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i
King Aerys says Lord Tywin has lost sight of the difference between being a father and being the Father, or so the servants at Casterly Rock whisper. Jaime hears everything he’s not supposed to and yet is deaf to everything else, Mother always says, but she never fails to smile at the sight of the boys, two drops of gold alike in every way, running about the castle. She is too tired to follow them around much these days, and over time even Cerion adjusts to increasing time spent at her knee listening to stories rather than playing games - Cerion’s love of games is the only thing greater than his hatred of losing them - as she supervises.
“Are you going to have twins again?”, Jaime asks eagerly, seated near the fireplace in Mother’s chambers. He’s asked before, but she said it was too early to know. Cerion points that out and Jaime is about to say something back, but Mother cuts off the looming squabble with one of her expert glances as she answers.
“The maesters don’t believe so, sweetling. I was much bigger with the two of you.”
“Because of me?”, Cerion cuts in. He had been born a little bigger, Mother says that much is true, with his little brother holding onto his heel. Cerion loves that story, makes Mother tell it yet again - Jaime loves it too most days. Cerion might tease him about being the younger, but they both know what the story truly means. Two halves of a whole, closer than brothers, inseparable. Father doesn’t care much for that sort of talk even at the best of times (Mother says Father thinks it’s important to get them used to the fact that they will not both inherit the Rock - the one sense in which they are for some reason not the same), so they don’t say it out loud except to each other. It is a fact of life anyway, indubitably true in the same way that they are indubitably the sons of Lord Tywin and Lady Joanna, the little lords of Lannister. One little Lannister lord, split in two, each as golden and hale as the other. The pride of Father and Mother and of the very Lannister name itself, or so they all say. It is a comfort.
ii
Doubt starts gnawing in Jaime only days after their mother has died, leaving behind little Tyrion in her place. Tyrion looks funny and makes funny noises and he's the only thing they have left of Mother except each other, but in his presence Cerion’s laughter is mocking and his words are outright cruel, and that’s when he even acknowledges Tyrion’s existence. Jaime has asked him why, has even hit Cerion once when he - in a particularly black rage - told Jaime he was going to throw Tyrion into the sea. Cerion keeps saying that Father speaks the truth, that it was Tyrion who killed their mother, that he's bad because he made her bleed with that deformed head of his. Jaime doesn’t think that makes any sense, but then again it wasn’t Cerion who disgraced himself by crying almost every night through for a week after Mother’s death while his brother had to hold him and shush him like he was an infant, or some especially prissy little girl. Jaime figures that sort of thing is why the gods decided that Cerion, and not him, should be the firstborn son and heir. Maybe they're not quite the same after all. (Jaime doesn't like to think about that.)
Jaime tries to watch over Tyrion as best he can. No one in the castle ever looks at him, barely even the nursemaids. He’s just a little boy, though, albeit littler than most, not a monster like Jaime’s heard they say around Lannisport. (Like Cerion always says.) It’s Jaime who teaches Tyrion to walk once he's ready, up and down the long corridors of Casterly Rock while telling him the best stories he knows, the ones of noble knights and great deeds. Though Tyrion learns to walk late he is still only a few years old, but he always seems to understand so much more than anyone is expecting, and Jaime likes to be able to do something for someone for once. It’s not the sort of thing he can tell Father and expect him to be proud of, but Jaime figures that Father will surely hate it even more if Tyrion never learns to use his legs.
