Quick note – I totally head canon Brienne as genderqueer and asexual but not aromantic so if you hate that interpretation you won't like this chapter, obviously everyone has their own head canons and that's cool, so I don't mind anyone disagreeing just don't hate. :-)

6.

Jaime

"You're riding with me to Winterfell today, then?"

It was phrased in such a way that he could have taken it as a question or a fact. He decided to take it as a statement, and responded with appropriate disdain.

"Oh am I. Am I really." He made an ugh sound and almost said do I have to but he supposed it would make him sound like a petulant child and held himself back. Cersei always said he was a child, a big baby, a whining imbecile, and so on and so on, ad nauseum.

There was a time when he had thought he could never, would never live without her. He never had done in all his life. He had thought that losing her would be like losing a limb. Well, he had survived that to begin with. This had almost been easier; she had lived on more than his missing hand had. It had been easier to internalise her than it was to learn to fight left handed. Well, he did not need to make a space for her voice in his head, she had always had it.

But it was the Cersei of long ago that lived on, not the desperate, scheming bitch of her later years. He was almost glad she had turned into somebody he hated before she died, he was not sure he could have survived her loss if she had not. The Cersei who lived on in him was the girl who had played the peasant, the girl whose smiles were like a fine rain and whose tears made the sun come out. She always was contrary, impossible to read. She was no different in his mind, only – better. A better person perhaps; the girl he had always dreamed she was, imagined she could be and who she never could have been in life.

He could not even miss her; all hint of that girl had died so long ago.

It made it easier that this one was as different from Cersei as a woman could be. In fact woman was barely even the right word. He had suggested a long time ago that they needed to make up a new word for whatever she was and it must have spoken weights as to how far they had come that he did not mean it as an insult and she did not take it as one.

He wondered what Cersei would say of where he had ended up; in quiet retirement not far from Winterfell, and with Brienne of all people. He could hardly credit it himself. She – though again a new word was needed – was everything that Cersei was not, honest and brave and noble to an often tedious thought. Ugly too, he would have once been the first to say – though he could not see it any more, not since he had first seen those blue eyes shining in any kind of happiness. He had been so delighted to have put it there that for the first time, more than ever with Cersei, he could have honestly said he knew what love was.

It was not a love he ever expected to find, in truth he would rarely speak aloud and no more would she, but they demonstrated it as they had from the start, each leaping to a steely fierce defence of the other that left everyone else behind.

He still called her wench, though he never thought of her as such, and sometimes, when she knew he would not take it seriously, she still called him kingslayer. She would follow it with a smile more beautiful than he could have imagined her capable of; it was all teeth, yes, but beauty was not about looks with her, he had come to realise that well enough. It was not as though he was so pretty any more himself- Cersei had been right about that at least.

Any sexuality he had had it seemed, had died with her. He never had been interested in anyone else, and now he was content enough that way. He had always assumed Brienne to be lying when she had claimed no interest in the matter but, after Cersei's death, for the first time he had come to understand her together. And that was fine. He had never imagined he would be able to share a bed with both no sex and no awkwardness, but it was pleasure and a peace that took him by delightful surprise.

He had questioned the location at first;

"Why Winterfell?"

"I swore an oath to protect the Stark girls," she said for the hundredth time.

"You swore an oath to a dead woman who tried to have you hanged," he pointed out.

"I swore to protect them and that's what I'll do," she repeated stubbornly.

"Anyone ever tell you you're the dullest, most predictable –"

"Repeatedly. And it was always you."

He had always assumed his irritation with her was simply that – irritation. He had never guessed it could be affection.

"I don't think she needs your protection," he said, after they had first gone to meet the new Queen in the North.

"No," Brienne had agreed.

"Even if she did not have our old hound to protect her – there's a girl who can look after herself". By all the gods – he remembered the day they had first arrived in Winterfell and the Sansa he had seen there and never thought he would have said such a thing.

"But her sister does," Brienne insisted. Jaime had started to argue that he had never met a girl who so well knew her way around a sword but once before.

"Oh she knows her way around a sword. It's not enough. I've never seen a girl need more help knowing her way around herself."

He had looked at her, smirking; he had seen the way she watched Arya.

"Dear gods," he sighed, resignedly – "It must be like looking in a mirror."

"Shut up".

That was the beginning of their relations with Winterfell; friendship Brienne called it, he would have tentatively said alliance and never admitted that she had the right of it more than he did.

