When Brienne had fled, Tyrion went in search of his brother. He finally found him outside the walls of the castle, doing his part to clear a path through the corpses in front of the wall damaged by the dragon. Jaime paused at his brother's approach straightening up and stretching his back. But when he saw the worry on Tyrion's face, he settled back into a hunch.
"What is it?"
Tyrion hesitated, "I need to speak with you."
Jaime glanced at the others, unaffected by Tyrion's approach and continuing with their work. They'd been tolerant of him and welcomed the extra hand, but they knew what he was and he didn't relish the idea of risking the tension that would come if he abandoned them before the day was out. "Can it wait? The sunlight's almost gone, I'll be back inside soon."
Tyrion pursed his lips and squinted, a look of guilt spreading across his face.
Jaime acquiesced with a sigh, "What have you done?"
"I –" Tyrion threw his brother a mock glare of offense…"I thought you would have told her. You two…seem so close…now."
Before we knew the other was ever there
Jaime froze and his mind raced – what sordid secrets could Tyrion have accidentally let rip in front of the only her he could be speaking of? Didn't Brienne know all of his secrets now? He measured his words carefully, "What are you talking about?"
"You didn't tell her about the baby?"
"What b-" Jaime's heart felt as if it had stopped, or simply sped up to the point that his pulse was now a hum. He stared at his brother. In the midst of the battle and the aftermath, he'd pushed away all thoughts of Cersei and her invented pregnancy, including the lie to his brother that he'd assumed would assuage Tyrion's embarrassment, no more.
He'd told Brienne that his loyalty to Cersei was severed, that she was in the past – if she now believed that he'd kept this secret, she might think that he had lied about his intentions. She might at this very moment be assuming that he was prepared to run back to his sister's side when, in reality, it couldn't be further from the truth.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath, attempting to quell his rage. When he opened his eyes, his brow was stormy and Tyrion took a step back from him.
"Tyrion…there is no baby. Cersei lied to us. I only said she hadn't because I thought to take some weight from your shoulders. If our sister is with child now, it must be Euron Greyjoy's or perhaps that smirking lapdog Qyburn has put a bastard in that cursed womb of hers by now, I don't know, and I don't care," he said with finality. He felt the last vestiges of Cersei's grip on him wither and flake off onto the corpses that surrounded them.
Tyrion stared up at his brother for a moment, and then his face broke out into a nervous chuckle. "Oh! Well that's a relief!" He caught sight of Jaime's deadly stare. "Is that…not a relief?"
"What possessed you to tell Brienne?"
"Ser Brienne was lurking at the end of the counsel meeting and ran off after overhearing me warning Ser Davos about our sister's dangerous unpredictability when it comes to protecting her young. And I may have mentioned that you were the father?" Tyrion winced, closing his eyes, preparing to be hit. Several moments passed. "Jaime?" Tyrion finally cracked an eye open to find no one there, just the muddy depressions in the ground where his brother had been standing.
A/N: I do not own Game of Throne or these characters; some dialogue may be taken verbatim from HBO's Game of Thrones or George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Lyrics used are directly from "You and Me" by Alecia Moore and Dallas Green (C) 2014.