Chapter Text
Jaime is in Pakistan when he gets the message.
He’s on a plane out of Karachi before his CO gives him permission, but he doesn’t care.
*
Tyrion leans back grimly in his seat and takes a sip of bourbon. The sun is setting over the Pacific Ocean and somewhere his sister and father are being wheeled into a morgue.
The bourbon does not taste as good as he thought it would.
*
Jaime logs onto his facebook account, shelling out five dollars for the airplane’s slow internet connection.
He goes to his sister’s page. There are posts from friends about how she will be missed, and how they can’t believe she’s gone. (He can’t either.)
He clicks her pictures and begins tapping his way through them.
There’s one from Myrcella’s birthday, all blonde curls and smiles.
Then they—Cersei and her three children—are at the beach. She’s reading to Tommen. Joffrey is lying on the sand, sleeping behind sunglasses, and Myrcella is sticking her tongue out at whoever took the picture. (Taena Merryweather whoever the fuck that is.)
Then there’s a picture of her and father at some fundraiser or another, where she’s dressed in a stunning golden dress.
Then there’s a picture she scanned of her and Robert’s wedding. Her hair is too big and too ‘80s, and Robert is clearly drunk with his arm around her. She looks overjoyed.
He looks at that one bemusedly for a moment, wondering what prompted her to upload it. Then he notices the date—the tenth anniversary of Robert’s death. She must have been feeling nostalgic. He clicks on.
There’s another scanned picture, of the two of them when they were seven. They are with their mother in Santa Monica and they are all three of them laughing their heads off.
He closes his computer.
*
Tyrion rereads the obituaries on his computer screen. Words like remarkable contribution to the field and generous spirit and survived by a sister (Genna), a brother (Kevan), two sons (Jaime, Tyrion) and three grandchildren (Joffrey, 17, Myrcella, 15, Tommen, 12) pop out at him.
He wishes desperately he could have written shitty father or biggest asshole in Hollywood, but he doesn’t think the L.A. Times would run it.
That’s when Tyrion realizes he is drunk.
*
Jaime doesn’t smile when he sees his brother. He thinks that he’s forgotten how to smile. Pakistan does that to people.
Tyrion doesn’t smile either, so he figures it’s ok.
“Nice car,” he says at last, climbing into Tyrion’s convertible.
“Thanks.”
“Did you steal it, or do you just make a fuck-ton of money?”
“Well, we both know dad didn’t buy it for me.”
Jaime barks a laugh.
*
The second day that his brother, his niece, and his nephews have taken up residence in his house, Tyrion comes home to find that Joffrey has dyed his hair black.
It is not a good dye-job, Tyrion thinks, and living in L.A. he knows a good dye-job when he sees one. He looks rather like some poor, underfed, junkie rocker who thought he was going to be edgy by dying his hair inky black.
Tyrion supposes he did so out of rebellion or something idiotic like that, but it might also be some desire to emulate his father. Indeed, the black hair does bring out his bone structure, heightening his similarity to Robert.
“I do admire it. We had a little too much blonde in this house,” he says benignly.
Joffrey glares at him and says nothing.
Tommen, who has spent the past few days looking as though he would never be happy again, chances a smile.
*
Jaime gets a phone call from Brienne a few days after he’s arrived at Tyrion’s house.
He doesn’t ask how she got his phone number. She’s just like that.
“I’m sorry about your sister and your father,” she says.
“I’m sorry too.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Can you make Cersei come back from the dead?”
“I wish I could.”
He sighs into the phone.
*
She’s playing the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata when he gets home. Her eyes are closed, and he wonders how many times she’s played it in her life.
He likes that someone’s playing the piano. He had gotten it years ago, mostly because Cersei had said drunkenly when he had moved into this place that a house isn’t a house without a piano. He doesn’t know how to play the thing, and had never thought to take lessons. He doubts that most pieces were composed for dwarf fingers, and his feet don’t reach the pedals.
But Myrcella looks like a painting against the setting sun through the window, the golden light from the sky making a halo around her golden curls. Her face is dark in comparison, though serene.
When she finishes the movement, she does not continue. “I thought you gave up piano,” he asks at last.
She doesn’t move. “I did,” is the soft reply, “but Mom loved that piece.”
And then she’s crying quietly and before Tyrion can go over to try to give her a hug, she has gotten to her feet, pushing the piano bench roughly away, and is already hurrying down the hallway to her room.
*
Jaime has trouble sleeping.
He thinks it’s because Tyrion’s mattresses are fucking soft.
