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In the chaos of the attack, no one remembered Melisandre’s portal. Those few who had braved the Red Woman’s fires to watch her try to peel back the years to the death of the last dragon king had been called away by the sounding of the horn – once, twice, and after a long pause, thrice. Even Melisandre had abandoned her – as she thought – unsuccessful working. By the time anyone remembered, the fires had gone out and the portal – if it had ever opened in the first place – was long since closed. ** In the bitter cold and the swirling snow, with night closing in on them and the wights swarming up the walls, Tormund and his wildlings simply accepted the appearance of a young southron lordling, golden-haired and wearing a blood-spattered white cloak. They gave him a dragon-glass studded blade and a flaming torch, and for long hours he fought beside them. During a momentary lull, huddled together in the shelter of a stone tower, one of the wildlings passed around a skin of fermented mare’s-milk he’d won off a Dothraki rider. The young lordling stared into the fire, his face pale and shadowed, his eyes tired and haunted, fixed on something far, far away. But they were all tired and haunted, and so they thought nothing of it; in fact they liked him all the better for it.In the spirit of fellowship, they offered the mare’s-milk to the southron stranger. After long hours of fighting, his pretty white cloak was torn and ruined, and if he’d been wearing shining armour he’d long since exchanged it for leather-clad mail and furs. He took a sip, coughed and sputtered and swore in disgust, but managed to keep it down – the wildlings laughed uproariously and clapped him on the back. “What’s your name, lad?” Tormund asked.“Jaime,” the young lordling said said, his green eyes glinting in the firelight. “You’re a good lad, for a Southroner,” scarred Frekke said expansively. They’d fought back to back at one time, when things had grown desperate, holding off four wights at once. “You can fight by my side, anytime.”“Aye,” someone else said, and nodding heads echoed the pronouncement. The young lordling stared at them solemnly, but before he could say anything the horns sounded again – three long, terrible blasts – and soon anything they might have said was lost to the furious battle. ** Ten long, terrible days and nights passed. The fighting was relentless, never-ending, the constant darkness taking its toll on courage and morale. The wights never tired, but men did; the wildlings fought until they could fight no more, and then they rested and woke to fight again. Young Jaime fought, and fought, and fought, wild and reckless in the way of a man with nothing left to lose. He slept only rarely, a few hours of rest snatched here and there, interrupted by twitching nightmares; his eyes were haunted, and his face shadowed – but so were they all haunted and exhausted. As the days passed and men died and were replaced with what reinforcements could be found, the fighters on the wall often found themselves fighting with and beside old friends, men they’d never met, and sometimes even old enemies. Young Jaime fought beside them all, and no one questioned him. They welcomed him into their ranks and made him one of their own.It was Sansa who first questioned his presence. In the grey, dim light that passed for morning, she was breaking her fast in the great hall when she caught a stray glimpse of golden curls and green eyes – the sudden resemblance to Joffrey – to Cersei – made her blood run cold. She gasped, her attention riveted on the strange young knight in mail and leather. “Who is that, Lord Varys?” she asked, her voice thin and strangled. “I don’t – I have never seen him before.”The eunuch paused to run his considering eye over the crowd in the hall. The young knight was eating with a group of Northmen, making some sort of jest; the Northmen laughed and hailed him, and he threw back his head and smiled, the golden force of his charisma apparent even in the darkened hall. “That’s young Jaime,” Ser Davos said. “He’s a captain on one of the walls.”“Young Jaime, you say,” Varys said faintly. “Oh, indeed.”“He seems a good lad to me.” Ser Davos shrugged. “A good fighter, and a natural leader. He saved King Jon’s life the other day.”The young knight looked up, saw Varys watching him, and the smile and the laughter vanished, leaving something older, darker and more haunted behind. “That,” Varys said, with deliberate precision, “is Ser Jaime Lannister. The Kingslayer.”** Sansa had him brought before the council in a private audience chamber. “Lord Varys tells me that you are Ser Jaime Lannister,” she said. “How is it that you come to be here?”He looked at her, frowning a little. His eyes strayed from her to Ser Davos, to Brienne – who could not take her eyes off him – and then to Varys. He stared at the eunuch as if he could not, quite, believe his eyes. And then Tyrion threw open the door to the chamber with a bang. “Lord Varys,” he said, “if this is another one of your cryptic puzzles, I swear –” He trailed off, staring at the young knight with wide, astonished eyes. For his part, the young knight looked back at him, bewildered and upset. “Tyrion…?” the young knight said, faintly questioning. “What happened to your face?” His gaze went back to Varys. “You really are Varys? I’m not just imagining things?”“Are you prone to imagining things, Ser Jaime?” Sansa asked coldly.He looked back at her, suddenly laughing – a swift, terrible, reckless humour, the laughter of a man with nothing to lose. “I would not have thought so,” he said. “Perhaps I am still seated on the Iron Throne with Aerys’ blood on my hands imagining all this. Perhaps this is reality, and I’m only imagining that I was ever a Kingsguard. Things have become – blurred.” “How is it that you come to be here,” she said again. He only shrugged. “I killed the king,” he said simply. “I was so tired, and so – I didn’t care what happened next. So I sat down on the throne and waited to see who would come. But before anyone arrived, there was – an opening, a tear in the world.” “A tear in the world,” Varys said – “Melisandre. Of course.” “I wanted to see what was on the other side,” said Ser Jaime Lannister. “It seemed better than life as a kingslayer and an oathbreaker. And so – I stepped through, and found myself here.”He stared at them, open and unguarded, as if his story explained everything. Perhaps it did. Perhaps it really was as simple as that. Tyrion began to laugh. “Jaime,” he said. “Brother mine. Only you could be so –What did you think would happen?”Ser Jaime only shrugged. “I didn’t know when or where I was. I followed the sound of screaming and fighting to the walls. When I first saw those – things,” he shuddered, “I knew that it was a war worth fighting. It seemed a better cause to die for than a Mad King.”** In the end, they found that they could not send him back. Melisandre had died on the battlements, calling on too much of her god’s flames; there was no one else who could even come close to replicating her feat.“Let him be,” King Jon said. “If he wants to stay and fight, we need all the men we can get.” “And what happens afterwards?” Sansa asked. “If – if the real Ser Jaime comes, if they both survive, what then?” Jon shrugged. “We’ll worry about that afterwards, when the time comes.”And so he stayed and fought.And they worried about it afterwards.