What Was Left

Chapter 1

He had thought death should have been much less painful. Then again, he was certain that he was far from any sweet glorious Heaven. He seemed caught in a churning tide. All at once he was brutally aware of the searing pain that tormented his body. It was almost more than he could bear. His muscles attempted to writhe in agony. However, his aching bones refused to move and kept him pinned in place, lying, waiting. Then, just as quickly, he succumbed to nothingness. An all encompassing void in which he ceased to exist. Then pain again, and once more the dark emptiness would creep upon him. Perhaps this was what Hell felt like. Jaime knew he more than deserved an eternity of such torture. He could abide it better than the remorse he had felt when he left her. It was more agreeable than the pain that shown upon her angelic face as she pleaded with him not to go. More welcome the feeling was than the hurt in Brienne's astonishing blue eyes. He could not bring himself to look into them that night. Jaime could see them clearly now, before him. Not filled with tears and anguished like the last time he had gazed upon her, but shining and bright and happy as he remembered from the moon they spent together lost in love and each other's arms. It was a torture.

Jaime felt it strange that it was not Cersei who should hover in his thoughts, constantly. She was, after all, the one to whom he had returned. The one for whom he had abandoned his true love. They had died together, had they not? He was happy his thoughts should fall upon the one he had loved. He had stood there, in the crumbling foundations of the Red Keep, certain he was going to die, his arms wrapped around Cersei, while his every fiber cried out for Brienne, as it did now. He had once thought Cersei his soulmate. He had been so very wrong.

As he and Cersei stood together amidst the devastation of Daenarys Targaryen's dragon fire Jaime had comforted his sister, but that was all she was to him now. No longer did he covet Cersei. He had not kissed her. He wished not for the taste of her kiss on his lips. Neither had he declared his love her. Cersei no longer possessed his heart. He would not die with her name on his lips. His lust for her had ceased the moment he rode away from King's Landing, heading North to Brienne. His mind, his heart, and even his body did not think of her as the woman he loved. That place now belonged to another. The one he had abandoned, the woman who had made him feel loved, honorable, and whole for the first time in his life. He had left her. There had been no other way. It was the only thing he could do to keep her safe.

Even now, Jaime's heart shuttered in terror to think of what Cersei would have done to Brienne if she had ever discovered the truth of the love he held for her. So he had told Cersei whatever lie she needed to believe, shepherded her to the depths of the castle he knew would not last, and resolved to die with her, to sacrifice himself for Brienne. It had been to save the one he truly loved. The ultimate act of his adoration for her.

Jaime had not sped back to the Capital with the intention of ending Cersei's life. He had resigned himself to living the rest of his days trapped in a charade, pretending to love her, as he yearned in secrecy for Brienne. He would be father to the babe she carried. At least there would be the child. It shocked him how quickly his plan had changed, almost as rapidly as his mind realized the truth. He knew immediately when he saw Cersei, her belly still as flat as the day he had left her. There was no child.

Moons had passed. He had been each time a moon upon the road to and from Winterfell. Cersei had been at least that far along with she had told him of the babe. After that, Jaime had spent another glorious turn in the arms of Brienne. Cersei should have been swelling with life upon his arrival. She was not. It had all been a lie. Another in a lifetime of falsehoods meant to trap him under her manipulation and control. It was then that he finally realized the depths to which Cersei would go to have her way. It had been anger and realization that had filled Jaime's will. He had not mourned even the thought of the child for whom he had returned. He questioned whether it was because he had never truly been certain that the babe was actually his. Then he realized that perhaps his lack of emotion was because the child he desperately would have wanted in life would have been pillar tall, with yellow hair and the same lovely sky-toned eyes as its mother. The child his heart had yearned for, was the seed he had hoped to plant in Brienne's womb. In that moment Jaime had known that whether it was by dragonfire or his own blade, he could not let the sun set that day with Cersei alive. The moon would rise upon her lifeless form, somehow, even if he had to die with her, for Brienne's sake.