Decided not to post separately.
So, here's a golden boy chapter, an in-between one-shot. A sort of flashback/ catch-up.
Hope you don't... you know... hate it.
Interlude – Desert Grip
"Look at that fat fucking whore."
"By all the gods…" a man whistled thorough his teeth catching sight of the person his companion was talking about.
It had been hot. Stinking hot. It didn't help that he had to cover up and wear a beard. His forehead pressed against the arm he was resting on the bar. He did not have to worry about the scum around him, his hand was gone but not his sharp senses.
If he lost those perhaps he could have tricked himself in to believing… Jaime breathed out a deep breath, the leather glove that his forehead leaned against was warm but necessary for covering his recognizable gold hand.
His brother had been so disgusted. So repulsed… He wished had not said anything. He wished he could take it all back. That he could have said 'no' to his father.
His heartless fucking father.
It was strange for Jaime to realize exactly how much he had missed his brother. He had tried to prepare, he was aware of the hatred Tyrion could be holding on to but he had not expected the… the… weakness within himself.
And so Jaime went to drink... often. Shaping a typical day in this sweltering heat, hotter than a corpse rotting in a yellow Dornish desert. Tyrosh was surely one of the seven hells. In this hell Jaime had found Tyrion playing at being a jester with a dreadful little dwarf girl… P- Pe- Pansy? Jaime shook his head… Some such stupid name.
All he could really recall was how sadly Tyrion had looked at him. It had winded him, like the dream of that weeping woman who he could not entirely recognize. They were the same.
He had destroyed his little brother.
Left Tyrion to think no one could ever truly want him. That his first wife… Tysha.
Jaime remembered her name.
Tysha… the skinny, frightened, little girl.
It made Jaime's skin crawl, he had helped to save her, only to have her be brutalized at the hands of his sadistic father… just as abusive and spiteful as the Mad King had ever been. It was disgusting.
So young an age, he could not have known what his father had planned. But for his own part in it all, Jaime felt the girl's fate may as well have come by his own hand.
What could he say to his brother? Who he had sworn to himself he would protect, who he had kissed and embraced with more love than anyone in their family had. What could Jaime do but send Tyrion on his way?
That final look was all Jaime had expected for himself and all he had gotten.
"…'magine the fat, wet twat 'tween those huge legs… bet tha' bitch's nice 'n' tigh…"
"May I ask…" Jaime spoke up, his eyes closed and his head still rested against his arm. "To whom you might be referring?"
"…'hom?" the more gruffly voiced of the men scoffed.
"Yes." Jaime sat up, his green eyes facing a rat-faced man and his considerable larger friend. "Whom?" he repeated stone-faced as he pronounced the word clearly.
"Tha' ugly lump ov'r there." The skinny, pointy nosed man gestured towards the door of the tavern.
Jaime looked. At one time he might not have had to. But times had changed, his eyes were new and the world was not as it had been.
Clicking his tongue against his teeth Jaime shook his blond head with a sigh, "No need to be envious, sweetling …" his green gaze fell back to the man "... one day you may stand taller than a bar stool…"
The scrawny man's face slowly changed into a scowling one as he worked out exactly what Jaime had said. "Wha' did yah…"
Before the small man could go on or reach for his blade, Jaime grabbed the horn of ale in the rat-faced man's hand gulped down the contents and smashed the mug over the dirty little man's head. The man's friend had no time to react, by the time he had dropped his own drink, Jaime had his sword at the large man's throat and his foot on the ratty man's spine.
"Ah- ah- ah…" Jaime warned as the larger man fingers fumbled with pathetic piece of steel at his hip.
