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They are on their way to get Sansa Stark from the Vale. He doesn’t know why the gods had them come across her path. A girl in the woods, running from something and finding herself surrounded by bandits.
Brienne, Podrick and he make quick work of the bandits and he has no idea why but the way she looks at him makes him offer his hand to her.
“Do you trust me?” he asks. He’s not sure why he does this too. She would have no reason to trust him, these are the first words he’s uttered to her. However that doesn’t seem to matter as she takes his hand and he pulls her on the horse to ride with him.
They make camp once before they reach the vale and she cooks. It’s ten times better than what Podrick had made. No one asks where she lives. It seems to be common knowledge she was running from something. Brienne asks from what and she says softly she was running from a monster.
Brienne doesn’t press after that. As she braids her dark hair she looks at them, studies them and Jaime almost feels annoyed at how she looks at him. He’s annoyed because he’s wanted someone to look at him like that his whole life. Like a true, gallant knight.
How dare she think that of him? He’s on his mission to reclaim his honor. Sansa Stark is his last chance at that. Yet she reminds him of the man he hoped to be.
They all slept in a circle around the fire that night. When they get to the Vale they find Sansa Stark, standing over the moon door, blood on her hands.
“Ann” she says in relief and runs to the girl they’d rescued, who’s stayed oddly close to Jaime.
The girl holds Sansa in her arms. Only Ann is able to lead the girl from the Vale. It’s Ann who sits with Lady Sansa and hears her troubles in the Vale. It’s only Ann who helps her put away the girl Alayne Stone and find who Sansa Stark is again.
All the while she is attentive to Jaime. Mending patches on his clothes, ensuring his clothes are clean and his armor is somewhat clean. She asks for no thanks and receives none.
It’s explained that Ann was one of Sansa’s childhood friends, a daughter to the Steward of Winterfell when her father held it.
When they reach the Wall, the Lord Commander, Jon Snow knows Ann too. However she still looks at Jaime in that way that infuriates him. Like he’s everything she’s been told in stories as a child, a golden knight with honor pumping through his veins, and he can’t stand it.
She doesn’t hover or follow him but he knows where to find her if he needs her. To his pure annoyance he finds he needs her. He needs her to look at him like she does. He needs her to give him some kind of hope that someone still believes he can be better.
The night before the battle of the bastards he’s plucking up the courage to go speak to her. Ask her for something, anything, so that she might look at him in that way again.
When he makes his way to her room he finds she’s looking out at the moon, knees to her chest, chin resting on her knees and arms around her legs. She looks so ethereal right now and he’s almost sorry that he’s disturbed her. That is until she sees him and smiles. Giving him once again that look that annoys him so badly.
She gets out of her chair and walks towards him. They don’t say anything because they both know why he’s here. Her lips touch his softly and he’s lost in her. Soon he’s lost inside her and she’s chanting his name.
When they’re done he’s afraid. Afraid she won’t look at him the same way now she’s had him and his one hand in bed. Cersei told him he was less, that he’d lost his hand and his touch, and he couldn’t bare to see it again.
However when he looks in her eyes it’s still there. The annoying look.
“Come back to me, my knight” she says against his lips as he leaves her the next morning.
He does as she commands. She is his ruler now and he will have no other.
When they retake Winterfell he smiles as he watches Sansa and Ann play in the snow, throwing snowballs at one another. He’s reminded how young she is and how old he is. He can’t help the twinge of pride that bubbles in his belly at the thought of her young body desiring his.
As they’re rebuilding Winterfell, Jaime and Ann rebuild themselves. Ann is taken as Steward of the house and Jaime becomes Lord Commander, much to the anger of Jon Snow.
Sansa trusts Ann, more than anyone in the entire North, and if she vouches for Jaime then Sansa trusts him.
Every night he’s in Ann’s arms. They make love and she strokes his hair as he lays on her chest. Finally one night he’s able to tell her he loves her. She says she’s loved him from the moment he held out his hand asking her to trust him. He knows she means it, he knows it’s true. He’s her knight from the songs and she’s his damsel. Only in this song, they seem to be saving each other.
