand. The small pouch he always wore about his neck swung from its leather thong.

"Listen to me. That man... he's been betrayed, stabbed to death and resurrected... I've seen him faltering and failing and trying again, better and harder. He set aside his own wishes I don't know how many times, to follow a greater good. But I've never seen him so lost, not even after the bloody Red Woman brought him back... Even then, he found a purpose. He kept himself alive! But now..." He let out a sigh. "I'm just an old smuggler who's been lucky once or twice on the battlefield and I don't have the answers he's seeking!"

"And I do?" Jaime retorted through gritted teeth, his own distress simmering in the tone of his voice. "What am I supposed to tell him, uhm? How I slew his grandsire?"

How I couldn't keep his half-brother and sister safe?

"Would that make him feel better?"

"That's beside the point," Davos pressed on, stubborn as an aurochs, and loyal to a fault. He grabbed Jaime's arm and stared pointedly at his golden hand. "You know how it feels to lose yourself, for a moment. You know how to get back on your feet."

I don't, he wanted to answer. Brienne did that.

But Davos' steel grey eyes did not relent. "Go to him."

That was not an argument he could win, Jaime realised. The Others take you, bloody fool! Glaring daggers at him, he jerked his arm free, vaguely entertained by the notion that an onion smuggler turned landed knight could have the nerve to push around a Lion of the Rock and former Commander of the Kingsguard, and followed the king into the groove.

He found him on the steep bluff overlooking the lake, huddled against a pine, with his elbows resting on his knees and shoulders slightly slumped over, so deep in thought that he didn't even hear him coming to sit next to him.

In his palm, Rhaegar's ruby twinkled like a dragon's eye; Jaime held out his own hand, in silent, reverent request.

The gemstone looked like an oversized teardrop of blood and when he turned it around his fingers, its many facets cast a dancing glow upon his face: over time, the incessant workings of sand and water had smoothed the precious ornament, rounding its edges, slightly altering its original shape, but Jaime would have recognised that particular cut everywhere. He had been staring at Lannister rubies for all his life.

They were his mother's favourites.

Very few still remembered that the rubies which had adorned the breastplate of Rhaegar's armour came from the mines under Casterly Rock. The gift of the new, young Hand to his friend the king, for his crowning day. The hope of many years of peace and prosperity to come.

Jon's gruff voice broke the silence. "When we were children, Robb and I often dreamed of running away from home to go looking for Rhaegar Targaryen's cursed rubies. A treasure hunt. We used to reenact the Battle of the Trident near the pond in the godswood."

"Who played Rhaegar?"

"I did," Jon admitted with a wistful smile, his gaze lost in the distance. "Robb would always poke fun of me, because I lacked the look."

A rueful grin played on Jaime's lips. The king certainly favoured his mother's colours, but he had a bit of Rhaegar about himself, as well. If one knew where to look. He handed the ruby back and with a low exhale leaned against the pine bark, staring at the waters below, black as maester's ink, and up at the canopy of stars that blinked wanly between the trees branches.

The Isle of Faces stood at the centre of the Gods Eye, imperturbable and mysterious like its secrets. The smallfolk believed it rose on the sacred ground where the Children had sought refuge during the war against the First Men and that their oldest descendants still lived there, or so it was rumoured. For all Jaime knew, the island was inhabited only by weirwood trees and the ghosts of the two thousand westermen who died in the Fishfeed.

Or perhaps only Daemon Targaryen haunts these shores alone, waiting to be reunited with his dragon for a proper burial.

Across the lake, the immense fortress glimpsed at Jaime through the foliage, the grotesque towers a shade darker and grimmer than the night they were wrapped in. King Harren had built them so that they could tickle the gods' feet, soaring higher than any other tower in the Seven Kingdoms. But stone and weirwood melted all the same like a lopsided candle, when the Black Dread descended upon them.

"It's odd. To be back here," he said.

"I suppose this place doesn't hold many good memories for you. Or Lady Brienne."

Jaime chuckled. "I was thinking about Lord Whent's great tourney, actually."

Jon cocked his head at him.

"You were there?"

"For a short while," he nodded. "Just long enough for me to kneel in front of the King and the cheering crowd, as Gerold Hightower put a snowy cloak upon my shoulders for the first time. The greatest honour of my life."

If he closed his eyes, he could still smell the dewy grass under his knees. Feel the wonderful weight of the clean cloak about him. Taste the rightness of the oath blossoming alive in his heart. But Jon must needs understand.

He locked eyes with him.

"It was also a trap."

Even after all those years, the memory still ate away at him. As the harsh truth sank uncomfortable between their silences, Jon's face clouded into a by now familiar frown, so much like Rhaegar's that his breath caught in his throat for a moment.

"It's only for life," he gravely recited the words Jaime had said to him, a lifetime ago.

A warning. A regret.

The hairs at his nape prickled.

"This place changed both our lives."

And changed mine again, forever, when I saved a not-so-fair maiden from a bear.

"Did you... did you meet them?" Jon asked again after a while. Jaime didn't need to ask who he was talking about.

"Not exactly, I..." His mouth went dry. Gods, this was harder than he thought. "The king ordered me back to King's Landing with the Queen and Viserys, just after the starting feast. I briefly glimpsed your mother. Pretty lass. Wild little thing."

Jon was watching him with round, liquid eyes, hanging on his every word, and Jaime dug deeper into his recollections of that night, to find an image of Lyanna Stark that the lad could relate to. That he could hide in his heart and cherish in secret. Just like he did with Joanna.

"Think... Arya, but with longer hair and a bit more grace. Just barely," he granted with affected annoyance and added: "She danced well." Jon's eyes crinkled at the edges, glistening with a genuine twinkle of gratitude.