Jaime doesn’t let Cerion see, as guilty as it makes him feel to not share quite everything with his twin. He knows Cerion knows, anyway - it’s just that he always tries to make it stop, shaking his head at Jaime and sneering at Tyrion. It’s best to do it when he’s away. Tyrion is young enough that he spends most of his time in his nursery regardless, so most often it’s still just Cerion and Jaime, like it’s always been. They take lessons together from the master-at-arms and play with swords incessantly even in their spare time - they’re evenly matched, and they both fight to win. They like to lord wins over each other too, but it’s never serious, and it makes Jaime feel good to train with swords even when he loses - though he’d never tell Cerion that. (In these moments it makes Jaime feel sick to the stomach to remember that he's ever found himself doubting their oneness. If he had been the heir, he thinks on more than one occasion, he'd have given up Casterly Rock and all the mines in the land just to see this side of Cerion, clear-eyed and strong and wholer than whole, every day of his life.)
iii
Cerion and Jaime are being trained in courtly etiquette and heraldry, and for a long while Cerion forgets all about the arts of war and wants nothing more than to explore the bowels of the castle where the lions are kept. They are handsome creatures, it’s true, but mostly they just make Jaime sad. They should be out playing and hunting and basking in the sun shining down on the peaks of the Westerlands, not shut down here, he always thinks. Cerion likes to talk about how they would eat any man who crossed them, even a great knight or a lord. Lions stand above the rest, he says. Lions do what they will. (Cerion always casts down his eyes when Father comes around. Jaime thinks he might be the only one who sees that.)
Jaime has his first kiss right after having pulled Cerion away from the cage, right after having refused Cerion’s - stupid - dare to pull the great beast's mane. His cheek is bloody from where Cerion’s ring caught on his skin when smacking at him to try to get free of his grip and Cerion just stands there and stares for a moment as if not comprehending what his own hands just did before leaning closer, and Jaime thinks he's going to be hit again but this is so much better - and worse all at the same time. One part of Jaime is shocked at what just happened, the other part is shocked it has never happened before. All of Jaime hopes it was Cerion’s first kiss too.
Lord Tywin very seldom shows his face at Casterly Rock after the death of Lady Joanna. Cerion says he’s busy ruling the kingdom (which Jaime can’t argue with) and that he shouldn’t be expected to suffer the sight of his youngest son more than strictly necessary anyway (which Jaime can and does argue with). But for all that Cerion likes to name him thick as a castle wall Jaime notices things too, and it has not escaped him that his father is disappointed in them all, not just Tyrion - for while having two golden sons is a joy, being entirely daughterless is not. Even their lady mother had made her hopes for a female third-born clear as day, and their lord father has made no moves to remarry - for what woman in the realm could hope to replace Lady Joanna?
“If you were a girl you’d be Prince Rhaegar’s betrothed by now,” Cerion says one day, rather out of the blue. They’re making their way back to the castle, still sweaty from the training yard. It has not escaped anyone’s notice that Jaime has started winning quite a bit more, and when their master-at-arms praised him today, Cerion had leapt up and hit Jaime right in the shin after the match was supposed to be over. As always, they made up quickly - Cerion only seems slightly gloomier than usual.
“I’m not a girl.”
“I just said you weren’t, you imbecile. Father wishes you were, though.” There’s a strange little smirk on Cerion’s lips.
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying. If you were his daughter he’d have a ready-made future queen, not a spare he hasn’t yet figured out what to do with.” Cerion grins and looks directly at Jaime for the first time this afternoon. “I suppose there’s always the Second Sons?”
“Shut UP.”
Cerion isn’t usually like this, not towards Jaime anyway. Haughty, yes (and in a way Jaime has always admired that), but not dismissive. They are the same, after all. It makes no sense to speak that way to one’s other half.
“Calm down, that was a jest,” Cerion says. “You’re always been as sensitive as a girl. You know I wouldn’t have let you marry Rhaegar if you truly had been my sister, right?”
The heat in Jaime’s cheeks suddenly feels significantly less unpleasant. He swallows, unable to look his brother in the eye all of a sudden.
