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Jaime Lannister has fought his last battle.
He still has the strength to hold a sword, but no longer the breath to wield one for long. A few moments wind him. A duel would flatten him. In battle, he’d likely die of exhaustion long before an enemy’s sword or spear finished him.
Once, the knowledge would have driven him to fury or despair. He would have raged against the weakness of his body the way he had raged over the loss of his swordhand. He would have driven himself mercilessly to try and overcome it and sunk into despondency when he failed.
Once, when he was a little younger and a great deal stupider.
But he is not young, now. His hair is grey, not gold, and time has cut more lines on his face than opponents ever did.
And he is not stupid, either. Oh, Jaime knows he’ll never be the cleverest Lannister, unless something happens to Tyrion and he’s also the last Lannister, but he’s been smart enough to love Brienne of Tarth and smart enough persuade her to wed him, and that’s all the cleverness he needs in this life.
He loves her with an endless aching wonder and with a joy that comes so easily to him that for a while, he distrusts it.
He loves their children the same way.
It terrifies him, the vastness of the love he feels. He lies awake imagining disasters – accidents, fevers, a bandit raid – trying to armour his heart against the possibilities, and always fails.
Sometimes, he spends the night alone. Brienne takes her turn watching on the walls at night, because she would never ask anyone to endure a hardship she isn’t willing to stand herself. On those nights, she come shivering to bed just before dawn. Jaime wakes as her cold feet edge beneath his calves, and then rolls over cover her with his body until she warms up enough to slip into sleep.
He never tells her that if he was an invalid unable to rise from bed at all, he would still consider his life well spent warming her feet after a cold night’s watch.
Every day, Jaime tells his wife that he loves her, with looks and touches but also with those very words, because she had not believed him when he’d first said it and he’d vowed in that instant to tell her again every day the Stranger spared to him.
He’s known as Oathkeeper, now. He keeps his word, even to himself.
Not that anyone calls him Oathkeeper, except on the occasional official document. He’s Jaime, to Brienne, with a tenderness that makes him breathless. Pa, in a Northerner accent, to the three children he also tells every day that he loves to the ends of the world and all the way back, because he remembers his father and he will not become him – and because it’s the truth.
Brother or brother mine to Tyrion, whose two Stark daughters have inherited their mother’s stature, not their father’s, bringing new challenges to Tyrion’s life. But then, Tyrion is proving more than equal to any challenge thrown at him, including that of bringing warmth and happiness back to Sansa Stark’s face.
Jaime is Master to the lads and lasses he teaches and trains in his role as Winterfell’s master-at-arms. He can’t spar with them, but his wind is good enough to demonstrate a stroke and he certainly knows enough to critique one. He learned from the best, once upon a time, and he passes those lessons on, along with the ones he picked up for himself along the way. Bite them on the ear, he tells them, among other things.
Kingslayer to the crippled young man who insists he is no longer Brandon Stark, but Jaime knows that Bran understands the truth of what he did (the truth of everything) and from his mouth, the hated appellation is an honour.
Brother-in-law to the Lady of Winterfell, cousin-in-law when the king comes to Winterfell – although Jaime is almost certain that isn’t technically correct, it’s bad form to argue with a king – and, occasionally, when Arya and the Hound’s travels bring them north, he’s you old cunt.
When people refer to him as Ser Jaime of Tarth, he doesn’t correct them.
He, who was once rich as a Lannister, now owns very little. His sword, his armour, his clothes. The golden hand has long ago been replaced by one of a less ostentatious metal – one much more useful, cast by Gendry Baratheon from a drawing made by Bran Stark. The thumb moves on a hinge, with a catch to lock it in place that he can flip with the fingers of his other hand. He can lock it around a fork, for example, which removes the need for Brienne to help him cut up his meat.
He could probably learn to use it to undo buckles and laces, but that would mean Brienne would no longer help him, and it’s his favourite part of the day.
For a while, he technically owned Casterly Rock and the rest of the Lannister lands, but the king – Aegon still feels wrong to just about everybody in Winterfell but so does King Jon Snow – the king eventually yielded to Jaime’s argument that the Lannisters had been a pack of treacherous cunts who’d betrayed two kings and the Seven Kingdoms needed to see justice done. Cersei has been attainted post-mortem. House Lannister is officially no more.
Jaime’s children are the heirs of Tarth, not Lannister, and he prefers it that way, just as Tyrion is happy for his daughters to be Starks. In the meantime, a good steward assists old Ser Selwyn, and they all visit every year.
Jaime likes Tarth. The waters around it are as blue as Brienne’s eyes. He looks forward to being an old man in Tarth, when Brienne’s had enough of what he calls, specifically to annoy her, knighting around.
Given she looks to be set on following Ser Barristan Selmy’s example, Jaime suspects he’ll be waiting a while, but that’s alright. He spent a great deal of his life in a hurry for things, but Winterfell has broken the bad habit. Even spring, which they can smell on the air some days, can take its time as far as Jaime is concerned.
It will come, when it’s time.
Of all the lessons Jaime of Tarth has learned through his generally misspent life, that’s the one he values most. All things come at the time that’s right for them,
Spring. Children.
Strange warrior maids with an unshakable sense of honour.
Love.
Happiness.