"As for Rhaegar... I might've been a few days shy of my sixth nameday when I first met him. We travelled to the capital, Cersei and I, for the celebrations in honour of Aerys' tenth year of reign. The young heir didn't exactly leave a lasting impression."

"Why?"

Jaime shrugged.

"Well, he was a nice-looking boy, tall for his age, very well-behaved and very serious, but at the time he was more interested in music and books than in swords and girls, much to Cersei's chagrin."

The memory elicited a smirk. Despite their very young age, his sweet sister had been utterly smitten with him from the start, and had soon lost her already short temper, when she realised that Rhaegar didn't even know she existed.

"For my part, I deemed him rather boring, to be honest," Jaime went on. The more he talked the more the words seemed to come easily, as though a dam inside him had burst. "We didn't have much to talk about, and I was too much younger than him to raise an interest which went beyond the formal politeness required by the circumstances."

In all fairness, he had spent most of his free time badgering Ser Barristan until he agreed to give him some pointers on how to improve his footwork, or staring from afar, mouth agape and eyes brimming with admiration, at Ser Arthur Dayne while he trained his recruits during the morning drills, dreaming to be worthy one day of that same honour.

"It took another tourney to change my mind. A few years later, Rhaegar came to Lannisport. My father staged a month of festivities in honour of Prince Viserys' birth. When I saw the Prince, riding his black stallion, tall and majestic and powerful, with his red-and-black armour and those rubies gleaming in the sun... He was the Warrior come again, and I was completely awestruck."

"My father immediately saw an opportunity to secure his position, and House Lannister's influence, and sought to betroth Cersei to Rhaegar on such a happy occasion. Aerys spurned his request."

'A man does not marry his heir to his servant's daughter', the King had said, very nearly sneering in Tywin's face. Cersei's desperate cries, later that night, were still etched vividly in his mind. With tears of rage streaking her flushed cheeks, she had kicked and screamed at their aunt Genna, calling her a liar, cursing her only because she wasn't their mother, and had only calmed when Jaime had lain down next to her and held her close until she fell asleep. But there was no quelling the quiet storm that brewed in Tywin's cold eyes from that day on.

"Everything went to the seventh hell after that."

"And you were caught in the middle," said Jon and if Jaime detected an undertone of pity in his voice he deliberately chose not to dwell on it.

"Worse than that. I was their pawn. Tossed back and forth between the two of them like a weapon." Resentment still burned like acrid poison in his throat, smothering his shame and the heartbreak for his lost dreams. "I was young and foolish, couldn't care less about politics. The only thing I wanted was to become a knight. I understood the price far too late."

"And Rhaegar didn't attempt to mediate between his father and yours?"

"I don't think he realised how deep Aerys' madness ran. How much his delusions had poisoned his heart against old friends and family alike." He grimaced. "Children oft choose to turn a blind eye when confronted with their fathers' folly."

Wasn't that what Jaime did, too, to fight shy of Tywin's ferocity? To cling to his life's hopes? To survive a loveless childhood, after his mother died?

And didn't he admittedly keep doing that even with Cersei, for most of his adult life, protecting her, enabling her, out of the love he bore for her?

Close your eyes and go away inside.

And then, unbidden, his thoughts flew to a ship sailing from the sands of Dorne... to Myrcella, floating like a golden butterfly into the last, soft rays of summer... how brave and beautiful she was in her last moments, how forgiving, when she had held his flesh hand in hers, with none of her mother's artifice, asking nothing in return. She had openly looked the truth in the eye and when the truth stared back, she didn't baulk away.

She had embraced it.

That kind of strength, forged and tempered from mercy, and faith and the purest innocence, bestowed upon him like a gift, like a promise of better things to come, had warmed him only once, before. When Brienne had similarly held his head above the water, after he had unburdened his sins on her naked skin.

"Is it true the tourney was just a pretext?" Jon inquired, jarring him back to the present. "That Rhaegar had wanted all the major houses gathered together in one place to plot against the king?"

Jaime hesitated. "It's possible." He truly didn't know. 'Changes will be made,' Rhaegar had promised him when he left for the Trident, but, beside that, the prince had not elaborated further.

"Rhaegar didn't make me privy of his plans, but at Harrenhal there was tension between him and the king."

Hushed gossip concerning the existence of a plan to depose Aerys had started making the rounds almost immediately after the tourney. Not at court, where dread and mistrust shadowed every corner and sealed lips and ears. But Jaime watched and listened. He had heard many a version of that particular story: some painted Rhaegar as the unsuspecting scapegoat too much busy pursuing the young Lady Stark to notice the snakes in the grass and Varys, who had helped organize the whole thing, as the real power pulling all the strings; some others whispered that Ser Oswell Whent, on Rhaegar's orders, had convinced his older brother to host the tournament as a decoy, so as to not arouse Aerys' suspicions. The most ludicrous tale Jaime had run across during the years he stood as one of Robert's Seven was the version reporting that Tywin himself, and his gold, were behind the Great Conspiracy of Harrenhal.

'If I had wanted to get rid of Aerys I wouldn't have even bothered raising an army, when he spent six months as honoured guest inside Lord Darklyn's dungeons,' his father had bluntly dismissed the whispers, and no one dared mention the matter again.

"Any diplomatic solution, if ever there was one, was cast aside the moment Rhaegar disappeared in the Red Mountains of Dorne with Lyanna."

"What did you think about it?"

