Author's Note: Hello, everyone! Thanks for sticking around despite the shameless drama, more drama, sprinkled with angst - and a bit of Jaime/Tyrion goodness.
I hope you'll like this chapter ;)
"Hey, I'm home," Brienne says as she gets inside, putting the keys down on the small table next to the door.
"Hey," she can hear Jaime's voice ringing out from the living room, which is dark, making her frown.
Brienne unshoulders her bag and strips out of her jacket before proceeding into the living room, surprised to find Jaime on the couch, but without the constant blare of some action movie, as it was usually the case.
"Is something wrong?" she asks. "Or is the TV broken?"
"No, not at all," Jaime replies. Brienne frowns, sitting down next to him. Her frown only deepens at a box in his left palm, where he usually has the remote these days. Her eyes wander up and down her partner, forcing her to an almost impossible grimace.
"Did you get a haircut?!" she blinks at him. Even in the dim light she can see that the hair is clipped and styled, and the beard is gone, too, and that even though Jaime had refused to shave ever since the one literally bloody try they had in the beginning - and wouldn't let Brienne do it either.
"Yeah, the barber from the brochure is better than I thought," Jaime shrugs. "I guess I really looked too much like a homeless person."
"It's fine. You know that I give little on looks," she argues with a snort.
And even with beard and too long bangs, Jaime looked nothing close to a "homeless person". He is good-looking by nature, beard and messy hair don't do much about it.
Though Brienne is honestly irritated by that sudden... move, let's say. They have talked like that more often these days, a bit more like it used to, though she can't shake off the feeling that something is wrong about this situation. For that, her shoulders are too tensed, still.
"Do you still remember when we first met?" he then asks, making Brienne blink even more.
This is definitely new.
"I remember how much I wanted to kill you because you kept calling me a 'beast'. Just like I remember how Catelyn Stark forced me to partner up with you for the survival training," Brienne blurts out saying.
Because that is the kind of conversation she used to be so familiar with.
And she just wants to talk about familiar things again.
Wants to be familiar again.
"Oh yeah, we got lost halfway through the second day," Jaime grins slowly.
Both had signed up for a survival training in Wolfswood. It was before Jaime started at the police station. He was still in training by the time. They were supposed to go in pairs, and Jaime had made the fatal mistake to blurt out asking if this camp was men's only, Brienne actually being the only female participant in the room, though he didn't catch that right away.
The Starks organise these survival trainings regularly, and Catelyn Stark, one of the instructors and initiators, of course, forced them to form a group once she heard Brienne cursing like a sailor, that close to jumping Jaime and wrestling with him in the base camp already.
They were to fulfil a number of tasks by getting to certain check points, and on the way, train their survival skills, obviously, hiking, making it across valleys, finding caves, making fire, camp for the night, and the like.
It was supposed to last a week. Jaime and Brienne only arrived on Day Eight, as night was drawing close, short before they wanted to send the helicopters to rescue them, all muddy and bloody from head to toe.
It's needless to mention that some, if not most of the bruises and cuts were from fighting each other rather than wrestling with nature. They really wrestled each other once, by a bridge.
Brienne had sworn revenge and cursed his name, feeling like a failure, after she wanted to impress Catelyn – since she had taken part in many of the programs hosted by the Starks to train these skills, and was a welcome guest, especially for Catelyn Stark. Brienne had grown on her and Brienne was thus even fonder of the older woman.
Well, that was until Jaime Lannister had screwed up her plans. Because Brienne was used to coming in first, fulfilling the tasks with ease, or maybe not with ease, but with enough will to be quick about it. She was used to Catelyn Stark being impressed with her skills… until they almost sent the helicopters to find them.
And for that, Brienne wanted Lannister blood.
To think that it has been years since.
To think where they stand now…
It's almost sad.
No, it is sad.
"You lost the map and the compass," Brienne insists, trying to ease into the conversation, into the familiar touch of the words, the tones.
"After you knocked me over and they fell down a cliff," Jaime argues vehemently. "And me along with it, almost."
"I really wanted to kill you," Brienne rolls her eyes.
"Likewise. At some point it's still a miracle that we could ever stop hating each other enough for something else to develop," Jaime chuckles.
"Yeah, and ever since that survival training, you just kept showing up because you wanted a re-match," Brienne remembers.
Back then, she really thought that once the training session was over, she'd never see the snobby Lannister spawn again, only to have him pretty much knocking on her door about a week later – after Jaime had people figure out her address.
Since then, he had demanded a re-match.
He just kept knocking on her door.
Brienne rebuffed him.
And this went back and forth and forth and back.
"Because you were not beating me. We were interrupted," Jaime grins.
"Yeah, yeah, you were taking a rest," Brienne huffs, though she has to smile as well.
