I had the opportunity to ilustrate the cover for @gothfamilyzine !!! The pre-orders for the zine start tomorrow, so don't miss the chance to get yours!! 👻⚔️🦅
I had a lot of fun drawing this piece, imagining all the cute scenarios they could be in and also how her journal spread would turn out! I hope you guys like it and also support our zine! Many amazing artists worked on it!!! You will love all the beautiful art on it!!
Jaime Lannister sucks in a deep, shaking breath as he places a hand on the colossal oak door of the throne room. His fingers, his real, human, fingers, trace the gnarled wood, smoothed by centuries of real, human touch, like his. He can't do this. He can't, but he will. Something in his chest stirs and with a sudden energy he pushes, and the door moves, slowly but surely, beneath his hand. As it heaves open, his eyes adjust to the dim light in the vast hall beyond.
Cersei is seated on the iron throne, just as Jaime knew she would be. She sits poker straight, her slim white hands curled around the sharp iron arms of the throne, her eyes staring straight ahead. Straight at Jaime.
He hadn't been sure how she would react. The Lannister children have not seen each other in a year, not since Jaime walked away from his twin as she threatened to have him killed. He doesn't know what to expect, but he is still surprised when she addresses him first. She has never done that; has always teased her name out from Jaime's lips before acknowledging him. He realises in that moment that they have both changed.
"Jaime."
She doesn't move, just lets his name fall from her mouth like a drop of water on a Dornish plain. He refuses to react, refuses to move too. A challenge. A game.
"You know why I'm here." He won't let himself say her name. He won't.
"You've remembered you're a Lannister," she says with a deliberate smirk, and a bolt of hot fury surges through him.
"Fuck being a Lannister," he spits out the venomous words. "I'm here because you've lost, sweet sister. Half of King's Landing is dead because you refused to surrender to Daenerys' men."
She meets him evenly and emotionlessly, without skipping a beat. "Half of King's Landing is dead because that vile witch and her heathens murdered my people."
He scoffs, but with none of his old arrogance, no humour. "Don't be stupid, sister. I thought you were the clever one?"
"And you were always the brave one," she says calmly, the corner of her mouth twisting slightly as it always did when she mocked him. "And yet who is sitting on the Iron Throne, and who has betrayed his family to join a failing cause?"
"A- a - failing cause?" Jaime is stunned. "You're mad. The Red Keep is surrounded, sister, and you are sitting in here and playing princess while your kingdom is slaughtered. You can hardly call yourself a queen."
Suddenly she looks so, so small, dwarfed by the hulking iron mass shrouding her in metal. "I always thought it would be Tyrion," she says quietly, almost to herself. "The witch was right. About everything." She raises her eyes to meet Jaime's again, and Jaime knows instantly what she means. Her greatest fear, the thing that has warped her and twisted her and changed her the most. and he knows that she's right.
"Cersei," he says helplessly, and suddenly memories are flooding his mind, visions of gold and red and green. He sees a small, white hand, fearlessly scrunched in a lion's mane. He hears a laugh, bright and derisive and mocking, and smells her heady, potent scent in the night, and feels the warm softness of her lips against his. He remembers her scathing remarks, the violet bruises that bloomed on her arms after a night with Robert, her tilted inquisitive head when she learned something new, her stillness, her eternal stillness. He remembers the kisses she pressed against his cold, metal hand when no one could look him in the eye, and the way she told Ser Gregor Clegane to kill him on the spot. He can still see her sobbing rage when Joffrey was poisoned, the way she broke when he returned Myrcella in a casket, her complete emptiness when Tommen threw himself from a window. And he remembers the day she ran to him in tears and told him that the valonqar would wrap his hands around her pretty, white neck and wring the life from her. And he also remembers the way he laughed as he pulled her into him and kissed her golden curls and told her that she was silly to believe women she finds in swamps. And now he sees her, sitting on her precious throne with nothing, nothing, her head shorn like Tywin Lannister's, her queenly robes like armour, and he knows that this is it.
"You have to, Jaime. Please." Her voice breaks.
He had been moving towards her, with careful steps, not the purposeful stride he'd hoped for, but her words make him stop.
