Chapter Text

Jaime sat again at the breakfast table, but this time, he drank water instead of ale. His chest and ribs ached from where he had beaten them with his golden hand, and it was a welcome ache, a familiar battle ache.

Brienne didn't come to breakfast, still sick abed with her baby boy, but Gerald was there, repeatedly thanking him for coming, for his service in helping him take care of his Brienne.

"My Brienne," Gerald kept saying, and each repeat was like salt in an old wound.

Jaime excused himself to escape to the ship, but Gerald stopped him.

"The lady of the house seeks your company, Ser Jaime," he said.

Jaime was powerless to resist. Brienne, for all her coldness the day before, had been on her deathbed mere days before.

When he reached the bed, Brienne was singing, low and lilting. He approached and was a little startled to see her breasts bare, the babe just finished suckling and napping atop her chest.

She didn't make a move to cover herself, and Jaime wanted to press a finger to her nipple, to remove the bead of milk there. He didn't, of course, sat in the chair next to her.

"Jaime," she said, warmly, and shifted her arms, and her breasts, so he could see the face of the babe in her arms. It had a round, cherubic face like Gerald, and a mop of gold curls.

"He's beautiful," Jaime said, and although newborns were usually shriveled things, mewling and howling, this one was more baby than newborn, big and bouncing and healthy, and he did think so. He wouldn't lie to her.

"Gerald said all I would speak after he was born was your name," She said. "And so he named him Jaime."

Jaime startled a little in his seat. He didn't speak. Didn't trust himself to speak.

She smiled at him. "It's a good name. A strong name."

Jaime scoffed. "The name of a one handed Kingslayer."

"The name of a true friend," Brienne corrected, her blue eyes flashing their warrior light at him, warning him not to disparage himself in her company. "I'm sorry I was cold to you. I was angry when I awoke. I had fever dreams...fever dreams where you...you left me without saying goodbye."

Jaime winced a little. He had left without goodbyes the last time he'd seen her, been too hurt and confused to stay and see her honeymooning with Gerald. Too confused to understand what he'd been feeling, the buzzing in his head, the jealousy and rage boiling just beneath the surface.

"I-I didn't know what to say," Jaime spoke, truthfully. "I didn't know how to say goodbye."

Brienne nodded, as if those words were good enough. She looked down at the babe and traced her finger down one fat cheek.

"Jaime?"

"Yes?" He waited, his breath bated, for her next words.

"Do you think.." she spoke haltingly. "Do you think, if I had been a prettier maiden...if you hadn't been Kingsguard...if Cersei-"

"Do I think we would've been-"

"Lovers? Do you think we could've been lovers?" Brienne looked up at him, something in her eyes bluer than all the sapphires of Tarth, and Jaime's throat was full of sand again.

"More," Jaime managed, hoarsely. "More than lovers, we."

Brienne blushed a steady crimson, and let out a chuckle. "I'm not a prettier maiden, though, and you are Kingsguard. Look at me, an old married woman blushing in front of Ser Jaime Lannister."

"Motherhood suits you, my lady," he said, and it did. The milk drying on her breasts, which were swollen with milk, her hips wider beneath her night dress, made his cock stir in ways he couldn't begin to explain to her.

"Will you stay with me, Jaime?"

"What?" He words startled Jaime from gazing at her body.

"Until Gerald goes to Pedalth this summer? It's only a week away, and I'm afraid I'll grow ill again. I don't want this to be the last time I see you."

Jaime felt a stab in his gut. This, be the last time he see Brienne, his warrior, with milk drying on her breasts for another man's babe. It couldn't be.

"I'll stay as long as you need," he heard himself saying, although another week of seeing her at the breakfast table, nuzzling her husband and babe seemed like an eternity, seemed like a lifetime of rolling guts and buzzing bees, because a week in her room, with the smell of her mother's milk and the glint of warrior still way back in her eyes, seemed like mere seconds.