Author's Note:

Sorry for the delay in posting this chapter! Crazy busy summer weekends have started earlier than normal this year. But no worries, I'm still very much invested in this fic. Love playing in this universe. Especially love moments like this chapter…where I'm able to shamelessly indulge in some extra fun wish fulfillment shipping. Ahem, Jaime/Brienne people, this is for you ;)

Back to our regularly scheduled Jorah/Dany loveliness next time.

As always, thanks for your faves/comments!

Tyrion

The wine ran out far too soon. Two months and Tyrion had drained it all—every last bottle in the woefully understocked Winterfell cellars. Apparently, while Sansa was busy gathering oats and wheat and whatever else, she neglected to import a few more casks of aged vintages to shore up her ancestral home's shocking lack of good, grape-based alcohol.

When he brought the shortage to her attention, she seemed undisturbed. But he should have guessed that. Northerners had such backwards views on what constituted a necessity.

Bronn had laughed when he first saw the state of the dusty, nearly-barren wine cellar.

"Well, that's not going to last, is it?" he mused, in that smugly-cynical and far-too-jovial tone of his that failed to give the misfortune the gravity it deserved.

And that facetious tone was exactly why Bronn wasn't allowed to share in the last bottle. He didn't respect the sanctity of a man's relationship with his wine…so he wasn't allowed to toast the bittersweet end of that holy relationship.

"Are you serious?" he asked Tyrion, when the half-man told him to fuck off and take his glass elsewhere. They were sitting in a set of Winterfell rooms that Tyrion had claimed as his own, with a sturdy table between them, cluttered with wine bottles and books, a red pouch spilling a little Lannister gold and a pair of dice. Add an open-air veranda, a sweet summer breeze or some golden sunlight filtering in through gauze curtains and they might have been back in King's Landing.

Once the wine ran out, that illusion would be much harder to keep intact.

"As serious as when I told my father not to say the word 'whore' again." Tyrion answered flatly, popping the cork on a Dornish red that represented the end of all his happy endings. Bronn laughed again, completely ignoring the threat in Tyrion's deadly serious words.

But, given the chance, Bronn would have laughed at the Night King so Tyrion didn't take any offense, drunk though he was. The sellsword was a brazen cunt. What else was new? That's why they got along so well. If forced into it, he might even say that Bronn was the only brother he had left now. But he still wasn't sharing that last bottle. Not for brotherly love. Not for shared misery. Not for an Iron Throne. Not for all his father's fucking gold mines.

Not for anything.

He poured himself a half-goblet and held it captive in his two hands, while keeping the bottle safe and far from Bronn's reach, nestled in the crook of his arm. He felt his mouth turn into a smirk, but it was sinister and dark, and said he was about to indulge in his moodier thoughts. Bronn read it clearly. The dwarf wanted some time to brood. Alone.

"I guess you'll have to drink alone then," the sellsword mentioned, turning his silver goblet upside down on the table. He rose from his seat, tilting his head with that sly sense of amusement at everyone and everything in the goddamn world. A cheerful cynic was a rare and uncommon breed. Tyrion had all of Bronn's cynicism with none of the cheer.

Lucky bastard…

"Cheers, Bronn," Tyrion allowed. But again, he wasn't changing his mind about the wine. He raised his glass only as a peace offering. Bronn nodded to his friend, winking once, and took his leave, giving the dwarf over to the company of his darker thoughts.

Tyrion sighed in the silence left behind. He looked around the room. The illusion he conjured for himself, by decking the room out in the brighter colors of his house, silks, wine, games and everything Sansa and her dour, fur-wearing household would call extravagant, faded a little each time the frost winds blew against the cold, grey stones.

It faded even more each time his mind wandered to thoughts of Cersei and his father. Pretty Myrcella and sweet Tommen. Even Joffrey. Scratch that. Never Joffrey. But certainly Jaime. Mostly Jaime. And the others by turns. All their golden hair and lion-like smiles.

Gold will be their shrouds.

The fact that he was the last Lannister alive weighed heavily on his soul. It shouldn't. He had betrayed his house, sworn them off, pledged his allegiance to foreign monarchs and northern rebels. But he didn't cheer with the rest when Cersei died and he hadn't stopped grieving since he'd been told Jaime had fallen.

Without a sister to hate or a brother to love, he felt adrift. Without a father to disappoint, he wasn't sure what his role in life would be. And added to that was the loss of his home and his position and the endlessness of winter…oh, winter was not his season.

For one thing, grapes didn't grow in winter.

"Lord Tyrion?" a woman's voice stirred him out of these endless, utterly bleak contemplations.

He opened his eyes, not realizing they'd been closed, and found himself looking up at a tall woman with straw-blond hair and sapphire eyes. Brienne of Tarth. The same thought always rushed into his head every time he saw her. Gods, she's tall for a woman. This was followed by another thought, which suddenly nibbled at his grey matter.

