Game of Thrones: Fanfic: Winter is coming

[m_findlow]

Title: Winter is coming
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jaime, Tyrion
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,018 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Game of Thrones, any, snow" at fic_promptly
Summary: Winter has come to King's Landing

Jaime watched out the window as the snow fluttered down. Snow. In King's Landing. He laughed at the old Stark saying. Winter is coming. Winter is here, he thought.

He'd never seen it snow in the capital. Was this the fourth or fifth winter he'd seen? It hardly mattered. Snow south of The Twins was nearly unheard of. Part of him wondered if the Maester's records locked away in Old Town had ever spoken of snow this far south.

Outside, everything was covered in a blanket of white. He tried to imagine the great Sept of Baelor, draped in a cloak of white - not unlike his men - but all that sat there now was a blackened hole. At least the snow had the decency to cover it up, hiding Cersei's madness. Funny how it seemed madness now. He'd been ready to cleave open the High Sparrow from gullet to groin for filling Tommen's head full of religious piety. In the end it was that same religious fervor that had cost him his life.

Wildfire. Cersei had been so proud of her handiwork. All Jaime could think of was the way he'd watched the Mad King's eyes glow when he'd revealed that he'd had pots of wildfire set all about the city. Tywin Lannister could burn in hell if he thought to take the city, and everyone else would burn along with him.

Cersei had let them all burn too, but he hadn't stopped her. He'd stopped Aerys from his plans to murder guilty and innocent alike, but he'd done nothing to raise a hand against his own sister. He'd refused her pleas to come and be her champion in combat against the crimes she been accused of. They'd made the mistake of underestimating her. Shaming her was their first fatal error. Letting her back into the Red Keep, where she could plan her revenge, was their second. Expecting her to attend trial was the last mistake. A Lannister always pays their debts, he thought. Cersei repaid hers in blood.

And what good was any of it now? he wondered. She held the throne, that much was true, but this Daenerys Targaryen had shown what she was capabable of, decimating the army he was bringing back to King's Landing. She could take the city in a heartbeat with her dragons. The only thing staying her hand was the battle yet to come.

The memories of that creature in the Great Dragon Pit left him feeling uneasy. It was dead but undead, and swords had done nothing to stop it. No, that wasn't quite true. Valyrian steel had some effect, as he'd seen demonstrated. He had Widow's Wail, but that would not be enough to stop an army of them. Only that dragonglass dagger had shown any real effect in stopping them.

This Jon Snow might be a boy king in the North, but his words shook Jaime to the core, knowing that there were then of thousands of those creatures up beyond the Wall. It would hold, he told himself. It had done for a thousand years. It had to now. Nothing had ever breached the Wall.

"The Night's Watch couldn't hold the Wall against an army of Wildings," Snow had confessed. "It cannot hold against the White Walkers. We need all of the armies of Westeros to face the Night King, and even that might not be enough."

Snow. Jaime watched it pile around the buildings below in thick drifts, its chill wrapping around his golden armor, seeping into the leather underneath. Further north, the winter would weaken armies and slow their progress. Provisions would run out quickly, and finding more on the road would be impossible. Winter had finished off Stannis' army right on the doorstep of Winterfell when salvation might have been just a league away or less. They'd been too cold, too starved, and too weak to put up any sort of fight against Ramsay's well provisioned forces. What would a winter do to a united army of tens of thousands, most of who had never campaigned in snow?

The sound of the door easing open distracted him.

'How did you get in here?' he asked, seeing Tyrion standing there. Hadn't their party of Northern and Eastern allies made their leave of the city already?

'You forget dear brother that I have become a master of secret passages. Most of them are very conveniently sized,' he mused. 'Almost as if they were designed for dwarves. Funny that.' He stepped over and looked out the window, arms folded behind his back. 'Winter is here,' he said, echoing Jaime's own thoughts.

'The last winter, so you would have us believe.'

'We must fight or we shall all die,' Tyrion told him in no uncertain terms.

'You honestly believe them?' he asked. 'Or are you simply paid too handsomely by this Targaryen queen to care either way?'

'If Jon Snow says there is an army of undead fifty thousand strong, then I believe him. It nearly cost him his life to bring you the proof that you've seen with your own eyes. Our job is to convince Cersei.'

'Our job?' he remarked. 'Are we on the same side now again?'

'This battle has only one side. Even you must surely see that?'

'Cersei will want more proof than one haunted corpse.'

'Then send Euron Greyjoy north with a small fleet to Eastwatch. Let him see it for himself.'

'Euron Greyjoy is a cunt,' Jaime replied, not hiding his enmity. He'd already told Jaime in no uncertain terms what he intended taking for his reward. Over his dead body if he thought he was laying a hand on Cersei.

'Then if he does not return, he will have done us both a great service,' Tyrion replied.

Jaime wanted to smile at that. Yes, wouldn't he like to see that smug son of a bitch torn apart by something unnatural. A quick death was too goo for Euron Greyjoy.

'Do squids do well in the snow?' he asked, grinning at his brother.

Tyrion grinned back and poured out two glasses of wine, handing one to Jaime. 'Let's find out, shall we?'