“I would marry you myself, not give you to any other. A lion is no lesser than a dragon. Father knows that too.” Cerion reaches over to squeeze Jaime’s hand. “And that, little brother, is why you should have been born a girl.”
iv
Neither Jaime nor Cerion have placed much trust in the gods since their mother's passing, but it is not until their eleventh year that the old septon seems to take notice. They know all the regular stories and prayers, of course, but now they are subjected to the kind of education on the matter that Jaime really thought was reserved for girls - the proper conduct of young nobles in the light of the Seven and so on and so forth. The lessons succeed in inspiring entirely new blasphemies as both boys find themselves quite taken with the exemplary tales of the knights from Andalos spreading the good word - swords held high - to every frightful frontier of what was yet to become the Seven Kingdoms, acting in the image of the Warrior as every young nobleman ought. Games of dragonknights and kings give way to dreams of divinely inspired, yet rugged explorers, and it is not unusual that such men encounter a wild maiden or two. Jaime learns about the mysteries of love through Cerion’s instruction - though Cerion has had to do with exactly as many girls as Jaime has, which is to say none - as his brother guides him through playing the roles of spearwives, princesses and beautiful witches alike. Most of the games end in Jaime being carried away in Cerion’s triumphant arms, and the really good ones are concluded with a kiss.
(Cerion doesn't ever play the girl. When Jaime asks him why, he just looks at him with the kind of withering glance he otherwise reserves for Tyrion and the servants. Jaime never asks again.)
Yet outside of their little games it is Jaime who gets more and more praise for being made in the Warrior's image. Cerion is a good fighter too, Jaime knows it and has felt it, but he's never loved horses and swords the way Jaime has. Cerion loves the triumph, even loves the learning, but all of Jaime’s wildness goes into the fight and Cerion’s wildness is everywhere all the time, spread out to all the corners of his life - he was born to rule the entire Westerlands, after all. Jaime’s fire consumes him whether he's on horseback riding alongside the coast with Cerion following or riding at rings in the training yard or disarming Addam Marbrand with his own wooden sword, Cerion’s fire just consumes.
Cerion was to squire in the capital if their lord father had gotten his way, but his last (brief) visit moons back had made it clear that this was not to be. Cerion’s response had been all icy deference with no sign of displeasure, of course, golden heir that he is, but in private he can't seem to make up his mind, and his shifts in mood are even more drastic than usual. Jaime tries to calm him when he rages at King Aerys and the disrespect the royal dragons allegedly show their loyal Lord Tywin, and feels warm inside when Cerion boasts of how they will become knights together and never, ever have to leave each other's side. It is the last response that Jaime truly concurs with, of course, but that feels selfish somehow. Cerion is the heir, not him, and that makes them different as much as he wishes it didn't.
But Jaime is a lord too, isn't he? Lords are allowed to want things. Lords and knights make things what they ought to be, set things right. Suddenly the whole situation feels like Jaime’s making somehow, or rather, like destiny. They're not supposed to be apart. That doesn't become any less true just because their lord father doesn't realize it. Cerion has said he would make Jaime his queen if Jaime had been a girl - Jaime can't quite envision Cerion as a girl no matter how hard he tries, but he feels the same fervor when he decides he can make it so they are forever brothers-in-arms in addition to brothers, and heroic ones besides. Fathers and marriages and the like needn't be allowed to get in the way, because Lannisters are not like other men. A lion is no lesser than a dragon.
v
The twins discover girls - real girls - once they are sent off to squire at Crakehall. In a sense, anyway - at Casterly Rock there had been serving girls too, but at Casterly Rock the servants know not to talk out of turn. The young serving girls at Crakehall do not share that knowledge, and the most impudent of them all, a tall redheaded girl about their age who Jaime later learns is called Merrei, gives Cerion the shock of his life by hollering at him in the yard one day and saying he looks like a prince - her prince, if he'd like. Cerion calls her a "little wretch" (though she has several inches on him) and very nearly goes to Lord Sumner himself to demand her dismissal, but Jaime talks him out of it - though he likes the looks the girls are starting to give Cerion even less than Cerion does, Merrei doesn't seem quite that worthy of consideration. It isn't like she knows Cerion enough to truly insult him, though Jaime has to concede that she was being quite truthful in saying Cerion looks like a prince.