"I was surprised," Jaime admitted. "Troubled, even. Rhaegar was by all accounts a clever man, and this was ill-advised, and very poorly executed, to put it mildly. It was clear it wasn't a whim that needed to be satisfied. There were brothels for that, and Rhaegar has never been that kind of man. I think... I felt sorry for Princess Elia. You know how it is with political matches: it is very rare to fall in love with your intended, and their marriage was not different. But there was mutual respect. And he adored the children. Especially the little girl. The only times I've seen him truly at peace were when Rhaenys was in his arms."

The little princess always had a bright smile for him upon her plump lips, he remembered; except the evening after Aerys burned Rickard Stark to a crisp. Jaime had found her on the steps leading to the nursery, scared and lonely, petting the black cat Rhaegar had gifted her for her third nameday and that she named Balerion. Anguished sobs wracked her body as she turned her wide eyes to him.

'Where's my papa? Why the angry man was screaming so loud? Ser Jaime, when is papa returning home?'

He had no answer to give that wouldn't turn into a cruel lie, so he picked her up, a gloved hand drawing soothing circles on her back, and carried her up the stairs. Halfway to her room, she had already fallen asleep, her brown curls gently tickling against his cheek and her little hands clasped around his neck as though he were the only buoy in the middle of the stormy sea.

Her tears had soaked the collar of his white cloak, and he did not understand how the prince he admired from afar could hurt his own baby girl so much.

Jon needs not know that, Jaime resolved.

And there was no need either for him to know how Aerys publicly blamed Princess Elia for his son's antics. How, in front of Queen Rhaella, Prince Lewyn and the whole court he had insulted the Martells and put her to shame by saying she couldn't even keep her husband into her own bed. 'I was under the impression a Dornish woman would know how to pleasure her man. Do your mothers not teach you these wiles from a very young age?'

Elia, although still weak and barely standing after Aegon's birth, had taken it all in stride, in dignified silence, chin high and proud, and the bloodshot eyes of a woman who had been crying herself to sleep for the last sennight, and Jaime didn't understand any of this.

I do now. I know how love and desire can bring a man to his knees and a realm to ashes.

He observed the man in front of him: his haunted grey eyes and the rigid tension of his shoulders belied his pain, the fire beneath the ice, better than any word.

He is still so very young, despite the crown upon his head.

"You have every right to be angry."

Jon lowered at him.

"Do I?" he seethed, grinding his teeth. No. Anger and pain were just on the surface. Underneath it all, a deeper anguish seeped quietly through the cracks.

"We had a maester in the Night's Watch. An old man, and blind. The wisest person I've ever met. Before he took the black, he had been Aemon Targaryen."

Jaime's head snapped up in surprise. He wasn't aware there had been a dragon among the crows.

"I've been thinking much about him, of late. I'm more and more convinced he knew who I really was. I have no idea how. He just did. Once he told me that love is the death of duty. Is that what happened to my father?" Jon asked, broken. "He forsook everything... wife, two children, the whole realm, for love?"

Was it love? Jaime was at loss. Love and madness looked like two sides of the same coin to him.

How many times had he witnessed it shaping the fates of their world? Rhaegar had only been one of many. It had possessed Robert as well. And before them, Aegon the Unworthy with his thirteen bastards, Daemon Targaryen and his niece, and the Prince of Dragonflies who chose to crown Jenny of Oldstones his queen of love and beauty instead of Jocelyn Baratheon... the tally was boringly long.

The very same madness has consumed me as I lifted Cersei up onto the Mother's altar and thrust into her again and again, next to our son's rotting corpse. And I was still calling it love.

"I'm probably not the best man to pass judgement on that."

Jon scoffed at that. Jaime carried on.

"All I know about love and duty is that there's no middle ground between them. They both demand your utmost devotion, your blood. Your life. They suck you dry until in their wake nothing remains but ashes. Whichever you pick, you always end up sacrificing a part of yourself you will never get back. Not the way it was, in any case. I pray you'll never have to make that choice."

"I already did," Jon blurted out in a whisper and immediately seemed to rue it, as though he had exposed too much of himself already.

"There was a girl. Ygritte. She has been raised to hate everything I stood for. We were two worlds apart. Enemies... until we weren't. I wanted..." he stuttered to a stop and took a laboured breath, his fist closing tightly around Rhaegar's ruby. The raw sorrow in his tone gave Jaime pause. From the doleful way Jon talked about her, it was plain that things didn't end well. He could only suppose the girl was dead. Ygritte... it didn't sound like a northern name... a wildling, maybe? He kept a cautious, respectful silence, waiting for the king to sort out his emotions. When he finally spoke again, his words were still rough, but his eyes were clear.

"I loved her. I would've done anything to be with her. But when the moment came to choose between her and my duty, I rode back to my brothers at Castle Black. That was the hardest thing I had to do."

"Do you regret it?"

"With each damn breath I take," Jon rattled and Jaime understood that the admission made him feel ashamed, as though he feared to uncover in some deep part of his soul the same weakness which led to his father's downfall.

Jon didn't realise he already was a better man than Rhaegar. Far, far better than me, anyway.

"You kept your oaths," Jaime pointed out, kindly. Jon let out a distressed half-laugh.

"Was it even worth it? I wish I could say I'd still do what's right, if I were to choose again. I don't have that clarity anymore."

Jaime dropped his head back against the tree with a sigh. He knew all too well the feeling.

"Only two things used to give me that kind of clarity. Holding a sword in my right hand and fucking my sister."

Everything was sharper, more focused, in bed and into the battlefield. His body, the blood rushing in his veins just took over, and he could soar, free and glorious, guided only by pure instinct and a higher sense of purpose.

He glared at the young man in prideful provocation, almost daring him to take objection, to condemn his sins, but when he saw none of the judgement he expected, he raised his gilded hand to his face.