It was harder for him than for Brienne, to find his way into their friendship. He supposed it always would be. He had heard that they had a dragon but was not prepared for it to attack him the first day they set foot within the walls. It had swooped down out of the sky, pinning him beneath its claws and roared, opening its jaws to stream fire into his face.

"Don't you bloody dare!" he had heard as something large crashed into the beast's side.

"Sandor?" he squinted, sitting up in the dust, but his erstwhile Hound was paying him no attention –

"We do not flame people!" he was shouting at the dragon as though it was a child – "Sansa -"

The lady had come running at the commotion – "Tell him!"

The dragon was clawing at the ground sullenly, glaring at the two people stood between them.

Sansa had held out a hand to calm the dragon and Jaime was astounded to see it have some effect, though she glanced at him a little too fiercely for comfort –

"That's Jaime Lannister," she said, as though this excused the animal's behaviour.

"I know who it bloody is! You said he – " he indicated the dragon – "Didn't attack people"

"He pushed him out a window!"

"I beg your pardons –" Jaime was getting to his feet finally – "But I think I'd know if I pushed a bloody great dragon out a window."

"That's my brother Bran," she said coldly, folding her arms and looking at him pointedly.

"Ah." Jaime stated, grimacing, working it out. He looked the dragon in the eyes, cringing a little –

"I suppose a simple sorry isn't going to do it?"

The dragon spat a tiny flame in response.

"No fucking fire, I said!" Sandor roared at it. He continued to rail at it whilst Sansa coolly welcomed him to Winterfell.

He was welcome on Brienne's account at first, though they had heard how he had searched for her and Arya and understood he genuinely wished to help them now, had done for a long time. But it had to be up to Bran when and if to forgive him, and he could not but accept this, saddened as he always had been by his one greatest misdeed. Thankfully Brienne and Arya were already bonding in the training yard by the time Sansa was finished speaking

It was Clegane who made him really feel welcome first, as soon as Jaime apologised for ever thinking he had been raping and pillaging the river lands.

"I should have known better," he admitted – "That's not you, is it?"

"I'd have thought the same of myself at one time too," Sandor shrugged.

As soon as Sandor had come to realise that Jaime no longer saw himself as his superior they became easily united both in distrust of Bran the dragon and in a shared disregard for the Kingsguard they had both been part of and the true knights who had destroyed their faith in the title. Sansa had come round to him soon enough, he suspected largely on her husband's account, and the children had followed soon upon Brienne's.

It was the dragon that was hardest and, when he thought about it, he could see no reason why Bran would ever forgive him. He would not forgive someone who had crippled him. And yet, one day, after many months of back and forth between their minor castle and Winterfell, he was walking through the Weirwood when a great warm weight nudged him so hard in the shoulder that he fell over. When he saw it was the dragon he got ready to scream – like a girl if he had to – but a girl, who could only be of Wildling descent, came out from under the shadow of a wing and pulled him to his feet.

"He says he forgives you," she said and she grinned – "But don't do it again."

"Yes well – I was planning to, of course." He looked at the huge creature nervous through the mask of sarcasm.

"He wouldn't be a dragon if he hadn't followed the three eyed raven he says, and he wouldn't have done that if he hadn't lost the use of his legs –"

The dragon made a little rumble;

"He says he would have grown up to be some rubbishy knight like you. But on the whole he can't not forgive you forever he says. He likes being a dragon."

After that everything was easier. He would never stop being nervous of the great, oily black beast. Often he would turn around with the suspicion that he was being followed and find the creature creeping behind him, cocking its head and licking its lips. He could swear to the gods it was laughing at him. Every time he argued with Arya – and she was quite as obstreperous as Sandor had warned him, she would end it by saying Bran was going to eat him, but over the years it had become almost as friendly as trading insults with Brienne.

"I promised Arya," she was saying now, and no doubt she had, for the two of them were thick as thieves – "We're going to train a little and I believe everyone's riding out this afternoon to take lunch in the woods."

"Let me check this – you're enticing me to Winterfell – for a picnic? How old do you think I am?"

"Do you really want me to answer that question?" She looked at him, weary already and it was only just after breakfast.

"Actually, I love picnics".

She rolled her eyes at him as they headed out to the stables. He rolled his back. They made faces. He grinned, he felt more golden than being a lion could ever have made him.

_x_

Maybe it's unrealistic to think Bran could forgive Jaime – but I think he's a very forgiving person/ dragon and if anyone could do that it would be Bran. So okay now I'm taking suggestions for who to do next! :-)

By the way, if anyone thinks I'm awesome enough yous can follow me on tumblr at shadow-in-the-shade. It's multi – fandom with much sansan. Enjoy. :-)