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Chapter Text

His first thought is that he is dead, surely, dead and buried in this tomb of crushing blackness, lost and alone for the rest of eternity in whichever of the hells he’s be judged fit to reside in. 

His second thought is to register the sound of his own heartbeat, thumping sluggish and stubborn deep in his ears and echoing through his aching skull.  

So not dead, then.

His third thought is of the look on Cersei’s face as the blade had slipped so easily between her ribs, that one fleeting second of genuine astonishment when she had turned and seen what he was doing, and the sound her body had made as it crumpled to the floor.   He’d tried to catch her, hold her, lower her with some last semblance of dignity at least, but then his stupid hand had slipped and she’d just…dropped.   

His fourth thought is to wish he were dead after all.  Alone in the dark with nothing but his very long list of failures, what else should he hope for?  And maybe there will be a kindness he can find in death that he has hardly ever known in life, an ending of it all even if not a resolution. 

After all this time, and all this suffering, at least it would finally be over. 

Time passes in funny fits and starts, and his mind wanders.  He wonders if the entire keep is pressing down above him, or if it’s just one part of it.  He hopes that Tyrion is unharmed, wherever he is, and that he’s the one to find Cersei, assuming she’s not buried somewhere above his head.  He trusts his brother to ensure that her body is not despoiled, even after everything.  Tyrion will do it for the love of him, maybe, rather than for any residual love he might bear for the sister who never once treated him kindly, but the whys don’t really matter, in the end.   

Brienne would treat her respectfully too, even if it meant going against orders from the Dragon Queen, and that just makes him even gladder that he left her behind, bereft and heartbroken maybe, but safe and well and every inch of her containing more honour than he’s known in his entire life.  In a life that’s been marked out by nothing but selfish deeds leaving her free before she could be dragged down into his mire is maybe the only truly altruistic thing he’s ever succeeded in.  She’s a thousand miles away; nothing he does can harm her now, and there’s something freeing in that, like he can finally face his love for her only now he knows she’s safe from the destructive force of it.

He still can’t help but wish she were here, at the end, to lay a cool, calloused hand on his face and sooth the terrors away, but he’s spent so many years marking time by her absence from his side, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that it all finishes the same way.

His leg throbs.  The darkness is suffocating, and that, somehow, is worse than the pain; pain at least is an old and familiar foe.  This helpless blindness is a new layer of cruelty.  Somewhere in the distance a precarious pile of rubble wavers and topples, sending a cloud of dust and grit over him and making him cough.  Even that is too much exertion for his beaten, broken soul.  Though the darkness doesn’t change he closes his eyes once more, and Jaime Lannister does not think again for a long, long time.

They tell him later that he was lucky; lucky that the seas were calm, lucky that Ignet was on watch, with her keen, curious eyes.  Lucky that they were passing at all, skirting the wreckage of the Greyjoy fleet for easy pickings.  Lucky they were traders merely scavenging, not pirates or soldiers.  Lucky Talut has a soft heart, for all his loud bluster and giant build. 

Waking up to the gentle rocking of the boat, pain in his head and his heart and nothing but a gaping empty blankness where his memories should have been, opening his eyes and looking around for…something, someone, seeking a face or a name he doesn’t know, maybe hasn’t ever known…

…it doesn’t feel much like luck.

The first few days he keeps waiting for something – anything – to seep through, some trace of a name he can claim or a past he might recognise.  They wean him off the poppy milk and his thoughts grow sharper; each day he can stay awake a little longer, his body steadily and surely recovering from its physical hurts, but the mental ones show no sign of lifting.

They give him the facts, such as they are, once he’s able to stay awake long enough to take them in.  He understands Valyrian, so they tell him, and the Common Tongue of Westeros, and so there is enough of a shared language for communication.  The ship he’s on is the Swallow, a trading cog nominally out of Myr, though Talut the captain is Pentosi, and his wife, the gentle-handed woman who had tended to him in his sickbed, names herself Norah of Lys.   The rest of the crew is equally diverse; every one of the Free Cities is represented, and a few from either further east, from the fringes of Slaver’s Bay and beyond. 

They’d found him drifting in Blackwater Bay in a battered old row boat with two oars and no sign of food or water. 

“And whoever you were, you were an idiot,” Talut chortles when he reaches that part of the story.  He is a giant of a man with a gregarious nature; so far he’s not been without a smile or a laugh on his face.   “What does a one-handed man want with two oars?  Did you mean to eat one?”

He can’t answer that question any more than the rest.

“We don’t normally cross the Narrow Sea,” Talut continues, unperturbed by his new companion’s silences.  “The trading’s not been worth it, especially these last few years.  War is bad for business.  But we are in Volantis and we hear that the Golden Company are paying good money for passage across the Narrow Sea.  Money is money, and maybe they will want us to take them home again too.  That would be very good money.  But they do not, so Qyrosh my first mate says, ho Talut, how about those burning ships?  Everyone knows the Iron Fleet are no better than pirates, and pirates travel with gold. Which is lucky for you, because else we might not have come this way out the bay.  Talut has no gold either way, but you have your life, so maybe not such a bad call!”

And then he laughs and slaps his thighs as if he’s told a particularly excellent jape, and takes his leave, still chuckling. 

By the time they reach Braavos he’s been on board for close to four moons and his physical injuries are as healed as he can hope them to ever be.  The first couple of ports they had called in at he had paid no attention to, at first because his hurts kept him confined to his bunk and then because his understanding of the ship and its people was still so rudimentary.  But by Braavos he’s got to know them, at least a little, and the interpersonal intricacies of life on board. A few people trickle away once they make port, passengers who have reached their intended destination or those who wish to stay longer in the city than the Swallow will be docked for, but the core crew – the ones he is starting to come to recognise and know – remain.

He does consider leaving, briefly, in the same manner, knowing that the crew would wish him and well and not begrudge him his departure – indeed, would likely add it to the mythos of his story when they told it next, and enjoy it all the more for the unsolved mystery.  

But in the end he stays.  He stays because they are decent people and they treat him well.  He stays because he likes it on board, likes how they work and eat and live together.  He stays because they saved his life, and he feels bound to them, in thanks for that. 

He stays because he has nowhere else to go.

They call him Stumps, for want of anything better.  He quite likes it, as names go; doubtless there are worse ones.

Life on board the Swallow is easy, on the whole.  They’re a mishmash crew, mostly men and women of the Free Cities who have sound themselves adrift from home due to preference or circumstance.  They please themselves, which proves far easier than trying to please other people.   Talut is their captain by mutual consent; he is the biggest, and the loudest, but more than that he fair and honest, as much as any captain can be and far more than most. He fills his crew with those whose loyalty he has earnt, and he takes care to go on earning it. 

Stumps finds he fits in well with the rest of them.  He’s a novelty at first and then just an oddity, and it becomes a popular pastime amongst the rest to try and guess at who he might have been and what he might have done before.  Ignet, the sharp-eyed  young Lorathi woman who first spotted his plight the day they pulled him on board, makes a game of coming up with new tales for how he might have lost his hand.  She has a new one every evening, and not one of them feels any more fitting to him than the rest. 

The months pass.  They pick up a cargo in one city and exchange it for coin in the next.  Occasionally they take on passengers as well; small-time traders, travellers and missionaries, the occasional band of mummers or sell swords.  Each day is a little different to the one before and after it, but at the same time there is a rhythm and a routine that he finds comforting and safe.  

Most days it is easy to forget that he might ever have had a life other than this one.  

“Ae you not even slightly curious?” demands Garrett one evening.  The navigator is an equable, lanky Pentosi native whose company Stumps particularly enjoys.  Many nights find the two of them and Ignet sharing a drink and a conversation, though in general Stumps is more inclined to listen than contribute.  Tonight they’re drifting somewhere between Lys and Volantis.  The sea is calm and the winds are low, and other than the gentle lapping of the waves against the ships sides the air is almost completely silent.  In the darkness the shoreline is completely invisible; they might be the only people left in all the world.

Stumps stays quiet for a moment, weighing the question carefully, wanting to answer as truthfully as he is able.

“I have dreams, sometimes,” he says at last.  “I don’t really remember much more than the feelings from them, when I wake up.  But…they’re enough to make me think I don’t want to know any more.”

They both look at him in silence for a time, light from the lantern flickering strange shadows over their faces, and he starts to worry that he’s erred, admitted too much, but, “You’re a strange man, Stumps,” Garrett drawls, smiling, “but I’m glad we fished you up.”

Ignet laughs, a mocking sound that he’s learnt means she’s genuinely pleased as well, and the warm feeling in the pit of his stomach follows him to his small bunk that night.  Whoever he was, whatever he did, it doesn’t matter here, and he thinks that is probably for the best.

(And though he never knows it, on this same night, a world away, Jaime Lannister’s children are born)

They discover he can fight quite by accident.  They’re moored for a few days in Tyrosh, taking on supplies and making minor repairs to the Swallow while Talut negotiates their next cargo.  Stumps, Norah and Ignet spend the afternoon exploring the local markets; he still carries the staff that Norah insists he keeps to hand whenever he might have to walk any great distance, but he goes the entire afternoon without needing to use on it, solid proof of his healing body.  And Ignet has never been to the city before either, so for once he feels on an equal footing in his ignorance, and there’s something comforting about that, too.

So it’s been a good day, which is what makes it all the more annoying when they get jumped half way back to the ship. 

They’re wending their way through the docks when they are caught.  The first two men grab him from behind while a third goes for Norah and the fourth tries to wallop Ignet.  He reacts instinctively, lashing out with his feet and swinging the staff round to meet the larger of his two attackers.  It’s over quickly after that; he and Ignet deal with their own assailants and then chase off Norah’s in swift succession, and all in all he could have done with the brawl lasting a little longer, because now his adrenaline is up and there’s nowhere to channel it.  