If only it would stay like that from now on.
"I was! But in any case, I beat you to it once you agreed to the re-match," Jaime chuckles.
"And you let loose one of the stupidest pickup-lines ever, after I beat your sorry arse again," Brienne huffs.
"I did not expect you to just pull a jiu-jitsu move and flip me over. I saw stars," Jaime grins. "And my back was one huge bruise."
"And still you had enough might to say that," Brienne shakes her head.
"Oh no, I'm choking! I need mouth to mouth, quick! Yeah, that was not at all smooth, but I still got to kiss you," Jaime smiles.
They had both been on the dusty mattress in the old gym, Brienne towering above him, and he just feigned choking before uttering that, catching her off-guard for no more than a few split seconds, pulling her to him and kissing her until she stopped knocking against him.
He never had so many bruises from a kiss than this one.
And still, it was so damn perfect.
"I still don't know how that made me act upon it," Brienne snorts.
"Oh, I was just irresistible back then," Jaime chuckles softly.
Now maybe no longer, but back then?
He really could have started as a model, had Jaime only the slightest bit of interest in the matter.
"Not as much as you always gave yourself credit for," Brienne huffs.
"Hey, I convinced you to take me, I think I get some credit for that. Till last, no one believed that we'd stop acting like bullheads and finally admit it to each other – or rather ourselves," Jaime argues.
"Yeah, that's true," Brienne sighs.
Everyone in their circles of friends kept bickering about them acting like an old married couple, something both refused with all their might. Brienne can still remember how she used to hit him in the arm like a thirteen year old boy to prove everyone else that she was anything but into Jaime Lannister.
Not that Jaime was any better. He called her 'wench' with a swell of pride in his chest, and used any opportunity to tease her to the point that she stormed off angrily, only for him to hurry after her to apologise and make her come back to him again.
And back then, they really thought that was the hugest part of work to overcome for their relationship.
But they were fundamentally proven wrong with this new situation.
This is their trial.
And neither one is sure if it won't be their error by the end of the day.
"Brie?" Jaime exhales.
"Yeah?" she looks at him.
"I wanted to apologise, for how I've been lately, ever since… it happened," Jaime says.
"You don't have to apologise," Brienne shakes her head.
"I do. You've taken all of my shit, and that even though you weren't well yourself. You've been the rock in this relationship in a long while," Jaime admits. "While I've been the tide trying to tear it down."
"That's nothing to apologise for. I made the decision to do what I did," Brienne shrugs.
"I'm still sorry," Jaime argues. "I really am."
"Jaime…," she means to say, but he interrupts her in a soft voice, "You know that I usually don't apologise, so you should better take it."
"Alright," she grimaces.
There is a moment of silence before he goes on talking, "At some point I just can't shake it off, you know? Everything was so good up to that point. Everything was messed-up because we are messed-up, but perfectly so."
"Yeah," Brienne can't help but agree.
Their perfection was odd, but it fitted them just right.
Until that night in the alleyway.
"And then those fuckheads destroy it all. I never thought that this hand would be so important to me until I lost it," Jaime admits, extending his right arm, glancing at the hand no longer there, his vision blurring a bit as he feels a bit of tear fluid gathering at the corners of his eyes.
"I picture," Brienne agrees solemnly.
"And you know what's bugging me even more?" Jaime goes on, his neck nervously flexing.
"No?" she looks at him.
"The irony of it," he snorts bitterly, still looking at his stump.
"What irony?" Brienne frowns.
She looks at the box he has been toying with throughout the conversation as he holds it right in front of his face.
"That evening they took my hand… the same evening… I wanted to ask for yours," he then says, eyes fixed on the box.
Brienne looks at him, not saying a word.
"I wanted to take you to where we first kissed, to the old gym. I wanted to do it all out of the handbook, only to see your surprised face… I've talked to your Father long before the day, to be allowed to propose. We both know how set he is on traditions, almost as much as my Father. The dinner I mentioned to you… it was supposed to be the dinner for us to announce it to my family. I had it all inside my head, like… I had two years inside my head about how life would be like, how our life would be like… and then those bastards came and… and they just cut that out, shot it off, took it away, took those two years away. And ever since I woke up after that ambush, there was just living from day to day, making it from one day to the next. I didn't dare to look any further…," Jaime says, his voice hoarse.
Brienne just goes on looking at him, not moving a single muscle other than those of her eyelids as she blinks at him.
"You know that I love you, right?" he then says.
"Yeah, just like I love you," she replies simply.
To her, that is simply out of question.
That is the one thing Brienne is always certain of.
"I do wonder… would you have said 'yes'?" Jaime asks in a small voice, eyes fixed on the box.
"Back then, I would have," Brienne tells him simply, finding her own eyes glistening.