Jaime, being a second son, only seems to get any attention from girls when they mistake him for his brother. The one exception is a girl called Hilda Hill, the natural daughter of some Crakehall brother who is to be sent off to the Faith a few moons after Jaime first encounters her - and she doesn't make big eyes at him or giggle when he comes around like the other stupid lowborn girls do with Cerion, she just wants Jaime to race with her in the woods because she likes horses almost as much as he does and has no siblings or ladies-in-waiting or the like to play with, being a bastard and all. Jaime supposes being a septa is the best life a Hill girl can hope for, but he still finds himself rather pitying her - Hilda seems almost as ill-suited for the religious life as Cerion would be. Cerion would likely strangle him to death for that comparison though, as Jaime’s other half detests Hilda with a fervor Jaime really doesn't think she deserves, no matter how unladylike and baseborn she might be. After the first few times riding through the woods, both of them hooting so loudly Jaime fears his lord father might hear them all the way from King's Landing, he starts pretending he doesn't notice her when she calls on him - Cerion is much happier that way, and Jaime would choose Cerion over anything, certainly over a Crakehall bastard of all things.
Mostly both twins are busy with their duties as squires, though - too busy to bicker or compete the way they had at Casterly Rock. There are not-infrequent visits back home, ones that Jaime finds himself eagerly anticipating for the sake of getting to see his little brother yet dreading on the occasion that the visit is made in the honor of their lord father, who all things considered seems to be intruding more and more upon the lives of his twin sons the older they grow. Lord Sumner is old and dull and infinitely more patient than Lord Tywin, and imbued with the dread that every Lannister bannerman feels in Lord Tywin's presence - as a result the suppers at Casterly Rock are always awkward at best and terrifying at worst. Little six-year-old Tyrion has grown too old (yet not too big) to shut away in the nursery, and every time Father acknowledges his presence it is with such cruelty that Jaime clenches his fists under the table. That's his brother, cleverer at six than Jaime could hope to be at thirteen and all Lannister, legs excepted. Yet for his part Jaime silences himself - his words and his fists - and makes sure to go to Tyrion after, playing and jesting as if nothing happened. On Tyrion’s seventh nameday he gifts him the finest pony money could buy in all of the Crakehall lands, and the look on Tyrion’s face is worth every piece of Lannister gold he spent.
vi
They say Jaime Lannister becomes a man the day he puts a sword through that outlaw, the day he is knighted and his blood spills from his shoulder from the mere touch of Ser Arthur Dayne's noble sword. Jaime knows he becomes a man the night of the party's return to Crakehall, when Cerion fucks him for the first time and blood spills between his legs as if he were a maiden. This is what it means to be a knight, he thinks, to be able to take pain as well as give it in the service of a greater cause, and enjoy it more than anything else in the world.
vii
They fuck a lot, after that. Father is furious with them both, of course - not because of the fucking, to which he is blissfully ignorant, but over what happened in the Kingswood. Jaime has no doubt he'd have Ser Arthur himself expelled from the Kingsguard if he could, but not even Mad King Aerys is quite mad enough to go along with that. Instead Lord Tywin commands Cerion to come to King's Landing at once, to stay at his father's side… and to wed Lysa Tully there. Normally a position at court and a marriage to a highborn maiden would be a reward for an eldest son, not a punishment, but both twins are very aware this is not their father's intention.
"He thinks I'm no better than a horse, to be traded off for breeding," Cerion fumes. "I'm a man grown, and his heir besides. He could order my knighting if it bothers him so."