"You know, when they cut it off, I thought it would've been more merciful to let me die. I've often prayed for it. It was not just the hand I had lost."

"You lost yourself."

"I lost everything. Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. What a sad joke! I couldn't defend my King, couldn't love my sister. I was a shell of a man. Yet I've played the part, donned my white armour until even that was stripped away. I only wanted to keep my family safe. Nothing else mattered. But then the children died, and I couldn't see the point anymore."

Jon considered him, a frown creasing his forehead.

"But you still came to Winterfell. You chose a side, even if it meant going against your blood."

"Blood isn't everything, and I had some debts to pay."

The ghost of the little boy lying on the ground, his back and legs shattered beyond repair was always there between them, reminding Jaime of his penance. Calling him to his duty.

'Serve the realm. Save the city.'

"In the end, a choice is all we have," he said. "There is no turning back. We all must learn to live with the consequences. Rhaegar wasn't perhaps the perfect prince I used to worship in my youth. But I did believe in him. I believed he could become a great king. I would've followed him to the Trident, hadn't he ordered me otherwise. I will follow you, if you let me."

"Why? Only because you discovered I'm my father's son?"

"No. Because I've been watching you. Because I've seen my fair share of unworthy monarchs through the years and I need to believe in something better."

He didn't know when or where, but that seed he thought withered and dead forever, burnt a million times over - upon the same pyre where he had laid to rest the butchered bodies of Aegon and Rhaenys, or buried under the smoking ruins of the Sept of Baelor where his baby boy's ashes had been scattered - that seed had taken root again, insistent, hopeful to the point of foolishness, timidly budding to a new life.

Perhaps it had begun when for the first and only time he had allowed himself to hold Myrcella like a father.

Or perhaps when he yelled sapphires to save a maiden with a knight's heart from a fate worse than death.

Perhaps when he rode through Winterfell's gates with his army at his back, the cold winter air clearing his head, finally his own man.

Perhaps when he started to see in this jaded man, this young king, resilient like Valyrian steel yet vulnerable in his own way, something of himself... there was darkness and despair in Jon as well, and maybe, maybe if he could help him fight it, help him shape from the shadows those dreams of spring into something just and worthy, it would be like saving a part of himself. Then maybe he could lay down his sword and rest.

Every knight is bound by their vows, and a Kingsguard more than most. Jaime had no more oaths to swear, not with words. Words had failed and betrayed him. Words could not help Jon, now, but maybe his sword could.

Perhaps that was just another kind of madness, like love was, but he was foolish enough to try. He was not a coward, after all.

Jon pulled his cloak tighter around himself, almost as if trying to blend in with the grayish canopy of grass, bark and rock.

"I might not be the man you think I am," he muttered.

Jaime smirked, oddly unconcerned. He put his hand on the lad's shoulder and squeezed. "Maybe. But it's a risk I'm willing to take."

And then Jon was intently searching his face for something missing, the eyes of Lyanna and Ned Stark staring at him from beyond the grave, until he finally said: "Why did you kill Aerys?"

His smirk wavered and died.

For a moment everything stopped and Jaime was turned inside out and upside down. All those years caught up with him at once, and he suddenly felt very old and tired.

He felt seventeen again.

Reeling between sickness and disbelief. Crumbling.

He wanted to scream.

He wanted to laugh.

His mouth opened and closed twice before he could find his voice again. "More than twenty years... and you're the first person who asked me."

His lungs burned as though he had been held underwater for too long, and now he didn't remember how to draw breath anymore. Does this boy realise what it means to me?

He had rehearsed his answer day after day, for weeks, for months, each time with a hundred different cadences: witty, scornful, cavalier, boastful, gloomy, proud... but never honest or true, because he knew nobody would care about it. Not Robert, who had sat on his throne, stuffed with wine and arrogance, and merrily waggled a finger in front of him telling him not to make his kingslaying a habit; nor Ned Stark, so prone to pass judgement by only one look. And most certainly not Cersei.

'Don't you want to know why I killed the king?' He had asked her the night of the coronation feast while her deft hands made quick work of his white cloak, pulling him unto the bed with her.

'Why should I care? Aerys is nothing but ashes. Robert is king, now. And I am his queen.'

Twenty years... oh, how many times had he imagined this? Someone stepping up to him with a simple question: Why did you do it? It didn't matter who... One of his sworn brothers, or one of the squires... a serving girl... a perfect stranger casually bumping into his horse on the city's streets... Why did you do it?

No one ever came.

And now that finally there was someone asking, his tongue was wet wool stuck to the roof of his mouth and the words he had carefully woven in his head had dried up in his throat for lack of use.

"There was wildfire under the city streets," Jaime managed to croak out. "All over it. The king gave the order."

His stomach churned. He shut his eyes. Burn them all! Burn them all!

"And while I was watching him bleed to death, on the other side of the Red Keep the Mountain and Amory Lorch were murdering Elia and her babies. On my father's orders."

Silence fell like lead. Jaime's eyes dropped to the ground. He could not bear the commiseration and the disappointment he might glimpse in the boy's look. He didn't know which he feared more.

Just outside the groove, the sounds of the camp reached him muffled and indistinct. The crackling of the fire, the crunching of the snow under leather boots, snippets of conversation, laughter every now and then... Impossible to concentrate on any of this. Blood was rushing in his ears.

"You saved the whole city..." the voice next to him uttered, shocked and horrified at once.

I did.

It wasn't enough.

He couldn't bring himself to say more.

Jon pushed himself to his feet and inched closer to the bluff edge, staring into the darkness ahead.

"You don't regret slaying your king," he spoke, as solemn as a sentence, "but you blame yourself for the death of the children."