They’re still riding high on the victory when they make it back to the ship, bloodied and dishevelled but still clutching their purses and purchases, and even Talut’s loud and expressive anger that anyone dared try to harm his wife and crew doesn’t dampen their exultation.   Ignet tells the story with relish over supper that evening, finishing with “You should have seen Stumps go for the bastards with his staff though.  Man knows how to wield a weapon.”

He’d kept quiet through Ignet’s retelling of their adventure, but now he finds himself the centre of attention and shifts uncomfortably under the scrutiny.  “I just…did,” he tries to explain.  “It was instinct.”

“Could you use a sword?” asks Talut with interest.

“Let’s see,” Qyrosh, the Braavosi first mate demands, and so once the meal is finished Stumps finds himself back on deck standing opposite the smaller man with a blade in hand and the rest of the crew watching on, eager and interested. They start with a few simple parries, and when he meets those with ease Qyrosh grins and starts to press him harder. 

It’s indescribable, the feeling that settles over him as his grip automatically adjusts to the weight of the blade and the pattern of Qyrosh’s attacks.  Every move, every step, every swing is a revelation, his body moving and responding instinctively to each cut and thrust, forgetting the residual aches and pains that have marred his slow recovery, and it is glorious. He’s got no frame of reference for what coming home might feel like, but he thinks it must be something like this.

Qyrosh calls the match off long before he is ready to finish.  “You are very good,” he says with a grin, sheathing his blade.  “We’ll do this again.”

Stumps can only nod, panting slightly from effort and exhilaration but unable to rein in the broad smile he can feel on his face.

“Someone spent a lot of time and money training you, once,” observes Talut thoughtfully.  “And then they spent it again after your maiming.  You were a big man, somewhere.”

“Maybe he learnt with the left.  Some men do,” points out Ignet, but Qyrosh shakes his head. 

“No.  The instinct is there, still, to use the right more than he should.  Talut is right; he fights like a Westerosi knight, a good one, but most would let such an affliction put an end to their fighting days.”

The little first mate stares at him in thoughtful contemplation for a moment more, then shrugs easily and moves away.  The rest of the crew take their cue from him, drifting back to their previous tasks, and then he is alone, the blade still a familiar weight in his hand.  He stays on deck for a long time, running his hands back and forth over the hilt, letting the light of the rising moon glint off the steel.  Something has settled deep inside, clicked comfortably into place, something he didn’t even know he was missing until it was returned, and he wallows in the pleasure of it until Garrett at last comes by on second watch and chases him to his bunk.

That night his dreams are of fire, burning red hot one moment and ice cold the next, surrounded by faces he doesn’t recognise and yet still knows, somehow, knows deep in his marrow where the heft of the sword and the kiss of steel sits.  He wakes in the dark with terror clawing at his chest and his throat, reaching out for something that is never there, and it is a long time before he can fall asleep again. 

Come morning he can’t remember the details, not the faces or the forms, just the impressions of fear and loss and grief, and the overwhelming sense of desolation.

They move on to Lys from Tyrosh, where Talut drags him to a smithy and commissions him a hook.

“Consider it thanks for bringing Norah safely home,” he demurs when Stumps protests at the expense.  “Ignet is getting that Myrish eye she’s been coveting.  This is small change in comparison.”

It doesn’t feel like small change though, when he returns to the ship with it a few days later and Qyrosh is already waiting, an expectant gleam in his eyes.  They have sparred a few times now and his strength is steadily improving day by day, but Stumps knows the first mate is eager to see how he might do with the hook to balance out his right side.

It soon becomes apparent that it will take a lot more work, however; whatever muscle-memory his body has retained for a blade does not carry over to the hook.

“You may have been a big man,” chortles Talut at the end of the session, from the spot where he and Ignet have been watching with interest.  “But you were also a stupid one.  What sort of a solider doesn’t arm his stronger side, if he is determined to keep fighting?”

Stumps shrugs and laughs too, because what can he say?  Maybe he was a stupid man, whoever he used to be.  It doesn’t matter now. 

Time passes.  Months become a year, and then two.  They travel back and forth, mostly keeping to the south of Essos, and never going further west than Lys.  Stumps quietly has the impression that whatever else Talut saw and heard in the days around the time they fished him out of Blackwater Bay was enough for even their steadfast captain to want to keep as much distance from Westeros as possible.

They stay east instead, skirting the southern Free Cities and the fringes of Slaver’s Bay, and so he’s walking through a market in New Ghis when it happens.  He’s with Ignet and Garrett, half an ear on their bickering and the rest of his attention on the surrounding stalls and vendors.  It’s past midday and his stomach is reminding him that he hasn’t eaten yet when they pass a stall where fish is being fried in a large open pan, sending out an enticing smell of cooked oils and spices, and he thinks Tyrion would like that.

And then he stumbles to a halt, ignoring the swears and grumbles of the crowd around him, because a moment previously he had no idea who or what a Tyrion was. 

But he’s there now, sitting fully formed in his mind as if he’s been there all along, his brother, grinning at him from a corner of his mind that has stood barren and empty for so long.  There’s nothing else, nothing of use, and nothing has changed really, because it’s no more than a name and a face, except it is so much more than that, because he has a brother, and he loves him, and that knowledge is shattering.   

Ignet looks over her shoulder and calls his name, chiding him for falling behind, and that’s not right either. Jaime, he thinks, my name is Jaime…

He hurries after them, automatically winding through the crowd even as his mind is racing far away. 

He doesn’t say anything, not straight away, and if anyone notices that he’s a little quieter, a little more preoccupied than normal, no one mentions it to him.  The crew of the Swallow are well used to his silences by now. 

He keeps running the name over and over in his mind – Tyrion, Tyrion – matching it to a face he would have walked straight past this morning and will never be able to ignore again by this evening. 

There’s nothing else there, no other names or faces or moments to look back on, but for the first time in years he finds curiosity more pressing than fear.

A few days later he wakes up remembering Brienne’s face in the firelight in the Great Hall at Winterfell, and gods how could he have ever forgotten that?

Talut seeks him out, a week or so later.  They’ve been sailing east out of New Ghis with a cargo destined for Qarth, a route Stumps has only travelled part of once before, and never the entire way.  But where Stumps would have been eagerly caught up in the adventure of fresh seas and the promise of new sights, Jaime has too much else on his mind.  He shouldn’t be surprised that the captain as noticed.

“You’ve been quiet, recently,” Talut says in his straightforward way.  “Even for you.  What’s wrong?”

Jaime hesitates, torn, wanting to share and discuss what has happened with the man he respects, considers a friend, but at the same time terrified of what giving voice to his past might mean for his present.  The crew welcomed and accepted Stumps; they don’t know Jaime at all – but then, neither does he, not yet, not really.  He is still adrift, no longer entirely one nor yet completely the other.  He’s been nursing a low level headache for days over that one, trying and failing to smooth the edges between who he’s been since the Swallow picked up against what little he’s remembered so far of who he was before.

“I’ve started to remember things,” he says at last.  “Not much.  But…bits.”

“What have you got so far?” asks the big man with careful neutrality.

“My name was Jaime.  I had a brother, and a lover.”

So little, and yet so much.

“Aye, well, most men do,” Talut says in his easy way.  “What now?”

“I’m not sure,” he admits.  “I’m not…I don’t know who I am, now, Stumps or Jaime or someone else entirely.  I don’t know if I even want to know.”

Talut eyes him steadily for a moment, and then clasps a vast hand on his shoulder.

“You’re a part of this crew,” he shrugs.  “Whatever name you go by, that doesn’t change.  The rest may come.  We’re weeks from Qarth; you’ve got time.”

He gives his shoulder a companionable squeeze and ambles away, leaving Jaime alone with his thoughts.

It’s a disorientating process.  There appears to be no rhyme or reason to the pattern of his returning memories.  One day he wakes up to find whole swathes of his adolescence suddenly back where they should be, years of squiring and serving and training that goes some way towards explaining his innate skill with a blade.  A week after that, in the galley, Norah slices through a haunch of meat, a rare treat when they’re not in port, and the noise is so similar to the sound of Vargo Hoat’s blade severing his hand from his body that he physically retches. 

On deck, the sun on his face and the wind in his hair, he thinks of Tyrion’s laughter, Brienne’s ferocity, Myrcella’s sweetness, and hopes that wherever they are and whatever they are doing, they are happy with their lot.

But while by day he can find that balance, to examine the scant details of his past while still keeping a grip on his present, the nights are an altogether different beast.  The hazy, restless, uneasy dreams that have plagued him for as long as he has been with the Swallow shift into something altogether darker and more terrifying, and he wakes most nights at least once or twice with sweat sticking to his skin and a cry on his lips.  It’s like the early days after he first picked up a blade all over again; the newfound peace in his waking hours are paid for with the hell of his sleeping ones.

They’re still a couple of weeks out of Qarth when he remembers standing on a different boat in a different ocean, cradling his dying daughter in his arms and being unable to do a damn thing about it.  It’s somehow even worse, losing her a second time, the grief renewed and refreshed, and with a new edge of terror too, because what other anguish is there lurking in the shadows of his mind?

He shouldn’t be surprised that those around him pick up on his distress, but it’s still a shock when he comes into Talut’s cabin one afternoon a few days later to find a small crowd waiting for him.

“You’re not happy, Stumps,” Talut says without preamble.  “And you look awful.” 

It has been weeks now of poor, broken sleep even without his more recent grief, and he knows his night terrors are starting to affect the rest of the crew as well.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the words utterly inadequate, because these people took him in when he was less than nothing and whatever happens next will hurt them; is already hurting them. 

“Do you need to go back to Westeros?” asks Norah, gentle and steady.  “We can head west again next, if you want.  See if we can find your people, or what became of them.  Maybe that will find you peace.”