Lady Brienne, do you miss my brother as much as me?

The answer was an easy one so Tyrion didn't bother asking it aloud.

She had entered the room and closed the door behind her. She must have moved quietly, as he didn't hear a thing. Or perhaps the wine had deadened his senses a little too well. How drunk was he? He glanced down at the wine goblet. It was still half full. He hadn't dared take a sip yet, needing to make this bottle last for as long as possible.

Still, there were three other wine bottles on his table. All empty, their aroma and taste still buzzing around in his fuzzy head.

It took a moment longer for him to recognize that he still needed to respond to Brienne. He meant to say something flippant, some teasing remark, some cynical musings…but then he caught sight of the woman's white-washed face.

She was in pain. Or afraid. Or…well, he had no idea. He didn't know her that well, honestly.

"What's wrong?" he straightened up, sobering, setting aside both the bottle and the wine goblet, wondering what new calamity could have befallen them in the minutes since Bronn left his presence.

"I…," Brienne could manage nothing further. She sank down into the seat that Bronn had so recently vacated. She was distressed, that was obvious. Her eyes were holding back tears. Tyrion was completely baffled. Brienne was not a woman prone to anything resembling an emotional display.

"What is it, Brienne?" he prodded her, pushing himself out of his chair.

She closed her eyes tightly, and there—a single tear dripped out from beneath her eyelashes, falling onto her alabaster cheeks. The sight of Brienne's tears was so uncommon and so unusual that Tyrion had no idea how to react. She whispered something but he couldn't make it out.

"Brienne, you have to tell me what's happened—is it Sansa?" Tyrion demanded, almost angrily, dread eating through his drunken haze. But she was shaking her head slowly, another two tears joining the first.

"When Jaime left your sister and came up to fight for Daenerys Targaryen, I met him at White Harbor…," Brienne began slowly. Her voice curled around his brother's name with a heady mixture of love and grief. This piqued Tyrion's attention further, as she made no attempt to hide her feelings behind formal titles. No Ser Jaime, no Kingslayer. Just Jaime. As if…

"I know," he nodded, not understanding at all where she was going with this. "I'm the one who sent you."

"I…," she started the same as before, but had to try again. "Your brother was—your brother and I had travelled together before and—"

"You were close," Tyrion finished for her.

If she thought the idea was a revelation, she was being a little foolish. Tyrion was at the Dragonpit. He saw the look pass between Jaime and Brienne, and the dagger-sharp glare that Cersei cast on Brienne afterwards. If the situation then hadn't been so dire, the whole notion of Cersei being jealous of this beast of a woman would have amused him to no end.

He never had the chance to ask Jaime exactly what the nature of his relationship with Catelyn Stark's sworn sword had been. Perhaps now he would never know.

But Brienne was nodding, struggling to find the words she needed to say.

"More than close, my lord," she admitted, barely above a whisper, blushing red on the words that followed. "For one night at White Harbor anyway."

Tyrion's features finally relaxed. Was this why she was distressed? A secret night of passion with his handsome brother? Well, good for her. Tyrion was tempted to raise his glass to her victory. For decades, women had been trying to draw Jaime away from Cersei's grasp without success.

Tyrion could list the names of a hundred high-born girls, all beautiful and provocatively dressed, who visited Casterly Rock year after year with their aim on Tywin's heir. But Jaime never gave them more than a sly grin and a chaste kiss on the hand.

That Brienne of Tarth, plain as salt and taller than half the men in the Seven Kingdoms, had been the one to finally turn his brother's head…again, he was tempted to raise his glass.

"Well, that's not really any of my concern—" he started, thinking perhaps she felt compelled to unburden herself, or perhaps find solace in the only other person in this castle who might be willing to mourn a Lannister. Unfortunately, he was fresh out of comforting words. She would have to find her solace elsewhere.

He reached out for his wine glass, bringing it to his lips.

"I'm carrying Jaime's child," she blurted the words out, her features a mess of misery. Forbidden love, loss of virtue, death of innocence, broken oaths, a bastard child that would have no father. It was all written there, on her grief-stricken face. "If anyone finds out, I…I don't know what to do."

If he didn't believe her words, he had to believe her hands. As she spoke, her nervous hands came to rest on the place where her child grew. Her winter cloak hid her secret well, but under her protective caress, the fabric tightened around her body in a telling way.

Oh Jaime, the things we leave behind…

Tyrion took a drink. Then, he spit the wine out as soon as it passed his lips. Ned had stored this particular bottle too close to the hot springs beneath the castle. He glanced at the cup distastefully before throwing the remaining liquid into the fire.

The sour taste lingered in his mouth for a long time afterwards.