Author's Note: Thanks for sticking around!
Jaime still finds himself caught up in old cobwebs as he somehow tries to get his anger in check. He was honestly scared at himself for how harsh he was on Brienne, which forced him ever the more to withdraw from her until he calmed down.
He sought Cersei's closeness again to somehow compensate his feelings of loss, though he has to realise, much to his dismay, that her passion doesn't fill the hole gaping in his very soul over the fear of the loss of the cub. In fact, he only feels emptier and emptier, number and number.
But at least it hurts less.
He is just numb.
"... I thought it'd make you happy, you know?" Cersei's voice rings out, bringing Jaime back to her bed and to her body close to his.
"What would make me happy?" he frowns.
"That Joffrey leaves you in the Kingsguard," she shrugs.
"You mean to say that you arranged for that?" Jaime makes a face. He had a bad feeling that she pushed on the matter, but he couldn't be sure till last. After all, Joffrey is unpredictable.
"I didn't arrange for it. Joffrey told me that Father talked to him about the matter, and I said that your wish always was to be a proud member of the Kingsguard and that you earned yourself that right over years of loyal service to the Iron Throne," Cersei tells him in a soft voice, edging closer to him. "And I thought that you wanted to stay with me. Was I wrong?"
"You could have talked to me beforehand, you know? Instead of just letting him drop the news with everyone around to choke on their food?" Jaime argues, not wanting to let on his emotions at this point. Even if he is angry with Tyrion and Brienne and the whole situation, he knows better than to risk being uncovered.
"But why? I was protecting you, Jaime, us, what we have," Cersei insists, her voice like honey.
"I am of no use like this," Jaime replies, sitting up. "Even if I don't like to admit it. I am a useless knight of the Kingsguard like this."
Just as he is seemingly a useless father.
Perhaps Brienne is right – and he is as useless as this stupid metal hand.
"You are of use to me," she argues.
"Since when?" he turns to her with a huff. Little while ago she didn't disagree when Joffrey told him that he is useless. She didn't let him close, only stared at the stump, at the piece missing.
"Since you claimed me again," she breathes, coming closer once more.
"Not long ago you said to me that I came too late," Jaime can't help but point out, his jaw set in a straight line.
"And I was wrong. I think I actually owe you an apology for it. I never should have treated you like that. I was… caught up in my own feelings, and in the aftermath of the siege," she grimaces.
"What made you change your mind?" he asks.
"Nothing changed my mind. My mind just cleared up again, to see you again, us, the truth," she argues.
Jaime grimaces, his head swimming once more, as it seemingly dives deeper into the cobwebs now his life again.
"What's on your mind?" she asks, leaving her arms on his shoulders.
"Everything," he huffs.
"You know you can talk to me about these things. I am your other half, right?" she tells him in a soft voice.
"I… have duties to fulfil, but I feel incapable of it. So? What am I supposed to do about that?" Jaime replies, leaving the conversation at the level of issues concerning his service. He might be swayed, but Jaime knows better than to give out information. Even her closeness doesn't wash that worry away from his body.
"Focus on what you know you can do, focus on the things just within your reach," she tells him, leaning her head on his shoulder.
"Isn't that a bit too easy?" he exhales.
Because his mind is spiralling around the things that lie in the future. His mind dances around the cub, of a possible life together, and all the dangers threatening it.
Ever since he travelled with Brienne, Jaime dared to think about changing himself, something he had given up on before, back when he had given in to his title as Kingslayer, when he had given in to that look. He thought it was a lost cause, that he was a lost cause. He bathed in the past, in his former glory of a knight, when his sense of honour was neither tainted by forbidden love nor stabbing a madman in the back to earn him everyone's glances and words of misgiving. And when Jaime was held prisoner, his mind, despite being alert for any situation to bring him out of that cage, even taking a young man's life, held on to the past. He recalled Cersei's face, her smile, the sound of her voice, the smell of her hair. He escaped into the past to somehow make it through the present of lying in mud with iron around his throat.
But then the wench stomped into his life and suddenly he was forced back into the present, since Brienne is a creature living in the moment. At the same time, it was her steady footing in the reality of the present day that forced Jaime to consider the future again. Because, at some point he can't tell anymore, he wanted her to see something else in him, a better version of himself. And ever since the cub grows within her, the wench forced him to make changes about himself, and at some point he cannot pin down anymore either, he started to glance at the future again to change its course, to change his course, for the better.
And isn't that the only way that you can grow? To reach out to a place outside your current reach?
So should he really focus on nothing but what he can – and not on what he can potentially still learn?
