Author's Note: Thanks for sticking around! I took the liberty to include some original lines, like I did in the first chapter. I found it had a nice touch. I hope you'll enjoy the chapter despite the gloom and all the drama.
I'm going full-out with this fic, I fear.
I hope you'll enjoy ;)
Jaime sits on the couch cross-legged, one of Brienne's brochures in his lap. Ever since the night they tried to make love for the first time since the mugging, things have been even more at a disarray than they were before.
It's not that Jaime actually forgot that Brienne was mugged alongside him. He is not that much of an idiot, but at some point between self-pity and self-blame, somewhere inside the hyphen, Jaime pushed the possibility that Brienne may suffer insecurities likewise. She just always seems so strong, even now, especially now, so it didn't dawn on him until that night that Brienne believed that he no longer desired her because those men touched her, or wanted to touch her in that way.
So, as an effort to stand true to his word, if in secret, Jaime started to go through the damned brochures. While he doesn't see himself anywhere in these projects anytime soon, he reckons he owes Brienne that much to read them before he says 'no' to them. Which is why he arranged with himself to read one per day. Slow steps. Careful steps. One at a time.
Like the doctor says.
They have argued less because Jaime really made an effort to act less like an ungrateful shit, but no matter how much he wants to move past this for Brienne's sake, he can't. As frustrating as it is, he can't. The hand no longer there literally stands between them. It's still too present in his life, his mind.
Not to mention the nightmares and the phantom pains. Jaime lost count of the many times he woke up to Brienne calling out his name, and he was drenched in cold sweat, whimpering like a bloody woman as he had the feeling that someone was running iron pokers through his invisible hand, up his visible forearm, shoved it through bone, through flesh.
And if Jaime doesn't rouse from phantom pains taking his breath away, he wakes up from nightmares as his mind keeps playing through the mugging again and again and again, if it doesn't paint an even darker outcome that this one.
Because there is, because there are.
Jaime dreams about the men raping Brienne before his eyes after all, right in the unnaturally blue light of the torch, looking into her sapphire blue eyes as she shatters.
He dreams about the men killing her before his eyes, snapping her neck, running a knife through her heart, shooting her in the head.
He dreams about the men cutting off his hand with a rusty knife, and tossing it over to Brienne to do with it things he doesn't even want to say out loud.
He dreams about the men cutting off both his hands, and his feet.
He dreams about the men shooting off his hand and then Brienne's hand.
He dreams about the desperation in her eyes.
He dreams about the leader's laughter as he calls her 'bitch' and him a 'rich boy'.
And it is only once he wakes up, finding Brienne looking at him with worry and an odd sense of understanding that he feels even more powerless, because worse could have happened to them both, and still, there would have been nothing he could have done about it. In every dream version, one worse than the other, it seems as though Jaime is incapable of saving her.
And that used to be one of the things he was certain about – that he could save her.
Keep her safe.
Keep her.
Just like he used to be certain about his manhood.
They had sex a few times after the first-time-post-mugging-debacle, but it's nothing close to good sex, nothing close to the kind of sex that left Brienne begging for him. He appreciates her, let's say, effort that she usually lets him be the top one, likely guessing that this would give Jaime a bit more control and more of the feeling that he is indeed the lover who can dominate, the way he used to, but it still doesn't help his shameful performances. In the end, they always end up as a bundle of arms and legs, trying to make themselves believe that just kissing is enough to make up for Jaime being the only one who comes anywhere close to completion while Brienne is left with a few soft mewls and keeping him close to her.
His stamina is gone, his tease is gone, the fun is gone. They used to actually laugh while having sex.
And now it's just a continuous try on his behalf to bring pleasure to the body that he loves, a constant trial and error, the operative word being error.
Jaime just feels completely useless.
He can't even make love to Brienne.
How is he supposed to show her that he loves her if he can't even do that tiny little thing? Because he knows Brienne needs it, needed it ever since they slept with each other for the first time. And normally, Jaime should be able to give her at least that much. That should be within his capabilities, just that it isn't.
Brienne isn't just gifted with a cripple to tend to, not just a brat of a cripple, an idiot of a cripple, who is too busy with his own problems, but also a cripple who fails at the easiest of tasks, to give her at least one good reason to want him, because all the other reasons why she seemingly still wants him are no good reasons.
He is no good reason.
Jaime puts the brochure down at once, letting out a growl, "I need a bath."
Baths prove to be easier for him. While it may be different for others, taking a bath instead of taking a shower leaves Jaime with his entire body to move, and if he loses something, it won't drop deep, not to mention that it feels pretty good to be hugged by warm water.
So soon Jaime finds himself in the tub, letting the warmth of the water seep through his skin. A lot of his muscles that used to tone up his body are now gone back beneath the surface. He is still lean – Jaime could eat a boar a day and still not put on weight. He has an outstanding metabolism.
Maybe he should start to work out again. Maybe that would make him look less like a pathetic teenager with a not-teenager-like head, failing at sex.
But then again, what for? To hide the fact that this body is burned out no matter what he does? Or that Brienne at least gets to look at a toned body while Jaime comes too early?
Jaime dips his head underwater, deafening all sound, muting the lights above him so that they bleed into swirls of colour.
He gets lost in the growing light-headedness, drawing all thoughts away.
