[ fic ] my fingers laced to crown ; cersei/jaime, game of thrones
Written for the prompt "the history books forgot about us..." by midnightblack07, happy holidays!
my fingers laced to crown » game of thrones. cersei/jaime. pg-13. 822 words.
One day, they will be remembered for the things that mattered least. warnings: incest. I own nothing of the show/books/characters/etc.
When they are children, Cersei is better at their history lessons than he is. Jaime blames this on the fact that he’s always been one to let his sister win when it comes to matters he doesn’t care about; he’s more interested in swordplay than books anyway. So he lets their maester chide him when he can’t answer questions properly, and holds back his own little grin when Cersei rattles off a list of kings and queens of Westeros, sitting up so straight and proud.
He wonders, there in Casterly Rock, at the age of ten, if the reason that Cersei cares so much more about knowing the names of all these people of old is because she wants people to one day remember her name.
But like many random ideas of daydream, the thought doesn’t stick in his head very long before something else takes its place.
He never thinks to ask her.
He kills Aerys Targaryen and in doing so brands himself Kingslayer as long as he will live - and longer.
And Cersei, she weds Robert Baratheon, a black and gold mantle draped over her shoulders - red and gold, he wants to correct them all, his sister should never wear anything but red and gold - and he knows this will be recorded in archives of the monarchy. He wonders how many years it will be before boys and girls will be sat down by maesters to list off ‘Cersei Lannister, King Robert Baratheon’s queen’, wonders what legacy she will leave behind her.
(He hears mutterings from the people he passes - it is all so fresh, or maybe it’s only in his head - and he already knows what he will be remembered for. He wonders what the point of anything is supposed to be now, if that’s already determined for him.)
Cersei tells him that her child will be his, and he thinks that this is supposed to be a moment in which men feel proud. His sister sounds relieved, giddy and scornful all at once, and he smiles at her, cups her face in his hands and kisses her mouth, if only for something to do with his own besides waiting for the wrong words to come.
He has imagined it before, Cersei bearing his child, but there is something so disjointed in the need to pretend that it is Robert’s, and he cannot quite bring himself to accept this as what he’d imagined.
“Are you happy, Jaime?” she whispers, when they’re tangled in her bed and he is trying to drown himself in her, her taste, her smell, her touch, all of her, anything but the words that came from her mouth.
But he says “I am”, kisses her again, and pretends for one too short second that none of this is secrecy, that they can damn the rest of the world and forget it all.
And months later, when Cersei finally gives birth to their son and holds him tight to her, never letting Jaime take the boy in his arms, he feels the same irrational, overpowering surge. Damn them all.
This too is a moment when men are supposed to feel proud, and Jaime instead reflects that there is something suitably ironic in that which should make him most proud needing to be kept his biggest secret of them all.
Damn the rest of the world, indeed, for they’ll never know.
Years pass, and still no one finds anything else to remember him for other than Kingslayer.
Jaime sits in the round room of the White Sword Tower, runs his fingers over the pages of the White Book - one page, specifically: his own. No one’s ever accused his family of being less than narcissistic, after all. He snorts.
His page lists everything that he will be remembered for, all simply and plainly put, all the details of his life that anyone will ever need to know. The legacy of the men of the Kingsguard is a much easier affair to judge. His becoming a knight, the battles he’s fought, it’s all listed. Killed Aerys Targaryen, it says too.
Aerys Targaryen, not the Mad King. They always forget that part.
He wonders if they will sing songs of the Kingslayer, if he will be mocked, if Aerys will be glorified. He should care more, he thinks, but he only feels tired. It is odd, to consider that the times he is living now will be the times of legend for future generations of men.
And he will be known to them only as Kingslayer; not a single song will mention the girl he loved with golden hair, or how he struggled across a continent to return to her. And the only tie he will have to the royalty he listed off as a child will be as a murderer.
He will be remembering for slaying kings, not fathering them -
And never for loving a queen.