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The mirror in Cersei's bed chamber was framed in ornate gold with lions' heads at the corners. The glass was slightly frosted with age, but she could still make out her reflection in it well enough. She undid the braids her handmaids had twisted in her golden hair and pulled it back in the style her brother wore when he went to the yard to practice with the other boys. When she was finished, she shifted the tunic she had taken from his things, and Jaime stared back at her from the other side of the glass.
It had always been one of their favorite games. The rule was simple -- and there was only the one -- whoever could fool everyone the longest won. Of course, Cersei won in the grand scheme of things -- Jaime lost much taste for wearing dresses by the age of seven or so. But even after their lady mother had died, Cersei could still get away with passing as Jaime, for a time. She couldn't hope to imitate him at the yards much anymore; he was too fast, too precise, too skilled. But once they made a show of dressing identically and playing at sword-fighting together.
A small crowd gathered, and it set Cersei's blood racing. Jaime didn't hold back, not exactly, but then, it wasn't a fight -- it was a dance. Just like in her mirror, her twin reflected her every move with a grace that was as easy as breathing. A step here, a step there, and they always moved together.
The servants and stable boys that had gathered to watch found it great fun as well. Their impassioned chatter and arguments over which of them was which had exhilarated Cersei all the more.
Lord Tywin hadn't shared in the amusement. "Ladies don't run around like ruffians," he said, his eyes flicking between them. Even now, he doesn't know who is who, Cersei realized, following his gaze.
But then Jaime had to open his mouth and the whole thing fell to pieces. "Everyone loved it," he said, with a smirk that was careless and rash and twisted his face into something so Jaime. "It was just a game."
Their father's eyes latched onto Cersei then, a look that said I see you, and she knew she had guessed true about his uncertainty. The steely gaze moved back to her brother. "A Lannister does not dance for applause," Tywin said, his voice as cold as his eyes. "And I will not have the two of you playing at this little charade any longer."
I can still do it if I want, Cersei thought later. Their lord father was often away at court, and anyway it only counted if she got caught. She was very good at not getting caught. The play-fight had been a purposeful spectacle; other times it was a perfect mummer's act, with no one the wiser but Cersei and Jaime.
And there were other ways to play at the game, too. Stranger ways that had nothing to do with crowds or their father, and everything to do with drawing the lines between this is Cersei and this is Jaime. Those games took place only at night, and they were growing more frequent and urgent as the years went on.
At ten their bodies were as similar as they ever had been, save the things between their legs. "Please, Cersei," Jaime would whisper as he pressed up against her. She liked to hear him say her name, but sometimes she wondered if they could take the game further, if for once she could be Jaime and he Cersei. But even in the dark with their bodies pressing close and Jaime's breaths puffed out sweaty along the slope of her neck, she didn't know what that really meant. How could they ever switch, fully? She would always be trapped in her own skin, and Jaime in his. Even when they joined at mouth or hip, one couldn't stop being the other.
It was only in the crowd that the real change could take place. It wasn't Cersei that physically became her twin; it was the crowd's image of her that changed, same as her father's that day when he'd been so cross with them. For those outside, she could slip into Jaime's skin as effortlessly as he slipped into her at night. But the change was in the eyes of the observers, then, and not in Cersei herself; she would remain stuck on the other side of the glass, watching a reflection and knowing all the while the limits of the illusion.
*
In the dream the woman looked like her.
She couldn't decide if it was the ghost of her mother, or an older version of herself. Whoever she was, she was beautiful, with skin like moonlight and hair like the sun and a frown as strong and sure as Lord Tywin's. Her eyes were shadows, though -- not in shadow, but shadow itself, swirling clouds of grey that turned to endless pits in the depths of her eye sockets.
She was sewing something, some piece of embroidery, but whenever Cersei tried to see what the image was, the lighting of the dream shifted it out of sight. The woman kept pricking herself as she worked, and the only thing Cersei could make out for certain was the streams of blood that seemed too much for such a small needle, coursing red down over the woman's fingers and hands and onto her wrists.