He wanted to get married.
And then this happens.
Fortune really plays the cruellest japes.
"And if asked you now? Would you say 'yes', still?" Jaime questions, his eyes not leaving the box.
Would she still want him like that?
Is he still the man she pictures her future with?
Or just the man she knows from the past?
Or rather, a faint echo of the man he was?
"No, if you asked me now, I would say 'no'," Brienne replies.
Jaime can't help but inhale sharply once.
Because that stings.
Not that he expected her to fall around his neck, it's just… he thought it would fix things for them, maybe.
Maybe he waited for too long or messed things up beyond repair…
And it would serve him right.
Jaime looks at her this time, "Why?"
"Because I know you better than most people," she says, making Jaime frown.
"So? Why shouldn't we marry? Maybe that'd undo some of all that bad," Jaime grimaces. "Because you're all that good."
Maybe that could fix them in some way.
Maybe they should just start over where they left off, where he left off.
"I'd like to marry you, one day, but… not like this," Brienne tells him.
"Because you don't want to marry someone who's treated you like shit the past few months, I see," Jaime huffs.
"No," she insists. "That's not at all it."
Jaime looks at her.
That's not it?
"Then why?" he asks.
"Because you do that out of the fear that I will leave you, right? You think that if you don't make me stay, with something like this even, I will take off," Brienne says.
It's what everyone keeps telling her. It's what Margaery tried to tell her. And it's likely what others warned Jaime about likewise. That if Brienne were wise enough, she'd call off the relationship.
Jaime wouldn't have done so many things at once, like going outside to go to the barber, and seemingly preparing to talk about these things - if not for reason.
And that is the only reason: Fear.
Fear that she will leave.
Fear that he has gone too far and that she won't follow anymore.
"You'd have any damn reason to," Jaime shrugs, but that is when she grasps his stump, and it seems almost natural for a split second.
"I don't want to marry you right now because I want to prove to you that I don't need a ring to love you. I never did. I promised you that I love you, back in the hospital again, and that won't ever change. You don't have to vow something to make me stay. I will stay, and that is what I want to prove to you," Brienne says. "That's why I'd say 'no' now. Not because I don't love you but because I love you. You don't have to make me stay because I will anyways."
"I really don't deserve you," Jaime shakes his head, tears pricking agianst his eyes.
He really doesn't.
A few years back, when Jaime didn't know her well enough yet, he thought Brienne was incapable of showing that much emotion, that much empathy, but here he has the one woman who takes his shit and still finds the will to fight, to love.
She stays even though he pushes her away.
She pulls him up to the surface instead of allowing them both to drown.
She may not be fearless, but she fights those fears, shoots them down, and his along with them.
"Don't say that," she argues with vehemence this time, ripping Jaime out of his thoughts.
"Why? It's the plain truth," he shrugs.
He doesn't deserve her, period.
Not after all that's happened lately.
"If you say that, it sounds like we don't belong together, and that is what we do. If not, all this here would be pointless, all the pain and the suffering and… and I want to believe that it's worth something, whatever it is. I need that bit of purpose, so stop saying that, please," Brienne demands sadly.
Because she always built on the premise that they deserve each other.
That they belong together, no matter what other people may say.
Brienne needs that bit of certainty - and she finds it shaking whenever she hears it that Jaime doesn't deserve her. Because that means she doesn't deserve him.
Jaime studies her for a moment, but then agrees, "Okay."
"I won't run away if you don't run away. I will stay if you stay. I will hold on if you do. And I will knock your teeth out if you don't stop acting like an idiot," Brienne tells him.
"Understood, my lady," Jaime says, flashing a small, sad smile.
They really need a new direction.
Wherever that is.
"How comes we talk about this only now?" Jaime grimaces.
Because now, it seems almost effortless, when it was so much effort, so much work before.
"Because you weren't ready until now," Brienne shrugs.
She really knows him like no one else.
Because she trusts him.
Because he trusts her.
That has always been the thing between them – that they were at a truce, a mutual trust.
"Brie?" Jaime asks after a while.
"Hm?" she blinks at him.
"Maybe we should go on dates again, you know," he goes on.
"Dates?" Brienne makes a face.
"Well, we both know that I've been anything but couple-y lately, to put it nicely," Jaime snorts.
And he wants to stop being this.
He really does.
He wants to be something close to the man that Brienne deserves again.
"Jaime, I don't need to go on dates for the matter," Brienne argues.
"I know, it's just… maybe we still should. I don't know," Jaime shrugs.
He has to make an effort, or no, he has to make the effort, but make it effortless at the same time.
"What's wrong?" Brienne asks.
"Ah, big question. Where do I start?" he huffs, to which she rolls her eyes, "You know how I mean it. We don't have to rush anything."