It’s tempting, and he’s touched that she offers.  But even if they started out west straight from Qarth it would be moons before they’d reach Westeros, even assuming the rest of the crew agreed.  And then he’d be…where, exactly?  In a land that feels only distantly familiar, searching for people he can only hope are still living. He doesn’t even know what side of the war he stood on; he could land and find himself arrested for things he has no memory of doing.

“I was content, before,” he begins slowly, wrestling with the words, trying to turn them into something he can understand, never mind the rest of them.  “Knowing nothing, it was…simple.  And now I know some things, but not nearly enough.  I don’t know what sort of a man I was before I washed up with you all, and I can’t make decisions based on someone I might not be anymore.  There might not even be anything left for me there.  I remembered my daughter alive for days before I remembered her dead; maybe it’s the same with the rest, as well. I need to remember.”

It’s quite possibly the longest speech he’s ever made and for a moment the assembled crew members just stare at him, varying degrees of shock and sympathy on all their faces. 

“It might come, with time,” suggests Ignet quietly, her eyes very wide.  “You already know so much more than you did.”

He shakes his head and runs a frustrated hand through his hair.  “It’s been weeks, and all I’ve got is a handful of names and a few conversations.  It could take years, this way.”

“They say there are witches, in Asshai,” says Garrett quietly, his usually dancing eyes sober.  “Who can look into your eyes and see your very soul, walk every pathway in your mind besides you, even those from when you were a small babe, the times you would never remember for yourself.”

“Witches,” mutters Talut darkly, his face unhappy, but Jaime ignores him.

“Then that’s where I must go.”

There is outcry; Ignet and Talut both start yelling at Garratt simultaneously, while Norah pleads with Jaime direct and Qyrosh just glowers round at all of them. 

“I’m sorry!” Jaime shouts eventually, breaking through the clamour.  And then, more quietly, “I’m sorry.  But I need answers, and if that’s where they are to be found, that’s where I’ll go.” 

 “We can’t sail you there, Stumps,” says Talut, his voice heavy with regret.  “I won’t risk taking us any further east than Asabhad.”

“And I wouldn’t ask you to,” Jaime agrees quickly. 

“We can try and pick up a cargo for Asabhad in Qarth though,” suggests Norah with an unhappy frown.  “Take you that far.  I’d like to see the Jade Sea again.”

The others nod in ready agreement, and the matter is settled. 

Qyrosh pulls him aside, his last night on board the Swallow.  They’ve been docked in Asabhad for a few days already, giving the crew time to enjoy some shore leave and Jaime himself time to find a ship or caravan travelling east willing to let him join them.  The idea of leaving has got harder and harder, the closer the day has come – the Swallow has been his home for nigh on three years now, is still the only one he knows as either Stumps or Jaime, and it’s people have been his family – and Qyrosh doesn’t make it any easier.

“I wish you would stay with us,” the dangerous little man says with unusual sincerity.

“You know why I can’t.  I need to find answers, and this is the surest way.”

Qyrosh says nothing for a moment, just looks up at him in the moonlight with a torn expression on his face.

“I like you, Stumps,” he says eventually.  “I like your bravery and I like your skill with a blade.  And I respect you.  I wish you well with your quest, but remember you may not like what it is you find at the end of it.”

“What do you mean?”

Qyrosh falters for a moment.  “I spent some time in Westeros, before I joined with Talut,” he hedges eventually.  “More so than any of the others.  The wars there were long and bloody, and I heard tales of horrific deeds performed by men from all sides.  I hope I am wrong.  I hope you find what you are looking for and return to your home a whole and happy man.  But if you do not, or cannot, I hope at least you can live with what you learn, and come back to us instead.”

He says no more, and Jaime knows him well enough to know he’ll get no more by asking, but the anxious concern in the smaller man’s voice stays with him long after he retires to his bunk.

Jaime leaves soon after dawn the next morning.  Most of his goodbyes had been dealt with the previous night, but Ignet and Talut are both there to see him off, all three pretending not to see the tears of the other two, and when he turns back at the end of the wooden dock for one last look, he can just make out Qyrosh up in the nest, watching him go.

The journey from Asabhad to Asshai is long and, on the whole, boring.  The fat-bottomed cog Talut had helped him find a berth on is sluggish in the water and stops off at every port.  Jaime earns his keep as a sell sword of sorts, trailing the merchants whenever they disembark to trade or negotiate and standing with an appropriately menacing expression, sword in hand.  It’s a role he finds surprisingly easy to fulfil, but it’s a lonely existence.  The other travellers keep mostly to themselves, and while no one seems to resent his presence, they don’t exactly welcome it either.  It’s a disagreeable change after the closeness and warmth of the Swallow, and by the time they reach Asshai he’s so relieved to be leaving the ship that he’s almost forgotten his apprehension about what comes next.

He thinks, afterwards, that he must have spent weeks in Asshai, but when he looks back on it there is nothing more than a haze of shadowy impressions that might have just been dreams. 

He remembers the silence, the stifling, cloying flatness that imbues everything away from the markets clustered round the main port.  He remembers wandering through narrow alleys and across cavernous, echoing squares, past buildings that looked like ruins one moment and opulent palaces the next.  He doesn’t remember eating, or sleeping, though he must have done both, and though he is sure he does talk to other people within the city, he can never again picture their faces.  He thinks he remembers ducking into a low-roofed building, seeing a strange golden hand lying on the table before the fire, hearing a woman’s low voice, though not the words she spoke…but it’s all indistinct, distant, like he’s seeing it through a haze sea water and silt.

But what he does remember, for all the rest of his long life, as familiar and clear as his own reflection and vivid in its sharpness, is the scratch of the blanket under his hand, the sickly-sour smell of burning in the air, the look of thoughtful calm on the witch’s face when he had opened his eyes, hours, days later, and she had said, “Hello, Jaime Lannister,” and he realised he remembered: everything.

He goes back to the docks after leaving the witch’s shop.  It’s the only place he can think to go to, and anyway, he’s always found something calming about being near water; he knows that for certain, now.

That’s the hardest part, at first; aligning who he has spent nearly three years living as with the fully formed man he was for a lifetime before that.

Or maybe that’s only the hardest part because it’s the easiest part to think on, and so for a while at least he ignores the rest.

Some parts are easier than maybe they should be.  Joffrey, Tommen, his father… he remembers them in life and in death in the same instant, and so he knows, from the start, that those memories are all he’ll ever have, now.  It’s not like Myrcella, who he had thought of as living for days before he remembered her dead, losing her so absolutely twice in a lifetime working to compound his grief.  He will forever mourn his sons, his father, in different, complicated ways, but it’s a weight he learnt to carry long ago. 

“I can give you what you seek,” the witch had said, dark eyes and pale hair and a strangely child-like voice.  “But I can’t promise that you will like what you find.”

Qyrosh had warned him, too.  Jaime wonders how much the Braavosi swordsman had known, or suspected.  Enough, evidently.  Enough to suspect that his quiet crewmate might once have been a Kingslayer, enough to think – hope - that he might not want to be that man again.  Of course Qyrosh had no way to know that the monster from the stories had been beaten and broken years before; Jaime Lannister in Winterfell was no closer to Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard than Stumps had been to either one of them. 

It is days before he can bring himself to really think of Cersei.  He thinks around her for hours, because there is so much to take in that he can almost fool even himself that he’s not actively avoiding her, he’s just…concentrating on other things. 

He sits and watches the harbour, boats big and small moving around, each one its own little world.  They’d done the same as children, he and Cersei, slipped away from whoever was meant to be minding them and snuck down to Lannisport to see the ships and dream of where they might go.  He spends a long time concentrating on those memories, the very earliest days of his childhood when everything was so easy and simple, just being Jaime and Cersei, not JaimeandCersei against the world because they hadn’t needed to be, back then.

And it helps, actually, to remember Cersei as she was; as a child, yes, but as a young woman, too, when the children were young and her entire world could revolve around them and their own small needs and wants.  She’d been happy, then, as happy as Jaime had ever known her to be, maybe the happiest she could be, and it’s a lot less complicated to mourn for the loss of that joy than it is to deal with the mix of grief and relief for the death of what she became.

He stays there for a long time, not moving, just staring out across the water, completely immune to the noise and movement of the market behind him, lost in thought and memory.  Dusks comes and goes, night falls, lanterns are lit, the cold starts to burrow into his joints.  When he finally stands to move away his bones scream in protest from the inactivity and his face is wet with the tears he hadn’t realised were falling, but his heart feels lighter and freer,  and he thinks he is ready, now, to go home.  

It takes nearly a full year to reach Westeros again.   It should be frustrating - the long, interrupted journey, boat hopping from port to port, scrabbling to find ships willing to offer him passage in exchange for work - but there’s something calming in the steady progress, slowly but surely inching west, waking up every morning just a little bit closer to where he wants to be.  He leaves messages at each port, just in case anyone from the Swallow comes passing through, but mostly he keeps his company and thoughts to himself. 

He thinks about Tyrion and Brienne a lot during that year.  Warily, at first, almost fearfully; he has no memory of their deaths, but it’s been years since he would have even known to care about such news from Westeros.  Brienne at least was safe in Winterfell when he left, but he has no doubt she will have thrown herself between the Starks and any threat they’ve faced since.  And Tyrion had marched with the Dragon Queen’s army, and even if had survived whatever followed their arrival in King’s Landing there are so many other ways he could have died since. 

It’s not until he reaches Volantis again that he finally starts to trust the gossip he hears, and even then it’s nothing concrete.  Queen Daenerys, Mother of Dragons, sits on the Iron Throne, and keeps a dwarf as her Fool, or her Hand, depending on the tale, or possibly she fed her entire council to her dragons and rules alone.   Of Brienne it is even harder to find news; certainly Sansa Stark rules the North, as either Queen or Steward, but no one can tell him anything of her court, and the one time he dares ask after the Lady Knight of Westeros the sell swords he is drinking with laugh in open disbelief.  But Lord Selwyn yet lives, that is consistent enough to be almost a certainty, and that is enough for him to hope that Tarth may provide word of Brienne at least, if not the Lady herself. 

