Chapter Text
Blue eyes.
Bright and big and beautiful blue eyes; deep and dark and almost otherworldly. They were the first thing he saw in the darkness. They kept him safe, protected and warm. He would be alright so long as he had those beautiful eyes to keep him grounded.
A form emerged from the darkness then, the person to whom those beautiful blue eyes belonged to. A cool silvery blue light surrounded the tall, pale woman who wore nothing but a red sword belt around her thick waist and a lion hilted sword in its scabbard.
She was the only light in the darkness. She was the only light in his world.
The girl was crying. She was crying and he wanted to run to her, embrace her, wrap her in his arms and protect her from whatever made her want to weep because he knew she would do the same to him but he couldn’t. He was stuck, he couldn’t move.
“I want to help.” he told her, his voice echoing in the vast emptiness. “Let me help you.”
“Don’t go!” she said through her sobs. “You can’t go, she’ll kill you! Please!”
Another light broke the crest of the darkness; blinding, cold, lacking any semblance of warmth or kindness or caring like the light around the tall woman.
It was hateful, and dragging him back, back, back away from the woman with the beautiful blue eyes.
“Help me!” They were both stretching out for the other but the light was dragging him back further and further.
“Don’t leave!” she cried again. He could almost feel the brush of her finger tips against hers as she fought to save him, to keep him near her, to keep him near her beautiful warm light. “Don’t go! You need to hang on! Please!”
“Help me!”
“ Please!”
But the light flashed a bright and blinding white, and with a gasp; the woman disappeared, and he woke up.
The world was one of pain and pounding. His head hurt, his side ached, and every muscle was pulled taut and tight.
“Help me,” he muttered, clenching his eyes tight hoping to be back in the darkness with the tall woman again. “Please... please.”
Another voice, once that didn’t belong to the woman who tried to save him cried out. “Qyburn he's waking up!” Hands laid on his face and he flinched at the sharp nails that dug into his cheek.
“Help me,” he moaned again.
“Shh…” a voice purred. The hand left his face and ran through his hair. “Shh, you’re alright now. You’re alright.”
He opened his eyes to find a face floating above his, beautiful with bright green eyes, sharp angles and a flawless complexion. Her hand cupped his stubbled bristly face. “You’ve been out for nearly a week,” the woman said. “The dragon queen destroyed half the castle before one of the scorpions managed to bring her and her monster down but we both managed to survive.”
“Dragon queen?” he muttered as he tried to sit up, falling back down on the pillows again when nausea and a spinning head threatened to overwhelm him. Her words were easily understandable on their own. He knew what a dragon was, what a castle was, what a queen was. But he had no recollection of the event she was talking about that involved them apparently surviving an incident that involved all three of those. “What dragon? Survived what?”
Her expression turned rather cross. “Don’t be stupid Jaime. I’m talking about Daenerys and her assault on the Red Keep.”
Neither ‘Daenerys’ or ‘Red Keep’ had any connection to him, it didn’t spark anything but the other word she said; Jaime...
“Jaime,” he mused, tasting the name on his tongue. It wrapped him in the warmth of familiarity and a tiny flicker of recollection. “Jaime… Yes, my… my name is Jaime.” He looked at the woman. “And who are you?”
The anger in her eyes faded into fear. “Qyburn!” she yelled again, and this time her calls summoned an old man with scraggly robes and greying hair came into the room. There was a pleasant grandfatherly look about him and the way he smiled wanted to put him at ease but there was something about him that simply seemed… off. “Somethings wrong with him,” she barked as he approached the bed. “He doesn’t know who I am.”
Old gnarled hands that stunk of age and chemicals gently grabbed his face and turned him towards him.
“Sometimes with head trauma there can be memory issues. Ser Jaime, I’m Qyburn. I’m the Hand of the Queen.” Ser. Yes. That title felt right as well. Flashes of the blue eyed woman swam before him at the mention of it. “Do you know your last name?”
“Of course I do,” Jaime said, utterly exhausted at what was sure to be an easy question. “It’s…” But he drew nothing but a blank on what should have been the easiest of any question asked of a man. His silence stretched on and on, and he swallowed the dread threatening to overwhelm him.