The water really feels great against his skin, like a second skin.
Maybe he really doesn't belong here anymore.
This apartment.
With her.
This life.
Maybe he should just stay underwater, where everything is dimmed, tuned down…
Jaime blinks as black dots dance before his eyes, but one particular black dot grows larger and larger – and at once he feels himself pulled back to the surface. Jaime sputters water, coughing a few times to look at Brienne, her sleeves soaked, sitting on the edge of the tub, staring at him with her sapphire blue eyes that are piercing right through him.
"Are you alright?" she asks, seemingly out of breath as well. "Do you have a fever or something?"
Really, she just comes home and wants to wash out a stain she got from the coffee she managed to pour over herself, only to see Jaime almost drowning in a bathtub.
"No, no," Jaime shakes his head. "I, uhm… I just dove a bit?"
Brienne looks at him, the air catching in her throat at once, coffee stain long since forgotten as she sees the shame in his eyes.
No.
Please no.
Not that, too.
"How long?" she asks, now in a voice that is hard as stone.
"I don't… know," Jaime brings out slowly, feeling shame creep up cold on his skin.
Did he really just try to…?
The first Lannister to drown in a bathtub, now if that wasn't a disgrace for his Father.
However, before he can go on thinking, Jaime hears a smacking sound before his brain registers pain in his cheek, his head turning to the side from the impact. Jaime blinks, stunned.
"You bloody arsehole!"
Jaime looks back to Brienne, hand still raised, breathing hard.
"Coward!"
Jaime bites his lower lip.
Because she is so right.
"So is that it? You just want to drown yourself while I'm not home? You just want to leave me when I can say nothing about it?" she demands.
"Brienne, it wasn't like that," Jaime tells her. "I didn't jump into the tub with the plan to… do that. And I wasn't even…"
He can feel her smack him in the neck this time, if a little weaker.
"Don't you dare say that it wasn't like that!" she shrieks. "I'm not that dumb, alright?"
"I don't say that you're dumb," Jaime argues.
"Then stop thinking of me as a witless fool who doesn't get this here," she demands. "Don't you mock me!"
"I'm not mocking you," Jaime argues vehemently.
He never could.
Not about this.
"You can't just die!" Brienne hisses.
The why is left unspoken on Jaime's lips as he looks at her.
"You need to live to take revenge," she hisses, to give him a verbalised answer to his unverbalised why.
"We won't ever find those guys, Brienne, face it. There is no way that we'd ever get revenge. I don't even care about revenge," Jaime argues, shaking his head. "They got what they wanted, and we won't ever get it back."
"You coward," she repeats again.
And Jaime knows she is right.
She is so very right.
He is a coward.
Suddenly he feels the sloshing of water and weight pressing down on him. Jaime tears his head around to see Brienne, fully clothed, straddling him, her eyes so fierce with ice that it makes him shudder.
She grits her teeth at him, "A little misfortune and you're giving up."
"Misfor… misfortune? I lost my hand, Brienne, that's not just a little misfortune," he insists, though his voice comes out hoarse. "I was that hand."
And he used to be a lion.
"You were that hand my arse! You think I would have started a relationship with you because of your hand? Do you think I love you because your hand or stop loving you because you don't have it anymore?" she growls, her blue eyes shining like a million sapphires.
"No, I…," Jaime mutters helplessly.
"You don't get to do that, you hear me?! You don't get to die!"
She pushes the flat of her hand against his chest, shoves him as tears spring to her eyes.
"You don't get to do that after all we've been through."
She shoves him again.
"You can't just die on me."
Brienne shoves him with both her hands, the water splashing over the edge.
"You can't just drown yourself in a bloody bathtub."
She goes on cursing, pushing, crying.
"You can't just leave me here."
She hammers on his chest, not strong enough to cause damage, but enough to shake him to the core, like a hammer rammed against a bell deafening all other sound.
"You can't just make me love you, and then drown yourself in a bathtub! I won't let you, you idiot! I will kill you before you kill you!"
Jaime simply pulls her down to make her rest against him. She squirms beneath his touch.
"I'm sorry. It won't ever happen again," he mutters into her hair. "I wasn't thinking."
"Right," she mutters, not convinced.
He was thinking, he must have been thinking.
He wanted to get away from her, from this life.
"I was not thinking. I just had my head underwater and forgot. I didn't make a plan or so. Believe me that much, Brienne," he mutters into her straw-like hair.
And Brienne finds herself trying to believe that, finds herself believing it already.
"I promise you. That won't ever happen again. I promise."
He never broke a real promise to her yet, and Brienne knows that this is intended as a real promise, as a vow, an oath.
Brienne just leans her head against him, not caring for the tub being crowded, not caring for the water getting colder and colder, not caring for her ruined clothes. She just leans against him, hearing his heartbeat, needing to know that he is still there, needing to remind her body that he won't leave, won't slip away.
Jaime kisses her scalp once before leaning his head back, sending the water up and down in waves once more.
They stay like that for a while, trying to make the promise more solid by holding on to each other.
"I am halfway through the brochures, you know?"
"You read them?"
"Yeah, I just take… a bit longer, I guess."
"That's alright, for as long as you read them."
"I will read them all, I promise you that, too."
"I promise you."
"I promise."
"I swear it."