So it is to Tarth he goes.  He tries not to think about what reception awaits him.  That they presume him dead is almost a certainty, that he has been labelled Cersei’s killer equally so.  He is confident Tyrion, at least, will welcome him - they’ve parted on far worse terms in the past and still forgiven one another.  But Brienne…it is better not to think about Brienne.  Once he starts he finds he can’t really think of anything else, and thinking is a hollow defence in the face of all the ways he has wronged her. 

If she lives then he will go to her. Once his own self-loathing might have kept him away – better she never knows he lives, better she lives out her life undisturbed by his presence on even the fringes of it – but he’s a weak man, now. He has to see her, even if it’s just once more, even if it is only to hear her tell him she never wishes to see him again.  He’ll do it, if that’s what she wishes.  He’ll do whatever she asks.

And if he hopes for anything more than that, well.  What he dreams up in the privacy of his own bunk is no one’s business but his own. 

The boat docks in Tarth’s main harbour, a natural inlet sheltered by the cliffs that sweep up and around the bay in both directions.  The harbour town clings to the land on one side of the valley, rows of colourful cottages and the occasional grander building, inns or market halls or septs, while on the other side woodland gives way to stretches of golden sand at the water’s edge.  The water is a hive of constant activity - larger sea-faring vessels are moored in the deeper channels at the centre of the bay while a fleet of smaller sailing and row boats bob around in between them – and when he finally disembarks the land is almost as busy, fishermen and farmers by far outnumbering the more well-dressed merchants.

For a moment Jaime just stops and breaths it all in.  He’s surrounded by snatches of conversation, the Common Tongue falling easily from lips everywhere he turns; he can smell saltwater and fish and horse dung, hear the creaking of boats and the clank of some unseen knight walking past in full plate.  All the things that have meant home, in different places and different guises, finally falling together. 

The late afternoon sun is warm on his neck and the breeze off the sea a pleasant counterpoint as he makes his way through the small town, taking the main road that winds up the sides of the valley towards Evenfall Hall.  It’s a small keep, perched atop the cliff overlooking the harbour on one side and the sea on the other, but a beautiful building in both construction and location.  Grey stone walls rise above the trees that surround it on the inland side, the corners marked by curved towers, and the whole structure dotted with glassed windows that glint in the afternoon sunlight.

Jaime pauses at the crest of the hill that brings the Hall fully into view for the first time and just…stares.  It’s a large, unpretentious building, and though he’s never seen it before – has never so much as set foot on Tarth before this afternoon – there’s something about it that feels both welcoming and familiar.  The nerves that have been twisting in his stomach since he first spotted the Westerosi coast on the horizon are finally, at least temporarily, eased. 

The track runs alongside the towering body of the keep for almost the entire length, and he follows it in the shadow of the tall stone walls until it curves around the far corner to where the main gates stand open.  The courtyard within buzzes with activity; carts unloading, squires running to and fro with packages and crates, dogs underfoot, a small group of men-at-arms laughing and joking in one corner. 

But none of that is what grabs his attention.

Even before he developed a personal interest in the Isle Jaime had heard stories about the beauty of Tarth, with its sapphire waters and emerald forests.   But nothing he had heard, or even seen on his journey up the hillside, had prepared him for the sight that opens up before him now. 

The courtyard is bounded by stone on three sides; the wall and main gate behind him, the long, narrow jut of the keep to his left and the main body of the castle with its curving towers ahead.  But to his right there is nothing but a low stone wall.  Beyond that the land drops away, a series of descending terraces laid out in vibrant gardens that scramble down to the cliff edge, and from there the estuary, visible through the trees, the blue waters sparkling far below nestled in the lee of the gently sweeping hills.  Jaime was raised in the grandeur of Casterly Rock, has gazed unmoved upon the beauty of Highgarden, the stony majesty of Volantis, the ethereal splendour of Asshai; but it is this that stills him, captures his gaze and his breath, and for a moment all he can do is stand there and stare.

Movement on one of the terraces below distracts him, two levels down and at the far end from where he stands, under the walls of the main castle.  She’s little more than a smudged outline at this distance, and it’s been five years and thousands of miles; he is quite literally a different man to the one he once was.  But the shape and form of Brienne of Tarth moving with a sword in her grip is as familiar to him as the back of his remaining hand, etched into the very marrow of his battered soul. 

The vista is completely forgotten.  His entire being, every scrap of focus, is centred on that single distant figure.  He can’t see who she’s with, what she’s doing, but it doesn’t matter.  She’s there, alive and safe and wielding a blade like it’s an extension of her own limb, and for a moment he just basks in the sheer relief that brings.

A low gate transects the stone wall a short distance away, and, after a quick glance around to confirm no one is paying him the slightest attention, he slips through it and down a flight of stone steps into the gardens beyond.  The gravelled path winds between grassed lawns and beds of bright, fragrant flowers, at one point crossing a bubbling stream as a small stone bridge.  He finds a second flight of steps and drops another level, losing all sight of his destination along with the advantage of height.  Twice the path he tries unexpectedly doubles round back on itself, and he’s just starting to curse whoever designed this infernal maze masquerading as a garden when he hears voices and the familiar sound of wood hitting wood ahead.

He follows the sound between two more planted beds and past a shady pool covered in soft green vegetation, until the path twists once, twice more to enter an archway laden with blooming roses and edged by thick hedges, and, on the other side... 

He freezes, still hidden in the shadows of the arch.  The path he’s been following opens out onto a wide grassy lawn, with another stunning view of the estuary and distant headland on one side.  But this time he ignores the scenery completely. 

On the opposite side to the edge of the terrace, in the shelter of a stone wall that retains the level above, is Tyrion, a little older, a little greyer, but still every inch his little brother, sitting at a small table with a cup in front of him and a grin on his face.  

And on the grass before him is Brienne. 

In his memories she is absurdly tall; here, standing mere yards away, he realises his mind has done her a disservice.  Absurdly tall, yes, and every inch of her more magnificent than his memories have ever been able to realise.  She isn’t wearing armour like he had pictured so many times, just breeches and jerkin, but she stands as straight and proud as any knight in full plate.  There are two small children before her and her attention is focused wholly on them, watching, correcting, praising, while they lunge back and forth with wooden swords that fit their grip far better than the tourney sticks he remembers using as a squire. 

Jaime draws back deeper in to the shadows, his gaze greedily drinking in every detail, jumping from the sun on Brienne’s hair to the sound of his brother’s throaty chuckle and then back again.  He finds himself at a loss, finally at the end of the journey that has consumed every waking thought and sleeping dream for so long and suddenly faced with the prospect of what comes next. 

He wants to go to them; he wants to leave, run and hide, because surely this can’t be real, after all this time, surely there’s some trick or trap just waiting for him to spring it.  He’s not ready; he can’t face them.  He wants to touch them, both of them, feel them solid in his grip, and he is paralysed by the indecision, because to move towards one is to move further away from the other, and he can’t bear the prospect of putting any more space between them again.  

How long he would have stayed frozen like that he never knows, because just then Podrick Payne appears on the steps leading from the terrace above, heading down towards Tyrion.  Brienne must see him at the same moment Jaime does; she stops the children with a word and crouches down to their level, whispering with them conspiratorially.  Pod too pauses, exchanging a few words with Tyrion and then turning to cross the lawn towards the huddled trio just as Brienne straightens and grins down at the children. 

Jaime realises what is about to happen all of two seconds before it does.   Pod opens his mouth but before the words can emerge the two girls are racing towards him, shrieking gleefully, swords discarded.  It’s over in seconds; he catches the first girl as she launches towards his midriff and tosses her easily into the air to shrieks of laughter, but the second wraps herself around his knees and then they are all three of them down on the grass in a mess of limbs and laughter.

Pod is the first to regain his feet, albeit hampered by both the children still clamouring around him and his own breathless laughter.  He plucks a child up under each arm and deposits them back at Brienne’s feet with a broad grin and a small bow. 

“Yours, milady?” he says cheekily, and god, the look on her face, the last time Jaime saw such ready mirth and delight it was lit by the fires of the Great Hall at Winterfell and fuelled by no small amount of alcohol during Tyrion’s ridiculous game. 

It’s too much, and all the emotions he’s been trying to wrestle under control finally break through as a strangled, incredulous, delighted laugh.  The sound must carry across the grass because Brienne freezes, straightening up and turning to stare into the shadows that conceal him.  He can’t read the expression on her face, not at this distance, but he recognises the sudden tensing of her shoulders, the automatic adjustment to her stance; alert, searching for the threat, ready to respond to it.

Suddenly glad to have the decision taken out of his hand, Jaime takes one step forward, and then another, moving into the clear light of the afternoon sun. 

There is a beat of absolute silence, broken by the crash of Tyrion’s cup clattering from his grip and falling to the stone flags below. 

“Jaime?” he rasps, and Jaime wrenches his gaze away from Brienne’s pale face to stare at his little brother, who has come three shaky steps towards him and then frozen again.  He’s gazing up at him, shock and disbelief writ large across his face, his mouth opening and closing but completely unable to form words or sounds other than a second, incredulous, “Jaime?”

But before he can say anything more, and before Jaime can find his own voice and formulate some sort of response, Brienne is moving, turning away, like she doesn’t understand how absolutely vital the sight of her face is to him at this moment; he’s gone years without it but now it’s in front of him again the idea of losing it for even a second is unbearable.  He wants to say her name, stop her, but his tongue is too big for his mouth and if Tyrion’s vocabulary has been reduced to a single word, Jaime’s has been wiped altogether.  