There.

That was the truth Jaime had tried to run from for half his life.

It wasn't the children he often dreamed about. It was Rhaegar, riding to him through the mist of his nightmares, his purple eyes ablaze...

I left my wife and children in your hands.

He would have killed Aerys a thousand times more, to hell with his reputation and bloody honour, but the children... Gods, the children...

"Rhaegar..." Jon broke off, let out a heavy sigh and resumed again. "My father made many questionable choices. He has wronged his wife, but perhaps an even greater injustice has been done to you, my lord. He knew what Aerys was, yet he left you, the youngest among the Kingsguard, to deal alone with a nearly impossible situation." He turned around and faced him. "You're not an easy man. I still don't know if I can trust you. Bran will never be able to walk again because of you, I can't forget that. But, for what it's worth, Rhaenys and Aegon's blood is not on your hands."

In stunned silence, Jaime gaped stupidly at him, then stared down at his hands, the flesh and the golden one, as though he didn't really expect to have them still attached to his arms. They were not dripping blood.

They were just... empty.

Seconds stretched and Jon's words still did not seem to make sense. Perhaps sensing his bafflement, the lad offered his left hand and yanked him up.

"You were an ass the first time we met," Snow said, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. The hand still holding his gave a stiff shake. "But I get that now."

Long after the king returned to the camp, Jaime still stood on the cliff, lost in the tangled solitude of his own emotions. His mind rioted with a hundred disjointed thoughts and possibilities, acutely aware of the momentousness of what had transpired. Something had shifted within, yet he still was unsure and wary of what this unlikely comradery, this blunt sort of respect might mean for him. How it would change him.

He does not trust me, not yet. Perhaps he never will, after what I did to Bran.

But he has faith in me.

The thought filled him with a quiet fulfilment, a sense of belonging which was a balm on his wounds.

Killing Aerys had been like setting a broken bone in the wrong way. It had crippled him forever and in more devastating ways than even losing his hand had, and each time he turned to Cersei for comfort, in the attempt to fix what was maimed, he only made it worse.

She couldn't heal me. The grief, the guilt, the shame. She couldn't understand.

And now this young man, this dragon in wolf's clothes, was telling him that there wasn't really anything to fix, after all.

Could it be so simple?

Hope is sweet, he ruminated, and treacherous.

The fresh snow crunched under the heavy steps coming from the camp. Driven from his thoughts, Jaime smiled without turning. He would recognise her ungainly pace even blindfolded.

"Are you all right?" Brienne asked tentatively as she walked up to him.

"I am," he said, sincere, and oddly confused about it.

The wench cocked an eyebrow.

"You sound surprised."

"You sound like you're... not?"

She snorted. "After Harrenhal nothing of what you say or do can possibly surprise me anymore, Jaime Lannister."

He heartily laughed. "That's... actually quite a disheartening notion."

Her eyes scanned the lake and the black fortress overlooking it. "So many good memories..."

Jaime hummed in sardonic agreement. "You trying to kill Bolton with a table knife."

"You fainting in the bathtube," she viciously retaliated without missing a beat.

"You wearing that hideous pink dress."

Another laugh bubbled up again at her gaping mouth and the absolute outrage colouring her cheeks.

"Really?" she quarrelled. "That's what got your attention?"

His lips twitched anew as he allowed his eyes to wander playfully over the length of her. He could've easily named a few other things that had gotten his attention, but that would've been untoward.

Besides, in that dress she had said her farewell to him, and that small, almost insignificant moment was seared on his mind forever. The gown was truly appalling, but she was bathed in moonlight, and his eyes had been helplessly drawn to the creamy length of her neck, the sharp line of her still unblemished collarbone, and he had no business whatsoever wondering how her skin would taste there, not when it was Cersei he wanted, yet his head had swum with a panicked sort of bewilderment at the mere suggestion. It's the fever, he had excused himself, more vexed than he cared to admit, the poison in my blood. But then the wench had started rambling like a fool about rescuing little girls and promises still to be fulfilled, and her already startling eyes had looked so fearless and determined against the very high chance she wouldn't be allowed to keep her maidenhead for much longer, so calm and so, so very blue when she urged him to do the honourable thing and carry out their oath where she couldn't follow, calling him a name which had entirely lost its meaning and worth after what he did, that Jaime could only swallow the lump in his throat and comply without question.

Any bidding of hers, I would've gladly done it. He would have taken her away from Harrenhal at once, ransoming her weight in gold, sapphires, rubies, whatever, had she asked. But she was too brave and stubborn for her own good.

All it took was a dream to stir him into action and Jaime shuddered now at the thought of what might have happened, had he reached the bear pit only a few minutes later.

He wondered if she knew she had saved him just as much.

Brienne beckoned him with a curt toss of the head and started back toward the camp.

"Come. I fear what Bronn might do, if Pod weaves some more bad poetry about Lynn again."

"Did you really mean it?" he called. "What you said about my hand in Winterfell?"

She frowned in confusion. This was hardly the right place for this particular conversation, but Jaime had to know. He crossed the distance dividing them in two strides. "Were you telling me the truth, when you said you think I'm better without it?"

Brienne's chapped lips parted into a soundless intake of breath. She held his gaze, unswerving even as heat rushed to her face. The bittersweet memory of that night in Winterfell took shape and stood between them in all its glorious, blazing details.

How she had lashed out at him at the foot of the Broken Tower, full of wrath and something raw and dizzying and unfathomable he didn't dare call desire; how he had wanted to cut her open and bleeding with his words just as she had him, because it was all too much and that was what he had learned to do with Cersei. Because he didn't know how to make that mulish wench understand. How he had tried to apologise after, inside the solitude of his room, but he could only gawk at her, as drunk and astonished as he was, as she crushed Cersei's lies in her fist like a dead autumn leaf.