It wasn't until Cersei tried to speak that she felt the bindings around her neck and limbs. She struggled, but the trappings turned to fingers made of the same dark shadowy stuff clawing at the space where the woman's eyes should have been. They filled Cersei's mouth, and when she tried to shout Who are you? only the first word came out, a choked syllable that echoed in the emptiness around them, you you you…
The woman turned her head in the direction of Cersei's voiceless cry. When she opened her mouth, she had a voice; a voice like thunder and a voice like a whisper.
"What do you want?" she asked, and with the question the shadowy spirals twining their way down Cersei's throat and rooting her legs disappeared. She clutched her chest and coughed out nothing, eyes blind with sudden tears and lungs filled achingly with air.
"You want," the eyeless woman continued, oblivious to Cersei's spluttering. One of her bloody torn hands reached out and took Cersei by the chin, twisting the girl's head up so she had to stare straight into the depths of that eyeless face. "But you don't even know what for, yet."
"I want to be queen," Cersei told her, thinking of Rhaegar. Her voice was thin and strained, echoing pitifully after the horrible fullness of the eyeless woman's.
"Your prince has another," the woman told her scornfully.
"Elia is sickly," Cersei spat. Her chin was still firmly held in the woman's grasp; she could taste blood where it was smearing on her lower lip. "Elia can die."
"All men can die, child." For the first time, the woman's mouth twisted into something resembling a smile. "All men shall."
The dream shifted; Cersei felt it, a rumbling beneath her knees. The woman shuddered and wilted; first her hair fell out in chunks, then she began ripping it out by the roots. Her body shriveled and hunched over, her skin turned fleshy and hung around her face, but she still had the same shadowy pits for eyes. Cersei recognized her now. It had been nearly three years; that stupid wretched Melara had said they would forget, that if they never spoke of it the prophecies couldn't come true, but Cersei didn't have to speak to dream of Maggy the Frog.
"I'm sure you want things very much," the old woman croaked, "even if you don't know what they are. But what does that matter? Everyone wants things, girl. You don't just get things because you want them."
"I'll take them," Cersei said. Words were spilling out from her like fire. When she looked down at her hands, they were the eyeless woman's, covered in rivers of blood. "I'll take the things that are mine."
Maggy twisted again, shifted form a third time until she was smaller. This time it was a figure Cersei knew immediately. Her twin stared at her in her dream, his eyes black and endless as the Stranger's own. "You're a fool, sister," he said, and when she tore at his face with bloody hands he disappeared in a swirl of black smoke.
She woke alone, damp with sweat and sick to her stomach. She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, feeling the thumping of her heart recede slowly back to a steadier beat. It felt like ages since she'd dreamt of the old hag. She glanced at her hands, half expecting to find them shredded in ribbons of red. They were pale and shaking in the silvery light, but altogether whole.
The wetness between her legs startled her. For half a breath she didn't know what it was, but when she tore back the sheets and lifted up her nightdress she saw the dark crimson staining her thighs and the bed underneath.
"Don't cry, my lady," her handmaid said, when the mess had been cleared away. "You're a woman now."
"I'm not crying," Cersei snapped. She dug her nails so far into her palms she was surprised they didn't start bleeding, too. If her anger were swords, she'd make the whole castle bleed. "Get out."
The tears were hot on Cersei's face as she laid back down to sleep. I am a rock, as still as stone, she whispered to herself like a mantra. I am a lioness, and lions do not weep. It was easier to think than to follow through, try as she might. She had never seen her father cry, and she had rarely seen Jaime cry. But then, her father and Jaime didn't bleed between the legs. The thought made her angrier, but the anger didn't seem to stop the tears.
You're a woman now, the handmaid's voice echoed in her head, and she wanted to scream. Jaime was out in the Westerlands somewhere, squiring and fighting and bleeding in battle, and Cersei was in King's Landing, bleeding in her bed sheets. That was what women did -- her mother had bled; the bleeding meant Cersei could be a mother, too. But Lady Joanna was dead, and Elia of Dorne would be mother to the prince's children.
