#haha u want some survival au and the aftermath of jaime's no good horrible awful very bad day? :)

[eclipsecrowned]

‘ i would rather die because i betrayed them than live because i betrayed you ’  (jaime @ joanna) // @dcviline

Where does it come from, this unerring loyalty, this head rightly twined into socket? It's a cold breeze blowing over her soul, reckoning where golden blood gave way to red-blooded sentiment. How did Tywin's son reckon family the superior of a name?

Her beautiful boy. Her foolish first son. Her avenger.

Years spent praying for a champion, for broader hands than her own that could wield a sword without tiring, and here he stands. It is too late to make it right for her, blood could never wash out the indignity -- But it pleases her all the same. Gods, it pleases her.

Those small, marble hands now rest against his face, her hold like iron. "They cannot have you," she says, tone gilded with sureness. "There will be no blade raised to you that can prosper, Jaime. You know that. And if those Winter Wolves come baying for honor and justice, ask them what they intended to do with the wretched bastard when they bound him in iron--"

Damn them. Damn them all. Why waste so much blood over one foolish girl? Was the coming generation so weak that they could not endure the least of what hers had known? Fire dances behind her eyes, white-hot, and it is only some deep well of self-control that keeps her teeth hidden. Why should Aerys pay for the sins of the son?

He had his own to answer for. Her Jaime had made it so. The heat rolls out of her in a long sigh, Joanna's hands dropping lest he feel the tremble in them. No. There was no blaming Jaime for doing what must be done. It doesn't matter why it came to pass, only that it was done. He is more a man in her eyes than even his father.

Deftly, she overlooks evidence to the contrary, the softness of a face that still so favors his sister, the growing he still must do to measure up to his peers. Becoming is a bloody business. He's far too old for her to wish it had been easier for him.

Perhaps she was never a worthy enough mother to pray an easier path for her children. Perhaps she was damned too young to dream of better paths.

"You will not die, Jaime," she says at last. "It would be a waste of your bravery. We have won. Slain the dragon and scattered its seed. The Baratheon boy is a fool, but you conducted yourself..." Poorly. It galls her not to sit where another had, to take from one Queen who had given her nothing besides. And yes, part of her aches to crown her own son, to give the realm the promise of a golden warrior over a moon-pale singer.

"...Adequately. It will be easy to cow him, between your father and I." It is easier to say these things now, to speak of quiet defiance and molten grasp hidden beneath velvet gloves. He has slain a King. What must loyalty mean to him now, besides his own admission of Mother, Mother, Mother?

His Mother is no font of mercy.

She smiles like one though, a soft, tender expression modeled on a Sept's effigy. "Though that is for Tywin and I to discuss. We... Should be talking about you." You, who will not bow to a Stag, trying not to trip over the wires that your parents stitch into him. You, the best of all sons.

#dcviline #joannatbt #long post // #haha u want some survival au and the aftermath of jaime's no good horrible awful very bad day? :) #THIS SO GOT AWAY FROM ME.