She had been so unguarded in her passion, so righteous while defending him that Jaime had nearly forgotten everything else.

His selfishness had hungered for her innocence.

If I had brought her down in the mud with me, I would have never forgiven myself, a part of his soul was reproaching him now. We should have never left that room, another part was rebelling, cursing and crying.

There was something wondrous and tenderly maddening about her now, too, as her eyes lighted up and pulled him even closer.

"I don't lie, ser," she reminded him, as soft as summer breeze.

"Sooner or later, you should learn to. Might even save your life, one day."

"I have my sword, the sword you gave me, to save my life with."

A warm wave of pride surged within him at the words. His eyes flitted to her thumb caressing Oathkeeper's studded hilt, then shifted to his right arm. The golden hand had lost all its shine and appeared dull and worn in all its elegant futility. A dead weight. He lifted it to Brienne's face.

"Cersei had this made, did I ever tell you? My stump positively repulsed her," Jaime recalled, surprised to hear his voice sound so dispassionate about it, as though he were relating some kitchen gossip about another, lesser, man.

He still distinctly remembered how his sister had recoiled from it, how she refused again and again to be touched, even to be near him, unless he had it tucked away and out of her sight... the heartbreak had been excruciating in its sharpness, unbearable like losing his sword hand afresh. Desperate to put back together the broken pieces, he had stubbornly closed his eyes and refused to mourn this rotting thing covered in maggots laying at their feet. Misery and humiliation and accusatory silence soon had filled their days and nights to the brim, until Jaime could not cope with it any longer.

The pain had become a dull ebb, distant like an almost forgotten dream. Brienne's blue eyes bound him to the here and now.

"We weren't mirror images anymore and she could not stand it," Jaime said. "She hated the empty space."

The empty space through which you slipped in.

Her head tilted to the side, Brienne studied the metallic appendage with a slight frown.

"It looks terribly uncomfortable."

"Feels even worse, I promise you that."

He could see another question forming on her lips: Why don't you just take it off, then?

Why, indeed.

She stared back at him, and stared and stared, her eyes a sea of tranquillity, honest and revealing, strong just like that night in Harrenhal, waiting for him to figure out the truth, and he peered down at his hand, grinding his teeth. Loathing his own weakness. I can't let it go. Not yet. When Brienne's gloved hands reached for his right wrist, Jaime froze. Her touch was impossibly gentle, just as he remembered it from their journey together. Through the haze of pain and fever, her hands holding him, big and comforting, scrubbing him clean, salvaging what was left of his dignity, were the only anchor mooring him to life.

His world had shrunk to the solid reality of her.

Her body. Her voice.

And now, as her fingers brushed the straps which bound the golden contraption to the stump, his skin tingled in nervous anticipation, yearning for freedom, and dreading it. But she didn't release him. Instead she cast her eyes down and murmured, with a strange intensity that made her words tremble: "We don't get to choose whom we love."

Hearing his own line tossed back at him was like a slap in his face. Like being doused awake by the Trident's frozen waters.

Was it an absolution?

Or a confession?

"It's a lie," Jaime blurted out before he could make up his mind.

'Everyone's got a choice,' Tormund's wise words rang clear and true like the first time he had heard them in Winterfell's courtyard. 'You just took the easy route.'

Seven save me, that fucking wildling was right.

The hand. Cersei. The love he thought they shared like a common destiny. "It's all a lie," he repeated and grabbed her right hand with his left. "My lady, I -

The high-pitched neighing of frightened horses split the silence of the night. They both turned their heads, startled. Before he could stop her, Brienne was barging back into the clearing, Oathkeeper unsheathed and ready, but abruptly halted at the edge of the groove: a few feet from them, Quent lay gurgling on the ground with an arrow stuck in his throat. Around the dwindling fire, half a dozen crossbows were aimed at Jon and the others, while another dozen foot soldiers crept closer across the line of the trees. There was no point in reaching for their swords: they were surrounded and outnumbered almost three to one. Overall, a fair fight, Jaime mused coldly. If I still had two hands.

The man who supposedly was in charge had his back to the two of them, but Brienne gasped in recognition, and he noticed her grow pale. When the man turned around he understood why.

We should've taken the road north.

His phantom fingers clenched in pain.

"Steelshanks!"

The captain barked an exaggerated happy laugh in greeting.

"Kingslayer! Fancy meeting you here!"

Jaime schooled his expression as to give no sign of discomfiture and darted a quick look around him. If the Bloody Mummers had been the scum of the kingdom, this group of outlaws and mercenaries was even worse. Vermin vomited by the deepest hell. A sturdy Ibbenese with warts peppering the spots on his face that were not covered by a coarse bush of black hair; a red-headed lad who could not have been older than twenty, wearing a tattered mud-grey cloak with the Seven-Pointed Star stitched on it. Jaime could be wrong, but he didn't look particularly pious, if that necklace of seemingly human entrails were any indication.

Another one was as ugly as Sandor Clegane, missing ear and puckered scars included, but stank considerably more.

One of the archers, whose shaft was currently holding both Anguy and Thoros on a standstill, had a shock of shaggy brown hair and sunken, hollow eyes that wouldn't have cut a poor figure on a cadaver. To his belt was strapped a bone flute as thin as he was.

Although they all wore nondescript black clothes and armour, he recognised Gold Cloaks, as well, and a few Frey and Westerlands soldiers who served under him in the Riverrun campaign.

No, these weren't simply the leftovers of the Bloody Mummers, Jaime realised with a chill.