After Sansa is declared Queen in the North, she appoints Ann as her hand to the Queen.
Jaime asks her if she’d marry him one night in bed. She kisses him passionately saying yes over and over again. They get married in the godswood.
Then Jon goes to meet with the Dragon Queen and the army of the dead are marching on Winterfell. Sansa brings in a letter to Jaime.
Cersei knows about Ann.
He wants to fear for his new bride but he knows he won’t let any harm come to her. There are two attempts on her life. He saves her from both.
“My knight” she says as she holds him in her arms the night after the last attempt.
Then she pulls his hand to her stomach and he feels the hard bump on her skin. She’s got his baby in her belly and she’s grinning from ear to ear. He nearly cries as she runs off telling everyone and anyone who’ll hear.
He’s not used to that. Ann is proud she’s bearing his children. Proud of him and wants the world to know. It’s an odd feeling. Then she looks at him, that same annoying look and he’s won over by her again. She can have what she wants from him just as long as she never stops looking at him like that.
The night she went into labor is hard. He’s in the room, sitting behind her as her back leans against his chest and she cries out in pain. There is so much blood he starts to get afraid.
Then the baby cries. Their child. Their boy.
She holds the baby as Jaime holds her. He looks at his son and words of congratulations are said to him. His son, who will bear his name and call him father.
“You’re lady wife did better than any woman I’ve ever seen the first round. She is truly a strong lioness” the Septa says as she lets them hold the child. Jaime knows she’s strong and sees it now more than ever.
“What should we call him?” asks her husband as she looks down at the boy, dark curled hair like his mother and deep green eyes.
“Leo Lannister” she said softly.
“Leo” he echos and the name sticks.
Then the war for the dawn comes. He’s heading out before battle, his son sleeps in his crib and he makes love to his wife. He kisses the marks his son left on her body as she housed him. He kisses the breasts his son feeds from. He worships his wife.
Before he leaves he looks at them both. His wife and his son. Never did he imagine that he would have this. This was more than he deserved. He used to think the gods were cruel but as he kissed the forehead of his son and the sweet lips of his wife he knew they had to be kind.
“Come back to us” she said “Come back to us my knight”
Then he gets the look. The look he found so annoying and one now he can’t live without.
The war for the dawn is hard. The Dragon Queen fights alongside them. They lose many. Bronn goes down in the fight, as does the leader of the Unsullied and Brienne. They burn their bodies quickly and continue fighting.
He can feel his limbs ache. He’s getting up in age now though is wife is still young and spry. He thinks on her, on their son and he summons courage he never thought he had.
The war is won.
He makes his way back to their chambers and his little wife and son are there waiting for him. She cries tears of joy as she sees him and he kisses them away.
“My knight” she says once again. He thanks the gods old and new, that she keeps on looking at him like that.
The time comes for them to march on King’s Landing. He doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t want to leave his wife and his son. He knows he must go though. The plan won’t succeed unless he goes.
As he makes his way with the dragon queen’s army they find the city in ruins. The Mad Queen, they call his sister. He sneaks into her chambers, as he had always done before, it disgust him he knows how to do it like he knows the back of his hand. She gasps when she sees him and her arms fall around his neck.
“I knew you’d come back to me. No whore or her baby could keep you from me” she says, so confident and so very mad.
She didn’t even see the blade as he dug it into her stomach. She looks up in shock but his face is impassive. Once she’s dead we’ll truly be free.
After she dies and he lets the Dragon Queen know he rides for Winterfell.
There he finds his son, having grown in his absence with a smile for his father and his wife with the same annoying look.
They stay in Winterfell, serving the Queen in the North. They have one more child. A daughter named Joanna and she has hair blonde as Jaime’s with eyes as blue as her mother's. They grow up and marry Sansa’s children. Leo to hold Casterly Rock with Cat and Joanna at Winterfell with Rickard.
As Jaime lays in bed with his wife, who still looks so young even though he knows his time is near he sighs in contentment as she looks at him, with that damned annoying look. As he closes his eyes, the Stranger coming for him he hears her say “My knight”
Then he’s reached his final rest. Dying in the arms of the woman he loves.