"What does it matter if it's easy?" she frowns. "For as long as you get what you want."
Jaime can't help a hidden grin. Brienne wouldn't ever let him see the end of it if he ever considered it. To Brienne, things that are a given don't matter, unless you earn them. She was given a royal name, and she certainly holds it with pride, but she always defended it, she lived up to it, with her undying sense of honour. She was given her body, and she never had the intention to leave it the way it was. She trained, forged it to how she wanted or at least needed it. In Brienne's understanding, so Jaime learned by now, you have to earn everything. You have to deserve it. And while she is not unfamiliar with simple acts of kindness that don't demand a payback whatsoever, it seems to be absolutely central to her that you fight for what you want, that you fight to keep it.
And to be honest, Jaime would like to think and be just like that.
If only he was a man made of that stuff, and not forged by Lannister-spite and years of questionable morale.
"But maybe…," he means to say, but she presses her index finger to his lips, taking the maybe from him all at once, "Shht, just forget your worries for a while. Just forget the world for a moment, hm?"
She kisses him, lowering him back on the bed along with her. Jaime means to take off the metal hand, but Cersei holds on to his wrist, "Leave it there."
"But…," he mutters, but she interrupts him once more, "Just leave it there, it's perfect on you. You are perfect like this."
Just that he feels anything but perfect.
Jaime roams around the palace after he peeled himself out of some of the cobwebs inside his head, and Cersei's arms, too. While he has no clue yet what to do next, he feels a bit clearer inside his mind.
He means to disappear into the next hallway, when suddenly he feels an iron grip on his arm, pulling him another direction. Jaime turns his head to see the wench dragging him along, her jaw a straight line, "Come now."
She pulls him down the hallways, like a broken ragdoll almost. Jaime sometimes forgets how strong the wench can be. Her sapphire eyes sparking like blue lightning, as she adds, "I am fed up with you acting like a pouting lad."
"Wench?" he blinks at her, still caught off-guard. She ignores him and forces him into her room, closing the door behind them with a loud thud. She turns around to face him, her face dark with anger, "So now, I am no woman of great words, but I see that we two have… to talk. So we will talk: You are acting like a complete idiot ever since your brother suggested the new plan."
"Thank you," he can't help but remark sarcastically.
"What? You refuse to talk to me – and you are apparently not pregnant, to somehow explain the behaviour, so let's not even pretend. I thought you'd come to your senses once you calmed down, but you prove to be more of a boar than a lion these days. So now, we will talk and we will find a solution so that I don't have to strangle you for your foolishness after all," Brienne lectures him.
Jaime knew this would come – and he knows that he deserves the harshness of her words, too, but then again, he still can't help himself.
The ache still burns in his bones like wildfire.
"You and I both know what it means if you were to go to Tarth. I would never see the cub, because I have to stay in King's Landing now that Joffrey pretty much glued me to the armour of the Kingsguard," Jaime replies, his voice much calmer, however.
"And you think I'm not aware of that? But what other options do we have? I can't stay here, Jaime, get that into your thick skull already. I can't, for both Sansa's and the cub's sake," Brienne growls.
"I want to be a father for the cub. The thought of… losing it makes me go insane. Believe me, I don't want to act like this. I don't want to be this, but I can't stop myself," he admits, allowing his feelings to show for once. "This... pains me. And to tell the truth, I didn't find a way yet how to deal with that with a smug smile. Trust me, I am just as frustrated about it as you are. I just... I don't want to lose the cub. I want to be... with the cub. I want to see it grow up and all these things, no matter what the current situation is, as foolish as that may appear."
Brienne looks at him with a sad grimace. She is not good talking about emotions. She is no woman made of this kind of stuff. And at some point she is honestly irritated that a man like Jaime Lannister apparently is a man made of the kind of stuff that he can speak free from his heart if he has to, even though that makes him sound like a goddamn dame at times. When she first got to know him, she thought he was incapable of such things, believing that the only thing he could show were scorn and sarcasm, but as she had to learn, he is a deep, deep pit, filled with emotions she cannot make sense of for the most part, but at the same time feelings he can bring to the surface if he must.
And at some point she isn't sure if she doesn't envy him for it. Because she oftentimes finds herself incapable of putting down her armour beneath which she hides her dark feelings no one is supposed to see.
"And I don't say that you are not the cub's father. I just mean to say that you cannot act like it around Red Keep or the royals. You are a man of the Kingsguard, we cannot change that anymore, and that means that you can't act like a father, for as long as it's here," Brienne argues in a mute voice.