Brienne, of course, is having no such difficulties.

“Pod, I need you to take the girls inside now, please,” she says, voice low and firm and not at all like she’s barely gripping onto control of her own emotions by her fingertips in the way that Jaime himself is. 

Pod is already nodding, gathering the two children to him and hustling them towards the steps up to the keep above.  One of them keeps twisting round to try and stare at him some more but Jaime pays her no mind; Tyrion has come forward again to stand a few feet in front of him, and for the first time he doesn’t have to choose which of them he looks at, these two souls he’s been thinking about for as long as he’s known who they were to miss, and now he fills his gaze with them, drinking them in.

“Jaime,” Tyrion croaks one more time, and finally the spell is broken.  Jaime drops to his knees and reaches out to gather his little brother in his arms.  How long they sit like that he never knows.  When they finally break apart Tyrion’s face is red, the front of Jaime’s tunic stained with tears, and his own face is sticky despite not realising he had been crying at all.

“How?” breathes Tyrion, finally expanding on his vocabulary, and later Jaime is sure he will look back on this with smug pride, the day he finally rendered his witty little brother lost for words, but for now he is too happy to care. 

“It is a really, really long story,” he says with a heavy shrug, turning to look up again at Brienne.  She’s still staring down at him with an unreadable expression and he abruptly worries about what other changes the past few years might have wrought, that for the first time in the whole of their acquaintance he can’t guess at least three of her thoughts just from one look at her face. 

He stands, awkward, wanting – needing - to touch her, to ground himself against her in the way he has Tyrion.  But the moment for impulsive embraces has passed and he missed it without even realising; suddenly all he can think about is the last time he saw her, sobbing in the moonlight in Winterfell’s courtyard

It doesn’t matter.  Maybe she can see something of his want on his face, or maybe she just has the same urgent need.  She lurches forwards a step, pauses, and then reaches out to seize his upper arm in a vicelike hold, squeezing slightly as if to convince herself of his own solid presence.  It’s not enough and it’s too much all at once, and it’s all he can do to keep standing there, still as stone, wanting to reach out and touch her in return but terrified that even the slightest movement might send her skittering back again. 

Though maybe he should just be pleased  she’s not coming at him with a sword.

Tyrion saves them from another silence by ushering him forwards, towards the back of the terrace.   Brienne stays close to his other side and so he allows himself to be led, not caring on the destination as long as they are both near.  They don’t take him far, however, just back to the table where Tyrion had been sitting when he arrived.  Tyrion pushes him into a chair, moving easily and freely around the space, obviously comfortable in a way borne of long familiarity, and the chair he climbs into has been modified in a style Jaime recognises of old. Brienne settles on his other side without hesitation, both of them used to sharing this spot, and he absently wonders if the third seat he is currently occupying is usually Pod’s, or some other as yet unseen person. 

“You look awful,” Brienne says quietly.

Jaime shrugs again; he has a feeling he’s going to be doing a lot of that before the day is through.  “I’ve been far worse, believe me.”

“Oddly enough that is not a comfort,” frowns Tyrion, pouring a generous measure of wine from the jug on the table and thrusting the cup into his hands.  “Jaime.  Where have you been?”

“Essos, mainly.  I was east of Qarth before I remembered where I ought to be, and travelling west isn’t cheap.”

Tyrion and Brienne exchange glances and Jaime is struck again by the awareness that time has passed here; last time he saw them sat together they were little more than acquaintances, united by a common ally, and now they are at complete ease in each other’s company, holding a whole conversation without words. 

And the thing is, he knows he isn’t helping, knows that everything he says is only giving rise to more questions; knows, fundamentally, that they deserve apologies and explanations beyond count.  But he’s still so caught up in the pure, visceral thrill of being near them again that he can’t keep his thoughts straight.

Maybe he should ask if they could just sit in silence for a while, let him look, maybe touch, for a time, before his brain has to engage enough to deal with the conversation and explanations that have to follow. 

But maybe that’s too strange a request, even for him.

“And how did you come to be in Qarth?” presses Tyrion. 

“It’s…complicated,” Jaime hedges.  “How much…what do you know?”

“We found Cersei,” says Tyrion, simple and straight. “And your sword.  We knew you’d been there, and we knew you hadn’t come out of the Red Keep above ground, there were too many people, you would have been spotted.  Which left the tunnels.”

“Most of which are still buried deep in rubble and earth.  We assumed you lost in it.”  Brienne’s voice is clipped and short, and for the first time since he saw her standing before him Jaime can’t bring himself to look at her face.  She had mourned him, of course she had mourned him, and now here he sits, alive and well, a mockery to her grief. 

“A lot of that is still hazy,” he says instead, keeping his gaze focused on some distant spot.  “Even after everything else came back, I’ve never really got a grip of those early days.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Tyrion’s brow furrow in confusion and frustration and Brienne frowning at him, looking, of all things, concerned, and he can’t bear it.  He closes his eyes, shutting out their faces for just a moment, swallowing hard and grounding himself.  He owes them this, owes them his explanation for being so completely and brutally absent all this time, owes them absolute honesty if he’s to ever have any hope of deserving a place in their lives again.

It’s just so hard.

He starts slowly, haltingly, stumbling over words and backtracking, clarifying, expanding out of order, but it gets easier the more he talks. 

He thinks of the witch in Asshai; he had never asked how the golden hand came to be in her possession, so very far away from where it was forged, but after he woke it had looked duller, somehow, tarnished and diminished, and when she tossed it into a fire that shouldn’t have been hot enough to even singe it had melted away into nothingness and all he felt was relief.

“It did it’s time, and it’s duty,” she had explained, though he hadn’t voiced a question.  “It bought you here.  It cannot take you back.”

At the time he’d thought she’d meant the monetary value, that he couldn’t bargain his passage west using it’s golden coating. 

Now, sitting in the shade of Tarth with his hook resting easily on the table in front of him, his brother on one side and his…Brienne…on the other, he realises she probably meant something more numinous than that.  Damn witches. 

He tells them about his years as Stumps, his time aboard the Swallow and the friends he found there.  About the slow trickle of memories, the journey to Asshai, and what little he is sure about from his time there.  About the cold, dawning realisation that his ignorance had drawn him so far away from where he wanted to be.

“And I’ve been boat hopping back since,” he finishes with a shrug, as if the last few months had been nothing at all.  “It would have been easier to find work on a Westerosi merchant ship, perhaps, but they seemed to question my capabilities.” He waves his hook wryly for a moment, and then, after a pause, continues. “And, to be honest, I had no idea of what I might be returning to.  Stumps was regarded very differently to Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer.”

“Pardoned Kingslayer,” corrects Brienne flatly.  Jaime looks at her in surprise but it is Tyrion who continues.

“Queen Daenerys issued you with a formal pardon, and made clear the reasons behind your actions to the general populous,” he explains with an odd expression on his face; he looks almost amused, of all things, though Jaime can’t see the joke.

“And that worked?” he snorts, disbelieving.

“Well to be honest, you were missing presumed dead, so most people had more pressing concerns to worry about.”

“I’m surprised she felt the need to say anything at all.  Dead men don’t care what people think of them.”

“And yet, as it turns out, those who love the dead men do,” Tyrion snaps back.  “Are you really complaining about this?”

“Not at all.  It’s good to know that a reputation is as malleable a thing in the new Westeros as it was in the old.”

Tyrion looks briefly indignant and then relaxes into a wry chuckle.  “That, I will concede.  You’ll find it genuine though, at least where it matters.   King’s Landing knows it stands twice over with thanks to you.  The North will always be its own beast, but it will be generations before those who fought in the Long Night are forgotten.  And here, of course.”

Jaime frowns at that; though Tyrion drops it in as almost an afterthought, it feels a little too forced, like he is making a point without saying so.  “On Tarth?  Why should the people here care?”

“I won’t have mistruth and rumour spread here,” says Brienne flatly.  Her voice is steady but her eyes skitter back and forth, avoiding meeting his gaze and, he realises, dodging Tyrion’s as well. 

Tyrion suddenly leaps to his feet and grabs the wine jug.  “We need more wine,” he proclaims, though quite who he is speaking to Jaime isn’t certain, especially since he can hear liquid still sloshing about in the pitcher.  But he pays Tyrion little heed as he bustles away up the steps; his focus is entirely on Brienne, sitting opposite and twisting her hands together anxiously on the table top.  He wants to reach out, still her twitching palms with his own, but in all the years he’s known her there were only ever a few short weeks when he could have been certain of such an intrusion being welcome, and they are as far from that now as they ever were before.

Instead he says softly “Brienne?”, the first time he’s said her name out loud in years, gods he’s missed the shape of it on his tongue, and that finally draws her gaze again.  She falters and then smiles, a small, sweet thing, genuine for all that it is an unfamiliar expression on this dearly familiar face. 

“It is so good to see you,” she says all in a rush, the words pouring out now she has found them.  “Truly, Jaime.  I’ve…you’ve been missed, you must know that.”

“I missed you too.  Even before I knew what it was I had lost, I knew I was missing it.”

Her smile widens at that and for a moment they just look at each other.  Jaime tracks his eyes over her, noting small changes, welcoming familiar sights he had forgotten.  Her hair is longer and looser, her face a little more lined, her eyes still the same deep blue.  The edge of a faded pink scar pokes out from under her tunic near her neck and it makes him smile to see it, that old familiar friend. 

She appears to be doing the same to him, her gaze roving over his face and then moving down, resting momentarily on his hook where it is strapped to his wrist, revealed by the shorter sleeves of his shirt; he remembers dimly that he’d have hidden it, once, under layers of cloth regardless of the heat of the day, and that she would have disapproved that he did.  She has always been so much wiser than him. 