"You'll be a knight in no time.", Jaime soothes, though he understands Cerion's point of view. As elated as he had felt that moment after the Kingswood battle (as elated as he still feels every time he remembers he's a Ser now), Cerion and Father are right that a second son should not be knighted before an heir. Jaime and Cerion have met both Riverrun sisters, and Lysa in particular had struck Jaime as an insipid sort, although from what he can recall Cerion had seemed quite pleased to command the wide-eyed, fawning attentions of the Tully maid. If Father wants them to wed and breed a Great House scion quickly to distract from the humiliation Ser Arthur had caused… Cerion is worth so much more than that, knight or not. But Jaime can't do anything, to his immense frustration, save soothe Cerion’s hurts with his words and his lips and his hands as Cerion calls him his "pretty sister", impending wedding all but forgotten. Cerion sometimes asks him to be on top as they rut together, to shield his body with his own, but every time Jaime does so Cerion shoves him away in disgust once they're finished. Still, Cerion seems to love when Jaime is overcome enough to seem shameless and aggressive, kissing and biting and losing control, and one time when Jaime had been in that sort of mood he had even caught Cerion spreading his legs just like a woman (just like Jaime so often does) though the both of them know they would never go quite that far. In this, as in so much else these days, they have roles. Besides, Jaime likes being fucked, as much as he increasingly knows he shouldn't. He tells himself they can be like the Targaryens and it need not matter what they do with their bodies as long as it's with each other, but none of the great dragonknights ever let themselves be fucked by other men, not even their brothers, as far as Jaime knows. There are no men like him.
Yet even these thoughts get lost in the rush of it, in being a real knight, in the awed stares of the men-at-arms when he's training in the courtyard, in whatever animal part of him that wants to spend every day hitting blackguards with his sword and then at the same time spend every day in bed with Cerion, even though by some great injustice of the universe he can't actually do both. Jaime has become a man in the course of one fateful day, and earned the ire of his lord father all the same. All he can do is to be better, stronger than all of them, his father and every other doubter. Yes, he must show Ser Arthur he was not mistaken, and show Cerion he is still his other half too.
viii
They send for Cerion a few moons before his wedding, and Jaime rages after he leaves, throwing things around his room and snapping at everyone (save Tyrion) who dares approach him. Cerion is going to be a lord, he is meant for so much more than to be treated like some incompetent just because Jaime shoved his sword through Big Belly Ben before Cerion could get to. Their father has never left Cerion alone, he realizes, not even from across the country, he has always made himself the judge as if Cerion isn't just as much man as he is, as if Cerion has ever in his life failed. Yet it's Cerion who loves their lord father, strangely enough, who wishes to be like him, which in a way Jaime supposes he already is. Jaime isn't, he realized that long ago. He is a second son, made for shielding his family with body and blade, just as Cerion is the mind who decides where that blade will go. It's in this that Jaime finds his honor and his pleasure.
ix
A greater honor than Jaime could ever have imagined arrives a few weeks later. And, as he tries not to think about once reality sets in that fateful day at Harrenhal, a greater humiliation than any of them could ever have imagined.
x
He doesn't quite serve his family, years later. Sullying his sword with kingsblood to save the capital (and his father's head, not to forget) did not spare him the privilege of serving the new king instead, a great Barathepn brute ruling by the grace of Lord Tywin's gold. Cerion is made Master of Laws as a reward for his cunning command during the sack of King's Landing, and Jaime feels his heart soar when he realizes he's going to get to stay by Cerion’s side after all, to the point that only a little of his joy is sullied by the realization that so are Lady Lysa and their ever-growing brood. Jaime has noticed that his own little brother seems far more taken with said brood than Jaime had expected him to be, and Jaime briefly wonders if maybe there is something wrong with him if little Tyrion, who Cerion has always been so harsh towards, can set aside resentments while Jaime himself cannot - and then those fleeting considerations give way to yet more white-hot jealousy as Joffrey, Myrcella and Joanna look at Cerion with the same wide-eyed awe Jaime and Cerion had granted Lord Tywin as boys. It's not that Jaime entertains any impossible fantasies of having his own children with Cerion, he is a man grown and a knight of the Kingsguard and a murderer besides, but it doesn't seem quite fair that Lady Lysa of all people gets to be united with Cerion in that fashion when his own twin - his other half - can never be. Besides, Jaime doesn't think he likes children much, his little brother notwithstanding. He had liked Viserys and Rhaenys quite a bit, true, especially Rhaenys who had admired Ser Arthur Dayne almost as much as Jaime did and who, with her clever black eyes that would dart away at the sight of her grandfather the king, had always turned Jaime’s thoughts to Tyrion all the way back at Casterly Rock… but it had not taken Jaime long to learn that he had not been called to King's Landing to like or protect children. This much Jaime knows by now - as a knight of the Kingsguard he is a sword, nothing more, and swords never do little ones much good in the end.
