Chapter Text
***
It seemed like the rubble of the entire Red Keep was raining down on him and Cersei. There was another passage from where they could have escaped, but Jaime couldn’t let his sister see it. She couldn’t survive this day because she’d burn the whole of King’s Landing with wildfire in retribution. And so, Jaime needed to stay here with her and die alongside his twin, as she’d always said they would. He wasn’t doing it for Cersei or even for himself, though. He was doing it for Brienne and Tyrion, who would be the first persons his sister would exact revenge on aside from the dragon queen.
The images of both Brienne and Tyrion surviving this endless war and finding happiness were the last ones in his mind before his world went dark, swallowed up by the dust as the ceiling collapsed above them.
***
A moment before, there had been pain, but now there’s nothing. No pain, no fear, no worry, no discomfort. Jaime doesn’t feel his body at all. He doesn’t think he even has a body anymore. He’s just floating around in blackness. And he’s alone. Or so he thinks until he hears voices speak up all around him. They sound somehow ethereal, more otherworldly than human and seem to come from all directions at once - even from within him.
“This is wrong. It shouldn’t have ended like this.”
“They have free choice. Nothing to be done about it now.”
“They are dead now. It’s final.”
Jaime wonders if that last voice might be the Stranger. It sounds like him. But whom does the next one belong to? The Maiden or the Mother or the Crone? He isn’t sure.
“It can be undone!”
“Why should we?”
“Because the world will end if Jaime Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen don’t survive this war. They are both needed in the plan to bring peace to Westeros. Just look…”
And suddenly, Jaime can see something again. He doesn’t know how since he doesn’t have eyes, nor does he know if the images are even intended for him, but he sees the world he left as if from above. Even though it’s not exactly the same world he remembers. Because the whole of Westeros from Winterfell to Dorne is engulfed in flames. A dragon circles overhead, spewing even more fire, as people try to flee from it. But it’s to no avail. They are turned into human torches, their cries of death and pain droning out the screams of the lone dragon in the sky. It’s Drogon, even bigger than before and much deadlier. And he shows no mercy to anyone. Cities, towns, lone huts, fields, woods, everything is burning beneath him, turning Westeros into a furnace of death. Then Jaime suddenly sees King’s Landing beneath him, which is burning as much as the rest. But within the rising flames, there’s a place around the Weirwood tree that is yet spared. And beneath it sits Bran, the Broken, the King of the Six Kingdoms, with a crown on his head. His eyes have gone white and his body is spasming as if he’s in great pain.
“The Three-Eyed-Raven belongs in the north where the old magic is strongest,” one of the voices in the darkness surrounding Jaime says. “He should have never gone south. We should have known that he would snap there.”
“What could we have done? They all have free choice,” another voice repeated.
Jaime wonders what has happened, but only for a moment as his question is immediately answered. The tone of the Stranger is emotionless as he states the obvious. “He’s warged into the dragon and is burning the whole land and all people within it. There will be no one left.”
Brienne! It’s the one thought that’s at the forefront of Jaime’s mind now. If the whole of Westeros is burning, where is Brienne? Then Jaime sees her and wonders why he hasn’t before. Because she’s standing right beside Bran, dressed in a white cloak to show her status as the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. She’s shaking his shoulders and screaming at him to snap out of it. But Bran doesn’t show any signs of waking from his trance and soon, Brienne is coughing as the smoke from the fires burn her lungs. And then, suddenly, there’s Oathkeeper inside her hands and she stabs it through Bran’s heart to stop him while tears are running down her cheeks.
Bran lurches in his chair and his eyes snap open briefly as he looks up at his Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. “Thank you,” he whispers as he’s dying. Only, it doesn’t change anything. Drogon is still spewing fire wherever he flies, and the world burns and with it all people, including Brienne.
Jaime sees her skin blister and her mouth open in an endless scream when the flames engulf her and lick at her skin. He wants to scream at that and claw his eyes out, but he has neither hands nor eyes and so the image stays with him for a while until the voices finally chase it away.
“Without Jaime and Daenerys, the world will burn. We need to send them back in time.”
“What would it matter? How will they know to make better choices the second time around? They won’t remember this past life. It won’t have come to pass yet. They could repeat all the same mistakes and we would be back to this moment.”
“Not if we give them a tool to help guide them along their paths.”
The voices continue to talk for some time longer, but the words don’t make sense to Jaime anymore and he just drifts weightlessly in the darkness. But then he feels a lurching motion behind his navel as if he’s yanked forward. And soon after, he sees a light in front of him. He soars closer towards it until he feels it consume him.