There’s still something she’s not saying though, and he’s just rallying himself to make a comment on the beauty of Tarth – because apparently after five years apart that’s the sort of asinine small talk she reduces him to – when she takes another leap into conversation. 

“Tyrion is trying to give us some privacy, I think,” she begins hesitantly, and that’s another new one; he’s seen her naive, he’s seen her wrong-footed and confused, but he’s never seen her falter so damnably. 

He nods his head at that, because five years may pass, regimes may topple and rise, he may lose and regain every part of his past and himself and more besides, and his little brother with still brandish conversational subtlety like a blunt weapon.  Brienne grins at the look on his face and he realises abruptly that she now knows this about his bother too, that at some point in the intervening time she has learnt to read Tyrion’s foibles, and to laugh at them as well. 

Maybe Tyrion left so that she can tell him they are married. 

He needs a moment to process that image.

“You…you saw us with the children, when you arrived,” Brienne continues, eyes once again fixed firmly on the table in front of him rather than on his face; this time, however, he is relieved, because it means she won’t see whatever expression passes over his face as his brain resets and tries to follow this new thread.

“I…yes, yes I did.  Pod took them inside.”

Maybe she married Pod.   Maybe that’s what she’s trying to find the words for, she married Pod and they’re producing a new generation of the most honourable, loyal knights to ever grace the Kingdoms. 

Her eyes are back on his face again now, staring at him intently, like she’s willing him to make some intuitive leap and he’s disappointing her.

“They’re my daughters,” she says, and he’s already nodding, because that isn’t a surprise, with or without Pod; in hindsight he knew it from the moment he saw them, not just in colour and look but the ease and familiarity of their interactions.  If he hadn’t been so distracted by the sight of Brienne herself, and Tyrion just beyond, he’d have made the link immediately.

“Congratulations?” he tries, because she’s still looking at him like there’s something he’s just not seeing, but apparently that’s not right at all because she just closes her eyes in frustration and blushes. 

“They’re your daughters as well,” she finally forces out, cheeks aflame and refusing to meet his gaze.  “Yours and mine.  Ours.”

Oh.

Oh.

Chapter Text

It’s like the first moment he saw Brienne and Tyrion all over again.  He’s torn between so many separate and opposing instincts that he can’t follow a single thought through; still frozen in the moment of Brienne saying ours like the word tasted unfamiliar on her tongue.

Brienne keeps speaking, her voice taking on a hurried, desperate edge, like she fears what he may say if she allows silence to fall.

“They were born at Winterfell.   We came back to Tarth after the second…no, third, Summer Fair.  My father is only getting older and I wanted them to know him, and the island.  They don’t…”

“What are their names?” Jaime interrupts the flow of words unthinkingly.

“Oh.” And somehow Brienne’s blush deepens, like Jaime might be judging her impolite oversight rather than focusing solely and completely on her answer.   “Arta is the older.  Alwyn is about half an hour younger.”

He soundlessly shapes his mouth around the words, trying them on his lips.  Brienne’s watching him, and the expression on her face is another bloody one he doesn’t recognise, can’t spare the mental capacity to start interpreting. 

“I thought it would be a boy, when I was carrying,” she continues when he fails to say anything more, and some distant part of himself it struck by the irony, that for maybe the first time ever he is the one who is silent and she is the one who can’t seem to stop talking. “And I thought…that is, I spoke with your brother, and he…Tyrion suggested Arthur, as an option.  Then it turned out one boy was two girls, so, Arta.  It’s a favourite story of hers, actually, that she was named for the man who knighted her fa…”

He jerks uncontrollably at that and she cuts herself off, eyeing him for a moment before carrying on.

“Well, who knighted you.  And was Alwyn for my father.  The Queen – Queen Daenerys, that is – she formally recognised them as my heirs, so they could be Tarths, not Storms.”

Her nervous patter trails off and still all he can do is stare at her, trying to wrap his head around everything he’s hearing.   Father, she’d been about to say, like that wasn’t a word that has broken and burnt him so many times before.

“They know about me, then?”

Brienne blinks at him.  “They know…?  Yes, Jaime, of course they know.  Not…not everything, they’re only five, but they know who you were – who you are – and they know stories about you,  Tyrion’s and mine.  I’ve never…I don’t lie to them.  They’ve not had many questions, yet, the wars left too many children without fathers, I think it must almost seem normal to them, but anything they’ve wanted to know, I’ve told them.  Or asked Tyrion.”

He nods slowly, and she’s still staring at him, waiting for some sort of reaction, but everything’s gone blank.  He’s trying to picture their faces, but he’d barely spared the anonymous children a second glance, too focused on the adults they were with, discounting them completely. 

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Brienne says hesitantly.  “If you need some time, to think about…everything, I would understand, I can go…”

“No,” he interrupts her, yanked back to awareness with a thump.  “No, sorry, don’t go, please.  I’m fine.  I just.  Needed a moment.  Gods, Brienne.”

She smiles at him at that, tremulous.  “It’s alright.  I remember…well, it was a shock, the idea of one baby.  And then two…”

Which just raises yet more questions - when, who, how – but before he can decide which one he needs answered first she speaks again.

“Do you…would you like to meet them?”

Her voice is hesitant, unsure, and he can’t tell if she’s worried that he wants to or worried that he doesn’t.  But it’s the easiest question he been asked since he arrived, and yet he finds his voice has deserted him again at the prospect.  He nods, a short, abortive gesture that must somehow still convey everything he’s not able to say, because Brienne smiles at him, gentle and kind in a way he’s never known her be before – has motherhood taught her that, he wonders, or peace?  Or maybe a bit of both - and rises to lead him inside.

“But…” he starts, and she pauses to look at him.  “Just…just as Jaime, for now, not…not anything else.  Please.”

Brienne is frowning, and there at last is an expression he recognises; like he’s said something to disappoint her. 

“What do you mean?”

“I just…. I’d like to meet them and know them, first, without putting pressure on them to react to me a certain way.  Please.”  He’s not sure he’s ever actually pleaded with her about anything before and the desperation tastes like ash in his mouth, but he can’t…he just can’t.

“Oh,” Brienne’s still frowning and he knows she doesn’t understand – neither does he really, frankly - but she nods acquiescence, and he follows her up the steps towards the keep with his heart hammering in his breast.

She leads him into the keep, up a sweeping flight of stone stairs and down a long corridor.  Everything is open and light, large windows on the outfacing walls with breath-taking views over the estuary mouth, the surrounding country side, and out onto the straits.  But Jaime barely registers any of it.  His mind is focused only on the line of Brienne’s back as she walks just ahead of him, and he’s grateful she doesn’t try to make any further conversation; he’s not sure he can concentrate on talking as well as walking at this moment.

They reach a door standing ajar, and Jaime can just make out the sound of voices from within; a low, undeterminable rumble, followed by a child’s laughter.  He swallows around the sudden lump in his throat and looks desperately towards Brienne, but she just smiles at him and pushes the door open, walking inside and leaving it open behind her so that the choice to follow her through or turn and flee is completely his own. 

He steps inside.

Brienne has already crossed the room and crouched on the floor near the hearth where the two girls are sitting surrounded by a sea of little wooden figurines.  Neither child looks up when he enters, but Pod, sitting with them, does; he scrambles to his feet and comes to meet him in the doorway.

“Ser Jaime,” he says, courteous.  “It is…it is good to see you again, Ser.”

Jaime refocuses his attention onto the younger knight – and he’s pleased about that, some distant part of himself realises, he is ridiculously pleased to see the green young squire grown so well.   

“It is good to see you as well, Ser Podrick,” he replies in turn, allowing his lips to curl just slightly at the title.  “And offer you a very belated congratulations on your elevation.”

Pod’s ears redden with pleasure – so not completely self-composed after all, and Jaime is even gladder for the familiarity – and steps back.  Their short exchange has obviously allowed Brienne enough time to say whatever she needed to her daughters – their daughters, gods that’s going to take some getting used to – because she’s gesturing him closer now, standing and bringing the children to their feet with her. 

“Jaime,” she begins, a strange quiver in her voice, “this is Arta, and Alwyn.”

She indicates to each girl in turn as she says their names and Jaime forces himself to focus, concentrate on the details and not allow his mind to swamp with the incredulity that has been threatening to overwhelm him since he arrived.  These are his children, whether they know it or not, and they are at first glance as identical as their own reflections; he means to know them, as absolutely as he can, and the first part of that is not mistaking one for the other.  

And there are differences.  Alwyn’s braid is coming undone at the ends, giving her a frazzled look, and Arta has a dark smudge of something just under her left ear.  They are of a height – tall, he thinks, for their age, though it’s been more than a decade since he spent any time with children this young, so who’s he to know, really – but Arta holds herself with more assurance, while Alwyn hovers slightly behind.  Shier, maybe, or quieter at least, happy to let her bolder sister lead.  He’s got time to work out which. 

“Girls,” Brienne continues, oblivious to his thoughts.  “This is Jaime,”

She doesn’t say anything more, doesn’t offer reason or explanation for his presence.  They both stare up at him, Arta openly curious where Alwyn seems more distracted, her gaze shifting back and forth between her mother and this new person, appraising. 

It’s on him, Jaime suddenly realises with a sense of rising panic.  He needs to say something, start conversation somehow, and he has absolutely no idea what it is you say to five year olds.  It was easy, before, with Myrcella and Tommen and even Joffrey when he was small.  They’d known him all their lives, their adored, easily biddable uncle.  You didn’t have to make conversation with children when they loved you like that; it just happened around them, bubbling out of familiarity and unquestioned love.  He’s no idea if it’s even possible to create that, outside of those bonds.

“Hello,” he tries, weakly, and he can feel Tyrion’s derisive snort, even if he can’t hear or see it. The two tiny faces continue to stare up at him with identical looks of child-like disdain – why did their mother interrupt their game for this, he can see them thinking – and in desperation he looks across at the mass of little wooden men arranged all over the floor in front of the fireplace. 