Cerion doesn't like being Master of Laws much. It had been a courtesy appointment in truth, a way for King Robert to show gratitude to the people whose swords and guile secured the capital without having to place Lord Tywin too far away from his post as Warden of the West, though this doesn't stop the King's younger brother, a strange fellow by reputation and by deed, from grinding his teeth through every council meeting - apparently the newly-minted Lord of Dragonstone considered being relegated to Master of Ships somewhat of a slight. Cerion does enjoy this particular ramification of his post, at least. What he hates is every other aspect of the council meetings, figuring out which Goldcloaks he can trust with some modicum of command, keeping an eye on the goings-on of the city outside the palace walls, and his powerlessness compared to Lord Arryn, without doubt the firmest Hand the Seven Kingdoms have seen since the glory days of their very own lord father. Jaime tells himself - at first - that it's just another power play on his brother's part when it finally becomes an unavoidable fact that Cerion is a client of Chataya's, that he, from what they say, never sees the same whore twice. It makes sense to let yourself be seen with whores when the bloody king himself practically takes pride in it, and besides that it shows Cerion has wealth to spare and serves to humble his dreadful wife all at once. Yes, thinks Jaime, it makes perfect sense for a young nobleman to distract curious eyes with a facade of whoring (with women, that bit's important) to keep anyone from figuring out who he's really fucking. (Everyone knows it's not his wife - it's been years since anyone has seen him in her chambers.)
"Jaime, Jaime, let me in," Cerion hollers one late night outside Jaime’s humble chambers in the White Sword Tower, sounding every bit like the boy of seven who had triumphed after every single victory in the training yard, who had stayed with Jaime every possible moment of the day and raged as only he could whenever they were forced to be apart.
Cerion bursts in without an invitation, firstborn son that he is, but Jaime is out of bed before he realizes, with a sickening lurch in his stomach, what it is Cerion has brought. It's a girl, a girl with pale rosy skin and sandy hair, looking equal parts scared and curious. Cerion has his hand wrapped around her wrist, eyes bright with drink and lust.
"This one wants to fuck the Kingslayer," Cerion says by way of explanation. "Should she get to?" His smile is genuine, charming, his curls wild around his beautiful head. The girl looks tiny and common next to him, like a mouse caught in a cat's paw. She doesn't look much like Jaime had imagined Chataya's whores would, not that he has any real experience to draw on.
With a sudden turn, Cerion shoves the girl away. "Go," he snarls, adding a "fuck off back to your hovel" in case she hadn't quite grasped his point. She turns and runs down the stairs, faster than Jaime has ever seen any woman run. Jaime wonders how she will get out of the castle - if the guards will let her leave without questioning or worse. In daylight she might pass for some wretched chambermaid with an errand to run, but at this hour…
"This one called me Ser Jaime, if you can believe it. It seems she thinks the noble Kingsguard goes with whores."
Jaime can feel his own heartbeat. "When really it's his noble brother who does? What a dreadful mistake."
Cerion is silent for a long, long moment before pouncing on Jaime, almost like he had so often done when they were boys. He pulls at Jaime’s hair (still identical to his own) and claws at his tunic, leaves bruises all up Jaime’s belly, but despite this Jaime has him turned around in a matter of seconds, staring down at his brother and his wild eyes and red lips. Jaime cannot tell what he is thinking or feeling in that moment, much less what Cerion is, but…
"Yes, I go with whores," Cerion whispers. "Discreetly, mind you, I'm not some degenerate like that imp you love so much. Yet you seem to mind my whoring a great deal more."