"Exactly," he insists, but much to his surprise, her voice rises again as she speaks, "Do you think I like that situation, really? Do you think I want to bring up the cub alone – or explain to my Father that I return from my service to Renly Baratheon with the false accusations of being responsible for his murder, and an illegitimate child in my belly whose father's identity I may never reveal? You are not the only one who is less than pleased about this situation!"
Jaime lets his shoulders drop.
He never thought about it like that until now. He thought that Brienne would be strangely glad to get back home and possibly away from him, too, especially after he acted so foolish over the last couple of days.
He shall be damned.
Jaime is really a bloody, selfish Lannister spawn after all, or so it seems. And up to his breakout a few days back, Jaime honestly thought he was doing better, that he was more of the man he used to be, the kind of knight Brienne is and that he would like to be, too.
That he had grown after all.
"I don't want to bring up the cub all by myself, I already told you, but I will if I have to. Going to Tarth is our only option left at this point, so we have to swallow both our pride and our own wishes to act in Sansa's and the cub's interest. So stop acting like a goddamn woman already!" she curses.
"What if something happens to you on the voyage? Or in Tarth? I won't be there," Jaime argues.
He wants to give in, he does. He wants to let go of the cub, but his fist is clenched. He wants to yield, but he can't.
"I can protect myself without your help, rest assured. Even nine months pregnant, I could still take out five men at a time. And in any case, it won't be much safer for me in King's Landing, even if you were there to guard me. I am more afraid of conspiracies than of swords. Because I know how to dodge a sword," Brienne replies with a determination in her voice that leaves Jaime breathless for a moment.
"That's not how it should be," Jaime exhales, his features dropping like a wet piece of cloth.
"It doesn't matter what it should be. It only matters what it is," Brienne argues. At some point, Jaime is still impressed at her sharp bluntness, how she really takes it to heart to only look at the present, with goals in mind, yes, but to live in the moment for all it matters.
"I could steal away from the Kingsguard, maybe," he mumbles almost sheepishly. "To follow you to Tarth in all secret."
"And draw attention to us, great thinking. I am no expert when it comes to plots, but that seems damn dangerous to me. People will go looking for you if you just took off now, especially now that attention was drawn to your service after Joffrey's declaration. That means they will go looking for us in Tarth as well, and earlier than we can make arrangements for Sansa's safety," Brienne argues, her voice lacking aggression this time, however.
She can tell by the sound of his voice that Jaime is just desperate to somehow stay around the child, and while she could smack him for his childish behaviour to make that want known, she understands that this want is scorched deep into his flesh.
"You are sinking my ships, wench," Jaime exhales.
"Because your ships are easy to sink – if I can sink them with my mental capabilities already," she huffs, but then licks her lips, letting out a sigh, before she goes on in a more forgiving voice. "And anyways, if we work hard enough, we might establish that I come to King's Landing on a regular basis, so you may see the child, just not around the palace. You would be its father no less, just without the knowledge of the royals around the Iron Throne."
"You'd do that?" he stares at her with wide eyes.
"You made the same vow I did. That means I will do anything so you can serve your duty as well, of course. And you could have known that in days now, had you not acted like a pouting lad," she shrugs.
Was he really that foolish to believe that she would just leave him stranded without ever having seen the cub? Jaime should really know by now that Brienne never yields, not without fighting till last.
Really, he shall be damned.
"Fine, fine! I see it now, I am sorry," Jaime holds up his hands, feeling utterly foolish, feeling utterly bad, mocked by the shadows he invited back into his life.
"At last," she snorts. "It's good for you that you finally admit it to yourself. I was that close to hitting you."
"Well, that's a relief," he huffs, but then adds in a quiter voice, "I reckon the cub makes me squishy, too."
"Look, it's far from perfect, it's far from good, but it might be close to being safe, and likely be the best we can get at this point. I am not good with politics, but I think that we can find a way, maybe not right away, but… then again, I didn't think I'd make it out of the bear pit either, and still we both did, so perhaps fortune will surprise us for once," Brienne adds peaceably.
He surprised her, too, right?
"You are probably right," Jaime exhales wearily.
He is really too used to being tricked that he forgot that there is one person who is incapable of it.
"Does that mean you finally got your wits back?" she snorts dismissively.
"I ever had them?" he can't help but chuckle.
"Not really," she smirks, sitting down on the bed.
Even though the cub seemingly takes a great deal of pleasure in pestering her body with morning sickness and the like, it actually has one advantage – for some reason Brienne calms down far sooner and stays calm for much longer, too. She is so used to being at war with the world and herself that Brienne thought it was impossible for her to ever be at peace, but now that she has the cub growing within her, she finds herself at a strange kind of ease.