How tiresome…
While Jaime had grown stronger with his left hand, as strong as he ever had been with his right. The drive to fight and live by the sword had left him somewhat. He had been an artist even with a blunt blade he could carve out true masterpieces. If he chose to, he could still create that same magic. But in him the hunger had calmed, without Cersei constantly whispering in his ear, telling him what he was... reminding him, trapping him with assertions that he was simply one half of a whole person. Jaime could feel himself changing. Though in truth he felt as though he was growing, filling in the space in himself that he had once given so blindly to Cersei. Needless to say however, what he could and would do if he found the right cause…
"Now" he began his green eyes keeping track of the happenings within shit filled establishment, remaining coolly focused on the ruddy man standing before him. "A lesson in etiquette…" Jaime hummed at the confusion in the larger man's expression "a lesson in manners…" he clarified. "You" he put more his weight on to the foot holding down the man and dug the sword further into the bigger man's flesh without drawing blood "do not go around calling expecting ladies 'bitch' or 'whore' especially" he pushed his foot and sword a bit further "when she is my lady, expecting my child" the sword ticked some red out of the man's neck. "Nod…" Jaime's expectant gaze moved from the man before him to the man on the ground as they frantically wagged their heads. "Good." Jaime drew back, still on his guard, he waited "Off you go."
The men took his permission and ran. She too turned and took off.
"Why…?" she asked when he followed her out of the tavern, into a crowded colourful street and down a dusty, dry alley.
"Because I did not fight my way into you, to have you ridiculed."
She stopped in her tracks, turning to face him, the fear in her wide eyes clear though, as always, she refused to back down. "Lannisters love their prizes."
"Yes, but you're not a prize"
"Of course. Someone like the Queen or your sister…" she began.
"Maybe they are prizes." Jaime nonchalantly shrugged. "But they aren't you and you are who I want."
"Why?" she asked, her voice small.
Jaime could only shrug again. He did not know. One day it had all become so clear to him. It struck him without warning. Helpless, he knew that he had to fight for her. "You're the only girl I was ever willing to marry."
"Why?"
"There was no other way to get between your legs." Jaime teased, "and…" he moved nearer "I can be myself with you, I finally know what it is be a whole person… and it has everything to do with learning what I have by being with you…" the fingers of his left hand traced the bugle at her stomach "… Brienne."
His Birdy had seen it in him, what he could be, but it was Brienne that had made him get 'there' just by being herself. He told Myra things and she guessed what he did not tell, he told Brienne everything about Tysha, about his father, the Mad King, the dream of the weeping woman, his mother, his brother and sister. It was Brienne who he wanted to tell, who he wanted.
"We'll have to run again…" her large blue eyes darted in the direction they had come from. The danger of remaining in so foreign a place after threatening some locals was not to be ignored. Especially as he was meant to be in hiding…
"Perhaps not the brightest of deeds …" Jaime nodded, agreeing with her tone of lament over his very public display "But this city stinks of piss anyway. And there are other Free Cities that Uncle Ger and Tyg would have wanted us to visit for the sake of true Lannister tradition," he blithely joked trying to dispel her worry, though he worried himself.
He felt uncertain of what could be waiting for him should he dare return to Westeros, he was still seen as a traitor to the Taraygren throne and, in the ever vengeful eyes of his sister, to the Baratheon crown as well. And still it remained that he was a Lannister.
Jaime had spent his entire life being recognized, it had been quite wearying really. Constantly being asked if he remembered this obscure person or that certain face from the thousands of nameless people he had encountered from the many places he had been.
Those damned lines of his family and of his life, had now converged with those that his Birdy had read in his skin. And alas, at his very centre, that was who he was…
A Lannister. In all that he did he was sure of that, just as sure as he was of his place with Brienne and to stay in that place he had to be alive, and to be alive he had to stay away from Westeros until all of the pieces in this game had settled. That dragon girl was moving slower than any conqueror he had ever heard of. She was still out past the Red Waste, rumoured to have taken a taste for slaver's blood beginning in Astapor and now moving on to other cities in Slaver's Bay.
If the wench moved faster, then at least Jaime could figure his future out further… running and hiding or facing his fate by the hand of a Queen or some Faceless Man funded by his spiteful twin.
Jaime could see the picture in his sister's head… honourable Stannis Baratheon determinedly losing the war he was still fighting, the Greyjoys raiding the paralyzed Westerlands, the Tyrells closing in at the Red Keep and the paranoid belief that Tyrion had killed Joffery. Though the final theory had likely become unpopular to most anyone else at court.
Especially with the sudden departure of the slippery Lord Baelish to the Vale where he had effectively take up Jaime's short-lived mantle of 'Warden of the East', acting as the remaining guardian to the lack-wit heir of House Arryn. And then there was also Lady Olenna Tyrell, suddenly having a less volatile king for her granddaughter to wed in little King Tommen.