Or maybe because when he closes his eyes, he sees Cersei.
*
Tyrion can’t help but feel affronted. Jaime had been out of the country for most of the kids’ lives, has a dangerous job, and doesn’t even fucking know them. He also doesn’t have any money in the bank—something that their father had raged about constantly.
And he, Tyrion, doesn’t even get joint custody?
Cersei would.
He glances at Jaime when Pycelle reads out that bit of Cersei Lannister’s Last Will and Testament.
Jaime’s eyes were bulging and he looks franticly at Tyrion.
“Yes,” says Tyrion, before Jaime has even figured out how to frame the question. “There’s enough room in my house for all five of us.”
Jaime looks relieved.
*
Jaime is in deep shit for leaving Karachi, but again he doesn’t care.
His CO has threatened him with a court-martialing or some shit like that. He is certainly going to be behind a desk for the rest of his career, unless something drastic happens.
But that was probably for the better.
Three kids to take care of—fuck.
He was only beginning to wrap his head around that one.
*
Joffrey quits the soccer team, even though he’s the captain. Tyrion gets an angry call from the coach about it, but he knows it’s no use trying to talk to Joff about it.
*
Jaime dreams that his father won an Oscar and melted it down to make a crown.
He doesn’t know what that shit means, but it doesn’t surprise him.
*
After reading the consolation emails from all of his father’s colleagues, from Cersei’s friends, Tyrion decides that it would probably be in extremely poor taste to be drunk at the wake the next day.
There isn’t so much as a word from Tysha.
He decides that it won’t be in poor taste to be hung-over at the wake.
*
She looks just like he remembered, only younger, and more at peace, and more beautiful than a fairytale.
There’s a knot in Jaime’s throat and he turns away and walks down the aisle of the funeral home
*
Tyrion thinks bemusedly that father smells a little funny. They say it’s because a piece of glass sheared him right through the bowels and there was some putrefaction before they could cut it out. They try to hide the smell with some of his father’s cologne.
*
Jaime doesn’t recognize any of the people at the funeral. They are all affiliates of his father, or companions of his sister. He doesn’t particularly feel like talking to any of them.
He sits with Myrcella and Tommen and folds his program into a lion the way he learned to when he was stationed in Japan. He gives it to Myrcella when he’s done, and he starts on making a dragon for Tommen.
She doesn’t smile, but she holds it carefully between thin fingers.
*
“The children?” asks Ned Stark.
He really is a surly bastard. Tyrion still wonders how on earth he got so well with Robert Baratheon. They are as different as was possible.
Cersei had never liked him, but she had been grateful that he looked in on her and the children in the months following Robert’s death. She hadn’t ever said it explicitly, but Tyrion knew she was glad that Joff’s godfather was as good a man as her late husband had claimed.
She hadn’t wanted Robert to die, even if their marriage was on the verge of going to shit. And she certainly hadn’t been ready to be a single parent, no matter how much money her father funneled into the kids.
“Jaime and I are sharing custody,” Tyrion explains, taking a sip of wine.
Ned nods.
“I can’t imagine this will be the case, but if you need anything, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”
“I will do just that.”
He can’t help but be touched.
Later, when Tyrion is squarely drunk, he watches Joffrey shaking hands with Ned. Ned says something and Joffrey shrugs and walks away.
*
He notices it when Joffrey steps away from his mother’s casket.
Joffrey’s tall. As tall as he is. Jaime wonders if he’s done growing, or if he will grow to be as tall as Robert had been.
Joff’s eyes are a light blue, and they look confused and angry when they meet his own.
Jaime meets his gaze evenly. He’s confused and angry himself, and he supposes that he’d be more confused and angry if he’d learned he was going to be in the custody of two uncles he did not know.
Well…one uncle. He knows Tyrion, Jaime supposed.
Jaime was glad of that when Joffrey’s jaw jutted out angrily. It was Cersei’s jut, the jut that meant there would be hell to pay very soon.
*
Tommen’s crying. Tyrion can hear it from under his door.
He pauses, then pokes his head inside.
His nephew is twelve years old, and he is growing. Tyrion imagines he’ll be as tall as Joffrey in a few months.
Tyrion sits on the bed and places his hand gently on Tommen’s shoulder. He thinks of Tysha. He’s thought about her a lot in the past few days. He wonders where she is.
He sits with Tommen until he’s asleep.
*
She places the origami lion on her dresser, between a photograph of her mother and father holding her, and a necklace that had once belonged to her grandmother.
She sits on her bed and stares at them for a moment, wondering when she’ll feel normal again.