Perhaps that is what this carefree expression on her aunt's lips back when she was still young was all about.
That she was at peace.
"I am honestly… sorry," Jaime apologises in all earnest.
"I understand," she assures him.
"You do? Because I don't understand this," Jaime snorts.
Normally, she is the one who needs calming down, and now he is the one acting like a fool.
"You want to protect the cub. I can hardly blame you for it. If I were you, I'd probably act just like you, like a pouting lad," Brienne shrugs.
"You wouldn't act like me, I know that," Jaime huffs.
No, she definitely wouldn't do what he did.
And at some point Jaime is honestly disappointed that they differ that much in this particular regard, because the more he feels as though he acts like her, the more he feels like a better man.
"Probably not," she shrugs. "But I understand it, I really do. I am sorry that it doesn't work out the way we had it planned, so that you can be around the cub all the while."
He looks at her.
How can a woman who normally talks like sailor suddenly sound like some celestial creature, full of concern and chances of forgiveness?
How can she just forgive him his foolishness without making him pay back?
How can she be all that good while he is all that bad?
Jaime simply attacks her lips without prelude. Brienne blinks a few times, but then pushes him away, running the back of her hand over her lips, "What in the Seven Hells has gotten into you?"
Jaime honestly doesn't know what's gotten into him. He only knows that whatever got into him, wants to claim her lips, wants to hold her close, if only one last time before she sails away.
So he kisses her again, pushing her upper body onto the mattress, holds on firmly as she squirms against his touch.
"What are you doing?" Brienne asks as she manages to pull him away another time, leaning on her forearms.
One moment he is angry, then regretful, then apologetic, and now what? Passionate? Amorous? Brienne always thought that women were the ones with mood swings, she thought she would be the one with mood swings, by the Gods, but now it turns out that seemingly Jaime is the one suffering from that mental illness.
They are all mad, as it seems.
"Kissing you, as it appears?" he breathes with a small grin, for some inexplicable reason suddenly feeling a bit more confident again.
"But why are you?" she argues.
He doesn't answer, just kisses her.
Jaime knows it is unfair, he knows it's mean, to claim her when he shouldn't be claiming her at all. But he wants to get lost in her, he wants to get lost in her very presence and never come out again.
So that he feels more like a good man than the bad man he actually is.
Because that is what he craves, needs, really needs – to feel like a good man again, a man who deserves her kindness and generosity, who deserves this child.
"Is it yet another attempt of yours to repay me something? I told you…," she means to object, but Jaime silences her with his lips once more. "No, no payback whatsoever."
"Then what?" Brienne questions.
"I don't know, just no payback. Just... us," he mutters, claiming her lips again, clasping her shoulder, trying to hold her close to herself to allow no distance.
Jaime opens the laces of her quilted tunic to reveal her abdomen. He got better at this at last, even if his moves are still rather fidgety. He strokes his palm over her midsection, but suddenly stops in the motion, tilting his head. Brienne looks at him quizzically.
"I think I feel a bump," he says, puckering his lips.
And that is one of the major differences between him with Cersei and him with Brienne. With Cersei, there is just hot-boiling passion to the point that he is speechless, but with her, there was and is almost always bickering and talking in-between. Being close to Brienne in that way is the same as being around her all day long. They bicker, they fight, he jokes, she pushes him back, he gets back up and tries again. When he is with Cersei, he is split in two. There is the way he acts around her outside the chambers, and there is the way they are to each other when they are alone. They wear two faces, but with Brienne, there is just one.
Because one is enough if it's honest, at least it seems to be for Brienne.
The blonde woman lets out a small laugh, followed by a grunt, "Splendid! Now I'll not only be ugly but also fat very soon."
"You know that pregnant ladies always have that natural glow?" Jaime chuckles.
"Oh, I am sure I will wake up a beauty the next day – and once the child is out of me, I'll look like a hag again, how joyous," she rolls her eyes.
"You know you already have that glow?" he mumbles, leaning his head against her shoulder with a smile.
"I still look like a hag, a fat hag soon, as it appears," Brienne huffs.
"My, my, do you seek a compliment that badly?" Jaime grins at her.
"No, that is a matter of fact. It is frustrating. My trained form is one of my few good physical features, if not the best," Brienne argues. She knows she is not pretty, and that men don't look at her body to marvel at its features. In fact, she still thinks that she can only hope that a man sees past that body, like Jaime seemingly does. However, her trained form, or so she always reckoned, was one of the few things that would belie the ugly rest.