Because this here is that bit of odd perfection Brienne has been craving for in felt eternities, where it's just them, where it's just them and talking about things freely, without fears, or at least not so many, and even if so many indeed… not between them, just above them, below them, but not between them.
She feels like she can climb behind the wall behind his eyes for once, and Brienne wants to climb.
She is a good climber, she really is.
"I have to rush a lot, because I have a lot of catching up to do," Jaime argues.
Because Tyrion is right – he can't afford to lose her.
He needs Brienne more than that bloody hand.
He needs her to the point of crazy.
"No, now you get me all wrong. Jaime, you are not supposed to rush things. You are supposed to get used to this situation, we both are. You suffered a loss, we both went through something… terrible… That takes time to deal with. And as I said, I will give you the time, I will give us the time," Brienne argues.
She just doesn't want to lose that flash of hope, because this is a step forward and she believes a step in the right direction at last.
One foot in front of the other, however dull the walk may thus be.
"I just want to be us again, like we used to be," Jaime admits feebly.
"We won't ever be like we used to be, I fear," Brienne grimaces.
"Yeah, I know," he sighs, defeat in his voice, pulling his shoulders down.
They can't go back to the almost carefree couple they were before all this happened.
They can't go back to the day where they first met, to the base camp in Wolfswood, Catelyn Stark rolling their eyes at them acting anything like the young adults they were back then.
Because it happened.
Because he lost the hand.
Because Brienne was ambushed the same way he was.
Because the last few months took place.
No matter how far Jaime leaps, that is the way he travelled, that is the way they both travelled.
There is no going back from that.
"What was your favourite date?" he asks after a while, his voice trailing off.
Because Jaime wants to hold on to that moment.
It feels like it's been ages since they talked like this.
And only now he realises just how much he missed this.
How much he missed being… them.
"What?" she frowns.
"Your favourite of our dates? I bet the first time in the shooting range," Jaime smiles softly.
"No," Brienne shakes her head with a small smile.
"What? I was certain about that one," Jaime makes a face.
Jaime can still remember the shine in her sapphire blue eyes when he switched the lights on in the range and let her shoot all she wanted, until they had no ammo left. Just like he can remember Brienne's almost dumbly happy smile she flashed at him after she proved to be about as much of a good shooter as he is, hopping up and down, even. And he remembers how he adored her for it.
"You remember how I had the rib fracture and bruised ribs? That was when we were only recently together," Brienne says, and Jaime nods slowly, "Yeah, I know that I wanted to rip the guy's windpipe out once I heard that you'd been injured during training by this dipshit because he didn't know how to use the baton properly, but did we really have a date by the time? You could barely move."
"Exactly. I mean, we'd only dated a few times, but after you learned about it, you were inside my apartment and wouldn't leave. You even took a few days off of work. I don't know how they ever let you get through with it," Brienne grins.
"I'm a good liar, you know that," Jaime says. "I made them believe that I was throwing up all over my place. You just have to be vivid enough in your explanations and flush the toilet repeatedly while on the phone."
"Aha... Anyways, we just laid in bed and nothing else… we didn't even talk… let alone kiss or do any other thing than watching a movie or eating… we just… laid there, I don't know. I liked that best," Brienne shrugs, her voice meek.
That was when Brienne, for the first time in her life, physically felt the care radiating from someone else like the heat of his body. That Jaime needed to make sure that she was fine, that he needed to be inches from her to be certain. Slept next to her even though they hadn't slept with each other by the time. Slept next to her because he had to make sure that she was breathing fine, that she wouldn't just disappear.
That was the kind of closeness Brienne, up to meeting Jaime, had ruled out for herself, being the ugly thing that she is. But he undid those red markers over her list of things that wouldn't ever take place, things that people like Septa Roelle had busily added to the list, and scribbled his name all over the page.
"Well, it can't be my favourite because you got injured," Jaime chuckles.
"I got injured all the time, like you," Brienne snorts.
"Yeah, true again, but that one was painful," Jaime argues. "Rib injuries always are."
"It was… but I guess it's worth the pain if it heals," Brienne sighs.
Jaime licks his lips, getting the implication despite the fact that she says that she is no good at it.
He just wants this moment not to be lost by the gloom that still lingers above their heads.
"Then… how about you scoot over and we do what we did on your favourite not-date back then?" he suggests, gathering all of his fractured courage - to move forward, or even if not, closer to her.
He wants to hold on to something reaching beyond this night, a bit of tomorrow.
He wants to hold on to her.
Brienne flashes a small smile before she leans against him and Jaime wraps his arms around her, for once really forgetting that there is just one hand to hold her.
Neither one says a word.
They simply try to get used to each other again.
Try to be familiar again.