They should have been mine, Cersei thought. They were supposed to be mine. She pressed her hand against her smallclothes, and even with the blood, it felt good there, where Jaime's hand belonged. She had often wondered if Rhaegar could make her feel as good as her twin did. She missed him terribly, then. Often she had other girls with her, handmaids and the daughters of noblemen to warm her bed at night, but tonight she was glad to be alone, and not just for her flowering. It was Rhaegar that she wanted, but she couldn't have him so she wanted Jaime. But he wasn't there either, so all she had left was herself.
*
Some time later, Jaime finally paid visit to the Red Keep. It had been nearly two years since Cersei left with their father for court. She had not thought to consider what that time would do to her brother.
When she had left the Rock, she had left behind a boyish shadow of herself. At fourteen, Jaime was a good handspan taller than she was, and his time spent squiring had filled out his arms. His skin was darker and his hair shorter, though she still found herself in the features of his face. His eyes were bright as his laugh when he saw her, but his voice was deeper. "Sister," he said by way of greeting, embracing her, "you look different."
Cersei stepped back, putting an arm's length between them. Though Tywin had never paid as much attention to his children as he might, she didn't particularly want him to catch sight of the gleam in Jaime's eyes, just then.
"I look the same," she told him coolly, though she allowed something reminiscent of his gaze to slip briefly in her answering smile. "It's you who's changed, sweet brother."
She was wrong, of course, as Jaime was quick to find late that night. He was in her bed chamber; it had only taken a minor argument with her septa to get her to leave them alone for the night.
"He isn't a boy," Cersei had said, doing her best to laugh lightly and playfully, just like maids were meant to. "He's my brother."
"You are a woman flowered, my lady," her septa answered in hushed tones. But she was an easy old woman with a kindly smile, and Cersei knew how to play her when necessary. "Your father has arranged a chamber for Lord Jaime during his stay at the castle."
"Of course," Jaime interjected. "But it's been nearly two years since I've last seen my family. I'll retire to my own chamber after I've gotten a chance to talk with my sister."
It mostly had been talk, at first. Jaime sprawled across her bed, head propped up on a hand as he watched her brush out her hair in front of her mirror. He talked of adventures and knights and fighting; Cersei told him of life at court. Her stories were dull by comparison, though she left out some of the better ones, like the tales of the kissing games some of the children played in the grove down by the docks. None of the boys were as good of kissers as her brother, but she didn't think Jaime would quite appreciate the comparison, favorable or not.
When he got up to stretch, he came over to stand behind her. She felt the calluses on his fingers when he took the brush from her hands. He brushed it through her hair, and she took his left hand in her own, running her smooth fingers over the roughness of his palm. When she glanced up at their reflection in the mirror, Jaime's eyes were dark and heavy and locked on her.
Her mouth was suddenly very dry. She swallowed. "Your hands are larger," she said, flexing her fingers along his. "Rougher. Septa says that men like their ladies soft." Something daring laced through her, like wildfire in her veins. She took his hand and slipped it down the front of her dress. In the reflection, Jaime's body visibly tightened as he drew in a sharp breath. "Is that true?"
Jaime cupped at her breasts beneath the fabric, and she watched him in the mirror as he folded over her, pressing the side of his face against her hair, breathing her in. "Cersei," he murmured in her ear. His lips moved down the side of her face, kissing at her cheek, her neck. He all but ripped her dress as he slipped his other hand down the front, pushing the fabric so that it pooled around her waist. He pulled her back with a sudden roughness, holding her tight against his chest.
They did not look so similar like this; they were reflections twisted wrong. Her body betrayed her in soft curves, where her twin was all harsh lines. Jaime's hands were callused and dark on the white of her breasts, her own hands slipped over his like an inverted shadow. Everything about herself seemed smaller, softer, swallowed against the backdrop of her brother. She could feel the length of him pressing hard on her back, and his eyes slipped shut when she shuddered against him.
She couldn't bring herself to look away from that image in the mirror, but Jaime had eyes only for her. His lips moved down her neck to kiss at her collarbone. When his mouth started to move lower, she finally tore her eyes away, turning toward him.
"What are you doing?" She cupped his face in one hand. The fierceness she found in his eyes sent a thrill through her whole body.
"Kissing you," Jaime said, moving to do so again, but she held him firmly in place. He settled for tracing a hint of those callused fingers along the lower half of her naked breasts, and she shivered at the touch. "You're beautiful. I think about you all the time, but all I had to remember was you at twelve. I may as well have been imagining kissing myself."