Qyburn smiled a reassuring smile. “Do you know who I am? Who she is?” he asked nodding towards the other woman in the room.
Jaime looked from the older man to the anxious woman, concentrating, thinking, struggling for some semblance of memory or recollection but you may as well have asked him to grow a second head.
“Do you know where you are?”
He looked around a large white circular room. A round table, a large bed with white bedding… He knows it should be familiar, he knows he should know the answer but he didn’t. He drew a blank, as he did about the rest of his life and memories.
“No,” he answered, a panic starting to overwhelm her. He reached out to the woman with his right arm. She was the first face he saw, she had been by his side, he was supposed to know her… surely she would give him some comfort. Instead she grimaced in disgust at the gesture and pulled away. When he looked down to see what had caused such an adverse reaction, he began to tremble with fear.
“What happened to my hand?!” he screamed, looking with wide frightened eyes at nothing but a heavily scarred stump. There was no blood, no tender red flesh, no pain and no stitches so it had not happened recently but even still… Jaime may not have remembered much, but he DID remember you were supposed to have two hands to go along with two arms.
“You lost it some years ago, Ser Jaime,” Qyburn answered the panicking man in a voice meant to soothe and calm. “I was the one who relieved you of the infection that set in afterwards.”
“But what happened to it!? Did I lose it in battle?”
“No you lost it-.”
“Stop.”
Both men turned towards the blonde woman who was eyeing the bed bound men carefully. She took a step forward towards the bed, to make up for the distance lost when she cringed away from his stump. “You don’t remember how you lost your hand? You don’t remember anything about that night? About what led to it or what came after?”
Jaime closed his eyes and thought and struggled, desperate to recall anything, something about that night but there was nothing. Nothing but…
“Screaming,” he muttered as he opened his eyes again. “I remember screaming. Not mine though. I-... it’s a woman’s scream I’m remembering.”
“Yes,” she said, running her fingers through his hair again before she took hold of his remaining hand. “You remember a woman’s scream, because you lost it protecting a woman from being dishonored and raped.” The woman smiled, and the green in her eyes were bright and beautiful. “You lost it protecting me.”
Jaime nodded slowly. Yes… yes that seemed right. The black fuzziness started to fade away and he saw a woman bound and fighting, screaming.
A short haired blonde woman he wanted to protect.
She leaned down and pressed her lips to his. He hissed in pain when she took his bottom lip between her teeth and bit down, drawing a trickle of blood but the she’s pain sent a stirring in his stomach and even lower. “Your name is Jaime of House Lannister, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard,” she whispered in his ear, sending a shudder that was not wholly unpleasant throughout him. “I am Cersei of House Lannister, the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”
Cersei took his face in her hands and turned his face to hers. Her nails dug into his flesh. “I am your wife. I am your queen. You are my Lord Commander, and you… you are my lover. It’s always been the two of us against the world, two bodies, one soul…” She kissed him again, hard and pressing and his head swam. “No one else matters but us, we’re the only ones who matter, the only ones in this world.”
“How long have we been together?” he asked against her soft, sweet lips.
“Since we were children. You were my first as I was yours. You love me more than anyone in this world.” Her hands have come up to brush his shoulders and she clutched at him painfully tight, as if she were angry for some reason. “You have never been with anyone else. You love no one else but me. You lost your hand for me.” Her hands tan through his hair again and she gave it a yank, making the dull throbbing in his head a sharp stab and he winced. “You belong to me, Jaime. Say it,” she said sharply. “Remember it.”
“I belong to you,” he said, his voice more uncertain than sure footed like she would have liked.
Cersei kissed him, dancing her tongue across his. “Again. Say it again.”
“I belong to you,” Jaime said louder, wrapping his arms around her. “I belong to you, I belong to you…”
This felt familiar. Not right perhaps, but this was familiar. Her words were familiar… “We’re going to rule the Seven Kingdoms side by side,” she told him. “We will take what is ours, Jaime. We will destroy the North, and anyone who threatens to tear us apart.” Her smile grew dangerous, cunning and cold. It sent a shiver down his back. “And I swear to you, we will destroy the woman who tried to come between us…”