These were something else.

"New friends?"

"A man must make do with what he's got," Steelshanks replied with casual insolence. "Besides you've got your handful of champions yourself. There's Ser Bronn, hero of the Blackwater, and Anguy the Archer and... I don't know who these four are," he pointed his thumb at Davos and the three remaining Stark men, "but they surely look fearsome, and... fuck me with a spear if this isn't Thoros of Myr! Old mad sot! I thought you dead in a ditch somewhere in the Riverlands!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Jaime perceived a movement in the foliage to his left.

Podrick.

The lad was there, frozen behind the bushes by Jon's garron, just out of sight, with his arms full of twigs and logs for the fire, his sheathed sword and a small axe strapped on either sides of his belt.

With an almost invisible shake of the head, Jaime signalled him to stay put.

Neither Steelshanks nor his men seemed aware of his presence, but the Red Priest inconspicuously shifted his weight just enough to block the former Bolton soldier's line of vision.

"These are the Riverlands, you utter idiot."

Steelshanks' brown teeth flashed into a nasty grin.

"There's still time for that ditch, then. The night is dark, after all, and full of terrors. And what else have we got here?" he tipped his head to one side, his gaze sharpening with interest when he spotted Jon. Jaime tensed. "Isn't that the Bastard of Winterfell? I've met your father, once or twice. You're a chip off the old block."

"What do you want, Walton?" Jaime snarled, trying to draw the sellsword's attention away from the king and onto himself.

Steelshanks turned to him, holding up both hands. "I want no trouble. Just give me what I'm here for and my men and I will leave."

"Which is?"

"You, my lord. I've come to escort you back to the capital. Queen Cersei's orders."

Of course. She has sent her best knights to beat this mangy old lion into submission.

He stepped up, determined not to give her the satisfaction of coming meekly.

"And if I refuse?"

Sunken Eyes squealed with a maniacal shrilly laughter. The others joined in with brays and jeers of their own. Steelshanks closed in on him.

"You didn't grow back your hand, but I see your sense of humour has greatly improved. Did I give you the impression you had a choice?"

"Ser Jaime is not given leave to go," Jon said. Jaime shot him a warning glare. Don't. Stop right there. "Tell his sister his sword belongs to me now."

Walton's eyebrows quirked up to his hairline and Jaime suppressed the urge to yell at Snow. Surprised gratitude and annoyance and panic mixed together in the stiffening of his shoulders, the clenching of his jaw.

"Very touching," Steelshanks said, clearly amused. "Very, very stupid, too. Speakin' of which... Lady Brienne!" he addressed her for the first time and a blind, paralysing terror nearly knocked the air out of him. "Still donning mail and leather. I see that time and circumstances have made you none the wiser."

The soldier looked her over, gave a stern shake of the head as though disappointed, and added: "I have a message for you. From the Queen."

Her face was a mask, but Jaime knew the storm in her eyes.

She is furious, not afraid.

"What is the message?"

From the bushes behind them came a rustling. A twig snapped. The darkness moulded itself around a moving shape, growing bigger and bigger as it crawled closer. The light of the fire danced on the maggoty, misshapen face, over the bald head.

Cersei's last gift.

The aurochs smiled at Brienne. His teeth were sharp like a beast's fangs.

"Me."

But hardly had he taken a step forward when his spine arched backwards and the savage sneer twisted into a surprised grimace of pain. His enormous hands flailed blindly behind his back and pulled off the axe lodged in his shoulder.

Podrick's axe.

The rest all happened in a heartbeat.

As Jon and Thoros launched themselves at the Gold Cloaks, still baffled for the surprise attack, Podrick came rushing from the thicket screaming TARTH! TARTH! at the top of his lungs, his sword neatly severing the arm of a slender man with the weak chin and the weasel face of a Frey.

The aurochs was not dead, but the wound had definitely pissed him off. Mad as a dog foaming at the mouth, he whirled the axe red and dripping in his hand and charged at Brienne.

The wench was ready, and so was Jaime. He quickly moved to her right and slid Widow's Wail across the neck of the closest westerman. Dennis, his name was. He was a Plumm, or a Lydden, Jaime couldn't recall. He finished him off quickly, while around him the night erupted into a chaos of screams and steel clashing. Jon's garron screamed and reared, pulling madly at his rope, when an arrow took him in the rump. More arrows hissed past Jaime's head, clattering off the rocks, sticking into the tree barks.

Brienne's gigantic opponent was raining blow after blow over her. He didn't look like he would be tiring soon, but Jaime recognised her moves. It was the same trick she used against him, as well. Let him come at you, wench. Jaime saw her sliding away from him and backing into the groove and realised she was trying to separate the giant from the group and bring him on the rough terrain of the cliff, where her swift footwork would be an advantage. Jaime ground his teeth and blocked one of Walton's attacks to his right side. He could not follow her.

To his left, Bronn was fighting against the uglier and stinkier version of Sandor Clegane with a sword in each hand.

Under his boots, the snow was turning into a slick, reddish pulp. There were other bodies on the ground. Jaime didn't stop to look.

"The Queen paid me a good deal of money to bring you back alive," Steelshanks hissed as he parried a cut to his head. "But she didn't say into how many pieces." His greatsword skidded down the Valyrian steel to the hilt. The sellsword was strong, stronger than him with just one hand, but slower and dumber. Jaime swivelled and slashed at Walton's legs. Window's Wail bit through his left greave. Walton went to one knee, wincing. Jaime raised his blade, ready for the killing blow. Somewhere to his right, someone was singing The Rains of Castamere. The sound unnerved him. He chanced a look and saw Sunken Eyes drawing his bow, the barbed point of the nocked arrow aimed at Jon.