He falters, feels heat burn behind his eyes, feels his voice crack. "I... I can't - don't - Cersei..."
It occurs to him that in all their life, he has never once seen his sister show fear. She's been startled and then has recovered, felt nerves and steeled herself, has been uncertain but has taken the plunge anyway. But she has not shown her fear. It occurs to him, too, that she will not show it today.
"Don't make it like this, Jaime. You know you have to do your duty. Make Father proud for once in your life."
It doesn't occur to him that she knows him too well, knows that the way to make him act is to rile him like a stick in a hornet's nest. He starts towards her again suddenly and sees her flinch ever so slightly. In two long strides he is at the Iron Throne, and she's saying "you always were a disappointment, Jaime. Not born first, renounced your claim to Casterly Rock and joined the Kingsguard, betrayed the king you were sworn to protect..." and his good hand is at her throat and his face is oh so close to hers.
"You are an evil, conniving, manipulative witch, Cersei," he spits, and she closes her eyes and draws a deep, silent breath under his grasp.
He squeezes, tighter and tighter, as he sees her golden curls on his pillow, sees a wicked glint in those emerald eyes, feels her cool hands caress his cheek, hears a child's laughter. He remembers the way she would not let him touch Joffrey. He remembers how she kissed him after she poisoned a girl before her mother. He remembers how she told him he took too long to get back to her. He has never been enough, and he has always been everything. He has hated her, and he loves her more than anything he will ever know.
He watches as a strange, sweet smile spreads across her face. He squeezes harder, because he hates her and he loves her and this is what she has always feared and this is what she has always wanted and this will kill her. They both know it.
Colour is rushing to her face now, a regal, Lannister scarlet, and he is reminded of when their son Joffrey died. Something crunches, collapses under his fingers, and he sees the word "Jaime" form on those soft, perfect lips, and he finally lets go.
The only white left on her now is the outline of his fingers around her mottled neck. Her breaths are rattling now through her crushed windpipe and she fights for air, but her features never move.
Her eyes rake upwards and find his, the emeralds locking onto each other.
"My love," she whispers, and her hand is touching his cheek with cold fingers. He kisses her, one last time, and his hand finds her throat again. He squeezes tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter until her fingers fall from his face with a dull thud onto her lap and he knows she is gone. He draws back, shaking, and feels hot tears course down his face where her icy fingers once were, as if already washing her memory away. He can't bring himself to let go of her neck, doesn't want to see the damage he's done, knows her head will flop like a broken doll if he lets go. Instead he sinks to the ground and her body falls with him, and he curls up against the cold metal of the Iron Throne and pulls his sister into him. She's cradled against him like a child, and a memory sears across his eyes of sunlight through spun gold, warm bodies pressed together. So very different from the two dead Lannisters clutching each other in a dark room full of ghosts.
After what could be hours, Jaime looks down at his sister. His own face stares back, purple and quiet and beautiful and so empty. He knows what he must do, what he has always promised Cersei, that they could not live without each other. He knows what he told Bronn many years ago: that he would die in the arms of the woman he loves. He knows that there is nothing for him now.
So Jaime Lannister pulls out his sword, Widow's Wail, that monstrosity of Valyrian steel, and admires it once more, the way the light from the window of the great throne room flickers and dances. Then he plunges it into his own chest.
And when Tyrion bursts through the double doors hours later, with Dany and Jon close at his heels, he sees his siblings curled up in each other's arms, slumped at the foot of the mighty Iron Throne, a pair of beautiful sleeping lions.
hey everyone!
all my shows are coming back! so i’m trying to come back from this hiatus and i’m kinda reorganizing my blog so i’m thinking about changing my url!
pls vote in my poll
and if you vote, you can send me a request of anything and i’ll promise i’ll get to it soon!
that’s basically all. also it’d be really cool if you could reblog this 🌼
also i’m just gonna tag some shows i watch in case any one wants to, ya know, follow this blog...
Hi, I wonder if I could join your GoTfamily? If so, can I be Rickon, please? and the quote would be "Are we going home? I want my horse. And I want applecakes and butter and honey, and Shaggy. Are we going where Shaggydog is?" Thanks. :)