Further disproving the treasonous allegations regarding Tyrion, was the fact that in the instant that Jaime had mentioned Brienne's state, any small amount of doubt he had held about his brother's activities vanished. By his expression alone, Jaime had known for sure that Tyrion could not have killed his own nephew, no matter how tempted he may have been.
Jaime had never been one for courtly life but even from his great distance he could see the vice tightening at King's Landing.
Cersei would no doubt be hunting for any sign of Tyrion. Just as sure as she was likely hunting for any sign of Jaime for his 'betrayal'.
Having left the King's Guard citing a legitimate aliment, Jaime could have taken Casterly Rock for himself, but nothing had ever made that title feel right for Jaime. Lording over the Rock was never a responsibility he had wanted, it was too much like sitting on a throne… one made of gold and not swords. So he had given claim of their childhood home over to his younger brother.
He had briefly entertained the idea of faulting the Northerners for their part in the Iron Born's freedom to sack the Westerlands, but then he thought of the Taragyren babes slain in their home at the behest of his father and the harsh means that were necessary to keep a realm together. His father had instilled that in him at least. And for that he could understand, though as it stood, it remained painful.
The ravaging of his homeland had struck Jaime deeply and he had offered to help Tyrion in taking back the lands. In turn Tyrion had made it very clear that he had no use for a 'cripple'.
Judging by Tyrion's disdain of him, Jaime knew he would probably never see the Rock or even the Westerlands again. He could stay in poverty in the Free Cities, live with a different name and create a life with his wife. But he could also return to Westeros, Evenfall Hall in Tarth was a smaller keep, removed from the politics but of some note. If it was safe to be a Lannister of Westeros he would wear and carry on the name. If it was not safe, then the name did not have to matter to the public, all that mattered was staying alive for his wife and child.
If only that dragon wench would hurry up!
"I…" Brienne's large blue eyes flitted over his face, she was slightly taller and looking down at him.
He would show Birdy now. He would point out Brienne's eyes. It had taken him almost an age to notice but notice he did and he'd be damned if the sea did not live in his Lady's gaze.
Her large hands entwined with his real one as she went on quietly "I've been thinking of names…"
"Something for that oaf again?" Jaime unenthusiastically rolled his eyes.
"The 'oaf' helped us escape from those sellswords at Pentos." Brienne corrected, though she smiled. Her crooked, gapped teeth showing how she how lighthearted she had grown in Jaime's relatively vulgar company.
"That one?..." Jaime frowned, as he realized to which dolt she was referring.
"Yes… who got himself killed."
"Not for us though." He countered.
"Aye." Brienne nodded though she went on to argue. "But he is dead all the same, and he did save us…"
"You saved us" Jaime interjected, his green gaze roaming over her freckled face with some consideration. At one time she was so unyielding Jaime was not sure how he managed to keep from beating her head in, anytime that she would open her mouth to bleat he would grow sick of her presence, but now…
"Fine then. Something with a 'K-' then…" he relented, shaking longhaired his head once again "What sort of fucking name starts with a 'K'?"
"Well" Brienne's blue eyes fell to her relatively swollen stomach under the loose fitting breeches and tunic she was wearing "we have another moon to find one."
"Gods! Has it been that long sinc…" Jaime stopped short, clearing his throat and looking away down the alley.
Brienne nodded understanding his sudden break in speaking "He should have reached Winterfell by now…" It seemed to him that he had only sent word of Tyrion to his Birdy a few days ago.
Jaime lifted his head, stretching a false smile over his lips. "I wasn't thinking of that…"
Brienne returned his smile with a soft genuine one, raising one of her hands to cup his bearded cheek. "All right." At one time he might have recoiled at her touch but his changed face wanted and welcomed the comfort of her caress.
"I wasn't." Jaime carried on defensively, clearly sensing how Brienne saw through him.
She kissed his frown with a smile. "All right."
Hate it? Wanna throw shoes at me?
So this is the ship for me, sort of a mirror of Robb/ Myra… sorry SanSan amigos. A lot of babies huh?
Myra will be back up soon!
Timeline of my story is a bit shifted, it might not be good story telling… but I want things to happen.