Looks once, then again, and stares.

“Is that the Battle of Whispering Wood?” he gapes, turning, betrayed, from Brienne – who hadn’t been in the room before he arrived, of course – to Pod, who most definitely had.

Pod at least has the good grace to look embarrassed.  “We did the Siege of Pyke last year,” he says hurriedly, as if that makes it any better, but whatever Jaime is about to say next is cut off by a small voice that pipes up with,

“Do you know the Battle of Whispering Wood?  Were you there?”

Jaime looks down again; it is Arta who had spoken, but both girls are staring up at him with renewed interest. 

He glances at Brienne, floundering, unsure what she might what him to say in response, unsure what he wants to say.  Talk about a loaded question.   But Brienne just smiles at him, that same strange soft smile that he doesn’t recognise but likes more and more each time he sees it, and moves away to sit with Pod and Tyrion at the small table on the other side of the room.  The message is clear: he’s on his own.

“I was,” he answers at last – I don’t lie to them, Brienne had said, and that seems as good a place to start as any.  “I mean.  Yes.  I was there.”

“Have we got the Karstarks right?  The map and Maester Barnet’s book don’t fit,” Alwyn says, studying him intently; not shy then, just quiet.  She gestures to the large book open on the settle behind her, a faded map besides it.

“’Wyn checks the book and I lay out the men,” Arta explains, crouching to rearrange some of the figures slightly.  “And Pod helps,” she adds with a brief acknowledging look in his direction before turning to stare back up at Jaime.  “But he wasn’t there.  And we’ve been struggling with this one.”

Jaime frowns slightly, looking from the map to the clusters of figures arranged over chalk outlines sketched onto the flagstones. 

“Your map’s not quite right,” he deduces quickly.  “It’s got the river in the wrong place to the north, that’s why you’re struggling with the Karstarks.  Here,”

He takes up a piece of chalk and adjusts their sketch slightly.

“That’s better,” breathes Alwyn, clambering onto the settle to peer down at the new arrangement.  “Here, Arta,”

And she starts to direct her sister in moving the figures into new positions, occasionally calling on Jaime’s input, until they all three are satisfied with the result. 

“Right,” says Arta decisively, and both girls turn eager faces towards him.  “The book says the Blackfish moved first, is that right?”

And Jaime suddenly realises what is about to happen; they have laid out the armies in their starting positions, and now these children, his daughters, want to move them through the motions of the battle.  He’s saved from having to react to that prospect by Brienne, who finally reinserts herself into proceedings. 

“Not tonight,” she interjects firmly.  “Bed.”

“But…” starts Arta imploringly, looking meaningfully in Jaime’s direction.

“Jaime will be here tomorrow,” Brienne says firmly, with all the confidence of someone who isn’t personally, intimately aware of how very not true that statement has turned out to be in the past.  She obviously misses the implication, busy herding her children up and through what is obviously a familiar routine of questions and goodnights to all present, but Tyrion definitely doesn’t.  His eyes stay on Jaime all through the twin’s departure, even as they come over to hug and kiss their uncle goodnight, one on each cheek, and offer Jaime slightly shier farewells.

“You’ll help us, in the morning?” Arta demands of him from the doorway, twisting round from under Brienne’s firm grip.

And what answer can he possibly give but yes?

There’s a short silence after Brienne leaves with a hand firmly on each child’s shoulder.  Pod had slipped out after them, though Jaime isn’t certain if that was a normal part of the bedtime routine or just his subtle way of attempting to give the brothers some time alone.

“Well?” Tyrion asks, his mouth smiling but his eyes serious as he pours a second cup of wine and holds it out.  Jaime takes it and sinks into the chair Brienne has just vacated.  He takes three large gulps and sets it firmly back on the table, blinking over at his brother and letting some of the shock finally take hold.

“I don’t…” he begins, then pauses and shakes his head.  “I mean.  How?!”

Tyrion snorts into his own cup.  “I’m going to give you a by on that, just this once.  And only because I’ve missed you, a bit.”

And underneath the all-encompassing shock Jaime allows himself just a brief moment to marvel at the fact that he’s sitting here, with his brother, being gently mocked like its five years or more ago and nothing has really changed at all.

“They seem…well?” Jaime tries next.  There’s too much – it’s all too much – there are too many questions he wants to ask and he can’t work out which answers he’s most desperate for first. 

Tyrion takes pity on him, thank the gods.  “They are the most ridiculously endearing pair of children, which I’m sure they must have inherited from their mother.  Though they both of them can be as pig-headed and stubborn as mules, so you’re obviously in there somewhere as well.  Arta wants to be a knight; Alwyn has her eye on a maester’s chain.”

“You know them well, then,” Jaime says, hoarse, his eyes never leaving his brother’s face.

Tyrion tries and fails at nonchalance.  “Turns out we Lannisters did quite a good job at wiping ourselves out, one way or the other.  For a while I thought I had no family left at all, and for all that I used to mock our father when he railed on the importance of blood it is a lonely place to be, the very last of your kin.”

“I’m sorry,” Jaime says again – and he is, sorrier than he knows how to show or express.

But Tyrion just shakes his head.  “It is what it is.  Or was, rather.  And Brienne is a far better person than any Lannister deserves; even when they were still in the North she would write to me of their doings, and since they came to Tarth we’ve been welcome as often as the queen will spare me.  Though,” he adds, rueful, “That might in part be because she wants to make sure I’m not undoing all her good work with Pod, I suppose.”

There’s too much to unravel there, too many questions raised for every one that is answered.   “And Brienne is…how has she been?”

Tyrion falters; a damming response in his verbose little brother.  “I didn’t know her well, before,” he tempers.  “But I know she is happy to be back on Tarth, and to be with her father, though I think she misses Sansa.”

Jaime frowns.  There are things his brother isn’t saying – or won’t say – but maybe he’s not the right person to ask anyway. 

As if on cue the door opens and Brienne enters; he leaps to his feet almost on instinct and this time he sees Tyrion’s smirk, even if she doesn’t.

“I’m sorry to disturb,” she falters, hesitant.  “I just…I’ve spoken to the maids, Jaime, and they’re preparing a room for you.”

“Thank you,” he begins, wrong-footed – had she heard him talking to Tyrion about her? Was she displeased at the idea of them gossiping? – but before he can offer her a chair, a drink, she is already bidding them goodnight and turning to leave, and then it’s just he and Tyrion again, his little brother still smirking up at him over the rim of his own cup, and why, exactly, had he ever missed him to begin with?

He wakes suddenly and abruptly the next morning, and it takes him a moment to remember where he is and all that passed the previous day.  He and Tyrion had stayed up late, talking into the small hours, but he still feels more refreshed than he has since leaving the Swallow, and probably since even before then.  The early morning light spills into the chambers casting a golden glow around the room, and the bed is warm and comfortable, so he lingers in it, indulgent, until a tap at the door announces the arrival of a maid, who enters carrying a bundle of cloth.

“Lady Brienne thought you might like some fresh clothes, Ser, and I’m to take your others for washing if you wish,” she says directly, staring at him with shameless curiosity.  He nods permission and thanks and she scurries away clutching the stained garments he has crossed a continent in, casting one last look over her shoulder as she leaves. 

It is an absurd luxury to pull on the clean fresh clothes.  Tyrion arrives to collect him for breakfast just as he finishes dressing, and when Jaime opens to door to his knock his little brother’s face breaks out in an absurd smile at the sight of him, as if he hadn’t be entirely certain he hadn’t dreamt the entire thing. 

The rest of the household are already seated and eating when they arrive in the Great Hall.  It hits him all over again, then, the utter insanity of everything that has happened in the last day, while he watches his daughters – his daughters, gods, will he ever get used to that? – eat and chatter.   Pod greets him with a smile, but when he looks to Brienne she shifts awkwardly and avoids his gaze.   It stings, which is ridiculous, but then Arta pulls him into conversation about their plans for the day and he forgets it entirely. 

“Would you like to come?” she asks him baldly, apropos of nothing.

“Come…where?” he blinks.

“To the beach,” says Alwyn.

“Uncle Tyrion promised he’d take us,” supplies Arta, glancing at her uncle as if daring him to disagree.  “But you can come as well.  If you want.”

And Jaime does want, can’t think of anything else he wants more.  He agrees gladly and gets a smile of warm approval from Brienne for his trouble, which turns out to be just as potent now as it ever was before.  It really is a beautiful morning.

It’s only when they’re in the yard, mounting the assembled horses, that he realises Brienne isn’t joining them. 

“She’s acting Evenstar while her father’s away,” says Pod with a shrug when he notes her absence out loud. “It keeps her busier than normal.”

And that’s all he will say on the matter.  He sees them off with a wave and a smile, but Jaime, glancing back, sees him frown as he turns to head back into the keep.

“You should be flattered,” his brother says, grinning and oblivious.  “Pod takes his job very seriously; he must trust you’re able to protect me from the wilds of Tarth for a day at least.”

“He’s with you now, then?” asks Jaime, curious; there had been too much else to take in the previous evening for him to give the young knight much thought.

“For three years now.  An altogether more reliable and less mercenary bodyguard than Bronn ever was.”

“And you need one, still?” Jaime eyes his brother sharply.

Tyrion shrugs easily. “I’m Hand to the Queen, and a Lannister besides.  The last Lannister, allegedly.  There are still people on both sides with good reason to bear me ill will, it’s only sensible to take precautions.  And there was a…dicey period…a few years back, but things are mostly steady now.  As steady as King’s Landing can be, anyway.”

“But you’re happy?” presses Jaime; somewhere in everything that has happened, he’s come to realise that that’s the only question that really matters.