"We aren't children anymore, Jaime." Somehow there was no reproach in her voice, though she meant for there to be at least some. "We can't keep playing this game."
"Game?" Her twin laughed. "I'm not playing a game, Cersei. I've missed you."
And that much was true, Cersei knew. He'd missed her, and she him, and they showed it to one another in the ways they'd always known, moving their kisses and touches to her bed. Jaime got up at one point to blow out the candles, casting the room in the silver-blue shadows of the moon glinting in through the windows. But even in the quiet dark, danger hung around them like another skin. It was one thing to be children fumbling at each other in the dark of Casterly Rock, and quite another to do so as guests of the Targaryen court, Father close-by in the castle.
None of that mattered when they came together. It was far from the first time he'd been inside her; Cersei wasn't sure if there had ever been a first time. Trying to remember one was like trying to remember a first drink of water or a first wound or the first time she'd ever cried or laughed or spoken. It was useless; there had been no first, not of any real consequence. And even if there had, it was lost in time the way most memories of body were. Their bodies were nothing if not memories of each other.
But something about it was different. They were no longer children, she'd said it and he'd laughed, but that didn't make it any less true. Children could play a game of dress up, could play at being one or the other, could even play at being inside each other, could see how far they could stretch the lines until they broke. They were becoming something else, and Jaime may have been able to laugh at it, but he couldn't laugh it away.
He's wrong, she thought, after. She'd let him finish inside her, though it meant she'd have to sneak into Flea Bottom disguised as some common whore to find moon tea. Jaime's fingers traced lazily along her chest, down over her stomach. It is a game. If it wasn't, then Jaime wouldn't need to leave before morning, to sneak into his own chambers and pretend to have spent the night there. She wouldn't have had to been so quiet, holding her moans in small gasps at the side of his neck as he thrust inside her.
She would have been able to marry him, if not Rhaegar. Her father had promised her Rhaegar, but that had been a cruel lie, and now he promised her a better man, but one didn't exist in the Seven Kingdoms. Septa had said that a woman was only as good as the family she married into, but she was a fool; Cersei was a Lannister.
"The Targaryens wed brother and sister." Cersei whispered the thought hoarsely into the dark. Jaime's hand tightened on her hip, drawing her closer.
"Is that what you want?" he whispered back, his lips moving softly across her cheek. The words had stirred his interest; Cersei felt it pressing against her leg. She closed her eyes. "To be my wife?"
Wanting you gets me nothing, Cersei thought as Jaime's hand slipped back between her thighs. But then, that was never entirely true. "What do you want?" she asked, in lieu of an answer.
Jaime's response was as predictable as summer was after spring. "You," he said.
He doesn't even know what it means, and he just says it, Cersei thought, but she turned his face toward her own for a kiss, all the same. Her mouth fell open beneath his, and he moved his tongue to match the rhythm of his fingers against her, inside her. Wanting me gets him nothing, as well.
Shadows and moonlight spread over his skin, softening his features. She pushed his hand aside and climbed on top of him, slipping his cock inside her. He held her hips as she thrust, moving them both. If she closed her eyes she could lose herself in the movement, in the sharp warmth where they were joined.
But all too soon it would be over. He felt so good, like this; they were complete, but when it was finished they would be apart. She wanted to tear off her skin, to push herself so far into his flesh that they were one, to never be separate from him again. She wanted to breathe his breath and see through his eyes, to dance the dance they did that day at the Rock, their swords meeting with clashes of metal like lovers, like the embrace they were in now. She wanted them on display, for the world to see how perfect they fit, how he was her and she was him. She wanted, but the wanting got her nothing.
She came with a louder moan than she meant to, shuddering above him. He followed her shortly after, but even when they were done she kept him inside her. He shifted his head against the sheets, and when he moved moonlight fell into his eyes. Jaime stared up at her, his mouth parted and his breath steadying on those open lips in the sudden stillness of the night. She spread her fingers wide across the center of his chest, feeling his heartbeat distinct and separate from her own, strong beneath her palm.