Jaime kisses Cerion (to shut him up, he thinks), his hands moving further down Cerion’s body. Cerion kisses back, then rolls Jaime off him with a laugh.
"You don't have to act like such a woman, Jaime. Everyone does it. Excepting the ones who prefer to act the whore instead."
And that's what Jaime is, then. Jaime should object, has objected, but he doesn't have time for that now that he feels a familiar heat inside him, a yearning. Cerion will always come back here, will not have a mouse as long as he can have a lion. If only Jaime could get rid of every mouse in King's Landing.
xi
In the early morning, after Cerion has left and Jaime has cleaned himself up, he goes to guard the king as is his duty.
"I wanted you to fuck her and show me you're a man after all," is what Cerion had said in the night, and it's what goes through Jaime’s head as he watches the pretty Queen Lynesse leave her King's bedchamber, quickly joining her retinue of richly clad Reach ladies. It had taken Robert some years to get a child on her, as she had been no older than twelve at the time of their wedding, but by now she has four of them, including a black-haired crown prince who grows into more of a royal terror every day, seemingly determined to usurp the title from the now older and at least somewhat calmer Joffrey Lannister.
The Queen actually smiles at him as she passes, silly girl that she is. Jaime has to stop himself from laughing. Her own husband, who doubtlessly just finished taking her like the beast he is, makes no motion to disguise his contempt for the vile Kingslayer, and there his little Hightower wife is, pretending Jaime never put his sword through the back of the king her own family had gone to war for. Rhaella had been just as good at staying pleasant and sweet for the king and all the court to see, but that hadn't stopped her own lord husband from brutalizing her whenever he felt like it, nor Baratheon from sending his brother to slay her family had they not slipped away from his grasp.
Jaime is good at staying pleasant too, his father as well as both kings trained him as well as they would have any lady. It's why everyone was so very shocked when they saw Jaime’s sword jammed through Aerys' back - queens and Kingsguard alike are for being fucked, not for fucking (or killing, whatever the difference is). He tries to imagine what it would have been like to fuck Cerion’s little mouse. Who knew Cerion wanted to see him put his sword through a woman for once? Unbidden, Jaime thinks of long-dead Rhaella again, with her bruises like battle wounds, and grows nauseous, nearly swaying on his feet. Throughout his years at court he had found himself looking at a few of the comelier of the ladies-in-waiting with less than chaste intent on a few rare occasions, but it had disturbed him more than he could say, each time seeking refuge in his brother's arms. Perhaps because in those same moments he had so very briefly wondered what sort of man he would have become if he had not taken that vow - if he had been given a wife to bed every night until yet another Lannister branch sprung into existence. He had thought that would be his life once and yet he never gave it much consideration, and perhaps that's why he, even today, can't say if he would have enjoyed it. He thinks not, and yet, briefly, his body had told him otherwise.
If Jaime still believed in the gods, he would rewrite that story he had told himself and Cerion their whole lives - for after the gods split them in two, they must have split Jaime in two as well, but only on the inside. One half for the world, to hold his sword and raise it high, and one half for Cerion, to grasp onto his heel. One half loved by Tywin, one half loved by Cerion. One half Warrior, one half Maiden.
xii
He dreams of Cerion, returned triumphant from his hunt, but clad in the simple garb of a peasant, far from court and far from Casterly Rock. Jaime cooks a feast (Jaime has never cooked in his life), wraps his arms around Cerion’s neck, sits on his lap, feeds him like King Robert might ask of some harlot in the hall. Yet with every hearty spoonful Jaime feeds his brother, the life seems to leave Cerion’s body - till at last he looks every bit the Stranger.