All thought fled from Jaime's mind.

He shot ahead, hacking his way past faceless enemies, and rammed his shoulder into the king, shoving him out of harm's way. The arrow pierced his flesh between pauldron and breastplate, through the mail and leather beneath. He barely noticed. Jon lurched back to his garron, grabbed the mysterious round bundle strapped to the horse's side and raised it just as other arrows flew at them.

A battered shield.

But before he could wonder why Howland Reed would give Jon such a poor gift, Jaime saw Davos on the ground, groaning half-unconscious with his fingers pressed to his open belly. The small redhead dressed like a septon was looming over him, with a crazed smile on his lips and a dagger dripping blood in his hand. Thoros' red cloak swirled in Jaime's line of vision, a blurred angry shape as the Myrish priest darted across the camp and slammed the cutthroat on the ground. At least five arrows were sticking out of his body at odd angles. He ripped one off his left side and stabbed the Septon in the face, again and again, shrieking curses... The burly Ibbenese was screaming too, his hands batting at his eyes, trying to shelter them from the scorching embers Jon had just thrown at him. The revolting smell of burning flesh soon filled the air.

The Ibbenese suddenly toppled face forward, the hot iron skewer they had used to cook the fish jutting from the back of his head. By the time he fell, both Jon and Jaime were fighting someone else.

"There's too many of them!" the king cried out.

Jaime surveyed the camp. Bronn was still standing, exchanging blows with Walton, and Anguy was still loosing arrow after arrow using the trees and the horses as cover, but the bodies of the Stark soldiers were carpeting the ground like fallen leaves, and with Davos and Thoros either wounded or dead...

Podrick... where the hell was that wretched boy?

A bloodcurdling shriek rose from the groove.

Brienne...

His feet moved on their own... and then a fire of pain split his skull apart and the ground rose to meet him.

He tasted blood and bile and pine needles. Hot needles were thrust into his brain. His head was ringing. Spinning. The whole world had turned on his axis and was spiralling out of control.

He faintly heard his own name and someone yelling at him to get up and fight.

It was Bronn's voice, and Brienne's voice and his brother's. And Brandon Stark was there, too.

Get up.

She needs you.

Your king needs you.

"He's the fucking King in the North, don't kill him! He will make a nice gift for the Queen," he heard Walton shout.

His limbs weren't complying.

Through the blood trickling into his half-opened eyes, he perceived a ripple in the air above him, a rustling of leaves, a fluttering of... wings? Blurry black lines coming from out the thicket... by the dozens... by the thousands... were the trees moving?... A jolt of sickness spiked through his body when he tried to roll over, groping blindly about him in search of his sword with the wrong hand...

Brienne...

The voices were screaming, now, but they weren't inside his head anymore.

Men were scattering in the woods. A tangle of legs and hands swatting away something at their faces. Their eyes were crying crimson tears.

Steelshanks was calling for a retreat and, in his head, Jaime was roaring with laughter.

No man can fight a bear with his bare hands, Steelshanks! Has nobody ever told you?

The snow at his back was cold, and welcoming. Jaime sucked in a raspy breath, wishing they would let him curl into his cloak and rest for a while, until spring, perhaps, but rough hands were grabbing him, dragging him away and he felt himself falling and falling and falling, until the fluttering stilled and his eyes could only see darkness ahead.

Sooo... let's start from the bottom...

You might remember that in CERSEI III, I introduced Steelshanks and his merry band of outlaws with the purpose of them being the most imminent threat to Jaime and the others. For the book readers, the fighting at the end is heavily indebted to AFFC, BRIENNE VII, of course, but I also wanted to make things a bit different, so I chose to keep my focus on Jaime, and have Brienne fight off-screen (but don't worry: you'll know what has become of our girl in the next chapter). Anyway, fighting scenes are hard, so if you've enjoyed it, do let me know.

The heart of the chapter is, obviously, the talk between Jon and Jaime: when I was still in the early stages of development, one thing was clear to me: I had to make this conversation actually more important to Jaime than it was for Jon! It might seem crazy, considering that it's Jon who's currently having his identity crisis, but there were so many unresolved things about Jaime, and his grief and trauma, the clash between love and duty, and what it meant for him killing Aerys and not being able to save Aegon and Rhaenys... all of this just resounded with me. So I shaped the conversation around it, and I think that having Jon forgive him at the end, for something Jaime didn't even do, but he always carried it within himself like a sort of original sin, is kind of ironic, but it's also a very powerful image, and the first brick (sorry Show!Jaime, no pun intended) on which to rebuild Jaime's sense of self and honour.

Because, the way I see him, Jon is like this. A kindred spirit. And he's better than Rhaegar, and he's definitely better than Ned, too. If you want to further discuss this, you know what to do! ;)

I've always thought about this chapter as a slow descent to hell, where the sense of foreboding grows heavier and heavier as we progress: first the Twins, then the Trident, then Harrenhal, with all its symbolic meaning for both our leading men, and even the small moments of peace and light (Jon finding Rhaegar's ruby, Jaime's atonement, Brienne forcing him to come to terms with his feelings) all of it still got an undercurrent of uneasiness, an anxious edge to it I wanted to bring forth, up till the final showdown. I truly hope I've managed to get all this through my writing.

Because, in the end, Cersei is always there, and there could not be redemption and a happy ending without going through a bit of hell first.

(And I'm not implying A Wreath of Thorns will have a happy ending...)

PS: "No man can fight a bear with his bare hands" is the actual line Steelshanks says to Jaime at the end of ASOS JAIME VI. I thought it funny to reference it here.