𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 || 𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝑾𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆𝒔 𝑪𝒓𝒚 𝑶𝒖𝒕

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑽𝑰

"You ever wonder about legacy, Ser?"

Jaime asked, though his words weren't made out of spite or anything of the sort, but it was a genuine question he knew he wouldn't get an answer to. Jaime found himself talking to himself about himself through an executioner, an angel of death.

"I mean, legacy is probably the greatest thing a man can leave behind when he is gone, right? You could build castles as tall as the clouds, but some day, those castles and towers will crumble and burn to the ground, dust and dusted away with time. But a name? Surely a name will live forever."

And again, Payne stayed silent. But this time, however, the man did look at Jaime. For maybe the first time in the last few hours, the man looked him in the eyes. From what Jaime could see, the man's eyes did not lie like his own did many times over. The dark eyes of Ser Ilyn Payne, the King's Justice, did not lie. They saw right through him.

"I don't doubt your name will live on, Ser. Not even a little bit. "Ser Ilyn Payne, the man who put down the Quiet Wolf himself." Quite noteworthy, Ser. Quite noteworthy indeed.."

His voice trailed off at that, leaving with the wind as it blew by. He hadn't thought about Ned Stark in a long time, in the few weeks they've been on the road. Ned Stark, Jaime thought. Judge and jury, yet not the executioner. No, of course Ned Stark never swung the sword in King's Landing. Sure, him and his belief in the Old Gods thought it just and righteous for the man who passes the sentence to carry it out also, but he never swung it in King's Landing. The Sacking, Jaime remembered then, continuing to ride with his thoughts of the past. His past.

During the Sacking of King's Landing, the Lord Eddard had arrived too late, only to see his father destroying much of the city and inflicting horror to its people. But of course, the man arrived to see Jaime sitting upon the Iron Throne, the Mad King dead below it's steps. "Kingslayer," the man uttered. It was a word that would forever haunt him, even in that moment so far separated from that time by land and by time itself.

But now, the land he was in was but a land that held more failures that he seemed to keep dragging behind him. Elia, Jaime thought. Elia Martell of Dorne, Princess of the Seven Kingdoms.

《¤¤¤》

The campfire crackled in front of the lion and the mute. Across the flickering flames, the glare from which reflected from the greatsword of the mute, shining like something elegant and refined. Jaime really never before saw the irony of how a sword, a tool of war and death, could be so beautiful. Of course it wasn't the sword that beheaded the Quiet Wolf, but it had removed many others since that time. Jaime had felt the pressure of its weight against a blade of his own, the one his sister had "kindly" gifted him when he gave away the Valyrian sword to another.

I gave it to her because she deserved it, Jaime remembered Brienne's eyes, then. The sharpness of the sapphire blues that shined in the light of the sun, and glowing of the moon. The more he thought about Cersei, the more her face, her body and all morphed into Brienne. It scared Jaime, really. It wasn't frightening that the thoughts of his heart was bow placed on a different woman, it was the fear that Cersei would somehow know.

The sliding of a whetstone against the greatsword made Jaime glance up at Ser Ilyn, seeing the man sliding the whetstone gently across the long blade in a practiced manner. He knows his craft better than I, Jaime thought bitterly, suddenly, looking down to where his hand— his real hand— should be. But it wasn't there. It never would be again. A golden hand may look pretty in the sun like sapphire eyes or a glistening sword, but it would never be the same like them.