"Most certainly nothing to sneeze at," Jaime smirks, thinking back to the bathtub in Harrenhal and the wench emerged out of the water like an Amazon from the old tales, her eyes burning with anger so much that for a bare moment, she forgot about her insecurity and stood tall against him.
He knows Brienne would never know how glorious she looked at that moment. Even consumed by pain and fever Jaime could see it clearly, and felt almost blinded by it.
"Well, but that's it. I can train as much as I want, that stomach will grow. And I'll be ugly and fat… with a child… thanks to you of all people," she huffs with a grin.
"Still as charming and goodhearted, Brienne, I must say," Jaime snorts, a smirk creeping up his lips. She pushes against his shoulder lightly, "Och, now don't you tell me that you feel offended. I have to bear this, not you."
"In fact male physiology would complicate the process, thinking about it. I wonder if we'd piss it or shit it," he tilts his head with a grin.
"I don't," she makes a face.
"Yeah, me neither, upon reflection," Jaime shrugs.
"Good," she huffs. "Never bring that up again."
"I promise," he winks at her.
"I hope I will forget about that," she shakes her head, before she grunts, "Too many pictures inside my head."
"My apologies," he chuckles, and she has to smile as well.
"Brienne?" he hums after a short while, forcing her eyes to meet his again, "What?"
Even now her eyes shine so brightly.
"Sometimes I'm glad that you are as ugly as you are," he goes on in that almost singing voice.
"And why is that?" she asks, waiting for the punchline.
"If you were beautiful and the person you are, too, entire Westeros would be chasing your skirts… or tasset," he grins before he kisses her again. Brienne blinks for a moment as a blush returns to her lips and she finds herself kissing back this time.
Jaime starts to stroke over the small bump again, now with almost childish glee, "I think I felt it move."
"It's too early for that, you fool," she argues, nudging him with her elbow.
"Lions grow fast," he insists.
"The cub doesn't kick yet, now stop," she argues, meaning to push him off, but he grasps her abdomen tenderly again. For a moment, she wants to flinch away once more, but his hand is warm and soft and, if only for a moment, it gives her a faint idea of what it'd be like if she were a lady and he her lord. However foolish that is, considering that she doesn't want to be. And that he won't ever be. Their current situation is a monumental proof of it.
Still, even the hard-shelled Brienne of Tarth, deep inside, is reaching out for arms to catch her and hold her, if only once in a while. She also needs arms to fight her and challenge her, but she sometimes seeks an embrace also, a touch of care, a fleeting moment of intimacy, as much as she could kick herself for it. Because she doesn't want to be this, but still... she is, and still, she searches it in the arms of a man like this bloody fool with his feral, smug grin and way too white, way too straight, way too much like pearls looking teeth.
He captures her lips again.
"Are you sure?" she asks breathlessly. Jaime presses his body against hers with a smug grin, "I am quite ready, as you might be able to notice."
"Gods, does that turn any woman on, really!?" she rolls her eyes. Jaime chuckles, leaning his head on her shoulder.
Brienne is really a woman made of a different kind of stuff.
"It won't hurt the cub, you know," he argues.
"I know, I'm not stupid," she huffs.
"And I know that you just try to play the one hard to get," he retorts before claiming her lips again. Brienne lets out a sigh, parting their lips slightly, "Fine. But take off that goddamn hand."
"What?" he frowns, blinking.
"It's cold and useless, I told you," she replies with a grunt. Jaime blinks at her for a moment, but then does quick work to remove it from his stump, putting it somewhere beside the bed, out of view.
And curiously enough, he suddenly feels his centre of gravity shift back in place.
"Better like that?" he chuckles softly before his lips are back on hers and she starts to melt to his touch just the way she did back in the moss.
For a moment, Jaime thinks it'll go rough now again, like it did with Cersei, that it will be boiling hot, sizzling, burning, but once he moves into her, his moves are slow and careful, filled with care. Warm.
Just as they were when he bedded her not on roses but moss instead.
And the whole time, her eyes are on his and his on hers.
Not once does she gaze at the stump of his arm, his missing piece. Instead, she instinctively takes his stump into her hand without hesitation and leaves it against her stomach where the cub grows into the small bump.
He sleeps in her chambers that night, curled up against her back, one arm loosely hanging around her stomach.
Brienne is awake a while longer, once again forced to wonder who is the intended target of his show of affection as she feels him grabbing her stomach ever so often even in his sleep.