“I am,” Tyrion promises with uncharacteristic sincerity.  “Daenerys is a fair queen, most of the time, and a just one; and even, occasionally, a kind one, which is a rare trait in royalty, in my experience.  She and Queen Sansa between them keep the rest of the Kingdoms in line with far less bloodshed than we were used to previously.”

They pass the rest of the ride in easy conversation, Tyrion filling his brother in on all that has passed in King’s Landing and the Westerlands during his absence.  His tales are a mix of names both familiar and new, but Jaime’s favourite part is how frequently Brienne and the twins crop up; incidental asides in the overall tales, so obviously steeped into every aspect of Tyrion’s life that their presence is assumed, accepted, unremarkable, for all that it is welcome. 

The cove they arrive at is small, sheltered by cliffs that rise sharply on either side, and the golden curve of the sand and the deep blue of the surf almost completely hidden on the seawards side by the narrow mouth of the bay.  The waves are gentle and there’s no undertow; it reminds Jaime of the sort of places he used to seek out around Casterly Rock, secret safe places he could take his little brother without fear of either natural dangers or unwanted eyes. 

His willingness to swim delights the twins, though Alwyn asks, with grave interest, why he doesn’t just go round in circles.  Jaime laughs at her perplexity and demonstrates the adapted stroke he had perfected while aboard the Swallow.  Tyrion insists on keeping his feet dry, and so the three of them splash around in the shallows until Alwyn drags her uncle away to look at rock pools, leaving Arta to try and teach Jaime how to surf in the incoming waves, shooting her little body up onto the shingle then running back out into the water to repeat the process.

It’s exactly like Tyrion had said; they are both of them endearing children, completely at ease with their little world and full of the confidence that comes from having been well-loved and knowing it.  They accept Jaime’s presence without comment or question, any early shyness quickly overcome by his genuine interest in their games and stories, and it is a glorious day - the sun warm on his skin, the sand fine between his toes, and the company the best he has known in years. 

It’s nearing dusk by the time they return to Evenfall, sandy and sun-kissed.  Brienne meets them in the stable yard and the girls clamour for her attention, launching into an intricate retelling of the day’s activities that keeps up all through dinner and, from the sound of it, out the hall and up the stairs as Pod ushers them towards bed. 

He worries, at first, that Brienne will find some excuse to leave as well, even though they’ve barely spoken since the previous evening, but to his relief she follows him and Tyrion to the solar, even if she does listen to their conversation more than she contributes. 

Maybe Tyrion picks up on something, or maybe he is just genuinely tired after their late night and long day – it’s always hard to tell, with him – but he takes his leave before long, and then it’s just the two of them, awkwardly avoiding each other’s gaze.

And it’s…it’s stupid, is the thing, Jaime knows how stupid it is.  He’s spent years working towards this, being able to see and speak to her, and now he’s finally sitting across from her near enough to reach out and touch if he only had the nerve, and the words just aren’t there.  It’s easy, mostly, with Tyrion; for all their ups and downs they are bound by their shared blood and a lifetime of fraternal love.  Jaime has done terrible, unforgivable things, but so has Tyrion, and so they balance, somehow. 

And the last time he saw Tyrion it was to say goodbye with a warm embrace and fond, albeit witty, words of farewell, before his brother rode south with the Dragon Queen and the rest of her retinue.  He hadn’t abandoned him in a torrent of emotion in the cold dark North.  Every time he looks at her he remembers her freezing hands clutching his face and the desperate begging in her voice, and he hates himself all over again, that he was the one to do that to her.

Qyrosh and the Fire Witch had both warned him he would not like all that he remembered, but somehow he suspects neither of them meant this. 

He can’t face any more of this quiet awkwardness, so completely foreign to their relationship at any point in their shared history, but he’s no idea what he can say that will get them past it.

“Did you enjoy your day?” she interrupts his thoughts to ask him quietly, still not quite meeting his gaze and still sounding so wholly unlike herself that he wants to scream in frustration.

“They’re amazing,” he says honestly, and that’s all it takes; Brienne finally smiles at him, wide and free and actually meeting his gaze, and while it’s not an expression he recognises on her from before, it’s one that suits her.  He’d like to see it more often. 

“They’re spoilt rotten, for which I mostly blame your brother,” she counters, a hint of challenge in her tone. 

“You’re no better at taking praise then, I see,” snaps Jaime before he can catch himself.

“And you still let your mouth run ahead of your brain,” Brienne retorts, but she’s grinning, eyes dancing with mirth, and the unease he’s been feeling all day at her stilted formality and ducked gaze evaporates like mist. 

“There you are,” he breathes before he can catch himself, thus proving her point absolutely.

Her face turns blotchy, abashed, but he ploughs ahead, determined not to lose this ground now he’s gained it. 

“Tell me about them,” he implores, letting his sincerity bleed into his voice.  “Everything.  Please.”

And she does.  It’s not enough, it will never be enough, no volume of words can recreate memories of all the moments he has missed, more children whose lives have been marked more by his absence than presence, but it’s more than he could have hoped for, and he tells her as much.

Brienne reddens but holds her ground, confident in this at least, keeping her eyes on him.  “There have been times…often, when one of them has done something, or said something, and I…I would wish you were there for it.  I think I’ve remembered most of them.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, hoarse, hollow empty words that will never be enough and are all he has to offer.  “More than I know how to say.  I wish I’d been there, I wish I’d known…”

But Brienne cuts him off, shaking her head, voice sharp and eyes flashing.  “No.  Please.  Don’t say things you can’t know to be true.”

He frowns at that, mulish, but grants her the reprieve.  “I can still be sorry, though,” he counters.  “For missing so much.  And leaving you to face it all alone.”

“I wasn’t alone,” she argues automatically, but he just looks at her, one eyebrow raised, and she settles back, ruffling her feathers.  “Though there were things that would have been easier if you had been there.”  And it’s what he wanted to hear, except not at all, not really, because gods has he ever done anything other than make her life harder than it ought to be?

“You said they were born at Winterfell,” he says, carefully not asking the question he desperately wants the answer to; he’d been there, for Joff and Myrcella and Tommen, had at least been able to do that much for Cersei, and he still remembers her pain and fear for all that she seemed to forget it as soon as each babe was placed in her arms. 

“They were,” Brienne confirms with a soft smile.  “Pod was with me; he was the first to hold them, after me.  He knew more about babies than I did, to start with.”

“I’m glad you had him there,”

“I don’t know what I’d have done without him,” she says simply.  “Or Sansa.  I thought I might have to return here, when I realised, but she offered me the choice of staying.  It was easier, then, to be where people knew and I didn’t have to explain.”

He flinches at that, though there’s no reproach in her voice. 

“You should know…” she continues hesitantly after a short pause.  “People here, on Tarth…I’ve never made secret of who their father is.  There would have been no point, and I wasn’t…I wasn’t ashamed.  I didn’t want them to be ashamed.   And Tyrion visits.  People will realise, quickly, if they haven’t already.”

“I don’t want to hide or lie,” he assures her quickly, thoughts going unbidden to the children for whom he’d done nothing but hide and lie, all their lives. 

“So what now?” she asks, his ever-pragmatic Brienne. 

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” he retorts, because she’s built a life without him and now here he is, superfluous to it in every way. 

“It’s your choice,” she insists, and he hears the things she isn’t saying, all the wrong decisions he’s made weighing down on them both.

“I want to be able to get to know them, properly,” he confesses, quiet and steady.  “And let them get to know me.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” she says, as if it’s as simple as that, and maybe, for once, it is.

The following morning he’s not actually looking for Pod but he finds him anyway, loitering in the corridor outside his chambers.

“Ser Jaime,” the younger knight says, apparently caught off guard despite the fact that his only reason for being there at all must have been to seek Jaime out.

“Ser Podrick.”

“I was hoping to speak to you alone.  Lord Tyrion is working, and Ser Brienne is with the twins in the training yard; they won’t miss us.”

“Of course,” says Jaime steadily, opening his door and gesturing Pod to go inside ahead of him.   The boy is jumpy, his eyes flickering from Jaime’s face to the room and back again, and his hand keeps clenching and relaxing around his sword hilt; Jaime allows himself a brief moment to wonder if the boy realises he has picked up this habit from his mentor.

“I wanted to return this to you,” Pod blurts out the moment Jaime has pushed the door closed and turned to face him.  He’s already got his sword belt loosened and now he holds the scabbard and blade out before him – and seriously, what is it about him that makes people keep trying to thrust Valeryian steel at him?  He knows Pod wasn’t in that tent in the Riverlands, could not possibly have seen or heard the conversation between himself and Brienne, and yet he still manages to echo her uncannily.    “It’s yours by rights, I said so when Ser Brienne gave it to me, but we all thought you were dead, and she and Lord Tyrion were…insistent.  But now you’re not.  So.” 

Jaime gapes at him, genuinely thrown. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Pod,” he scowls.  “I won’t take it.” 

Pod frowns, unhappy.  “No, Ser, I can’t keep it, it isn’t right.”

“It feels right to me,” counters Jaime, the words unfolding naturally for all that he hasn’t thought about it even slightly until now; it is right.  “If Tyrion and Ser Brienne have told me even the half of it then I owe you more thanks than I can ever repay.  Let me have this, at least.”

But Pod is shaking his head, alarmed and frustrated.  “No, Ser Jaime, please.  Don’t.  I didn’t…that is, I can’t accept that from you.  Nothing that I’ve done has been with you in mind.”

There’s a strange look on his face as he speaks and a number of things suddenly fall into place in Jaime’s mind.  Pod had been a stranger when he’d sent him off with Brienne, a favour for his brother, but even then he’d recognised that idealistic belief in the good of the world, and been amused by it too.  Except the young squire had kept it, somehow, through all the horrors he’d seen, and he gives his loyalty more absolutely than anyone else Jaime knows bar one.

“Oh,” he breathes, and then again, “Oh.  You’re…you’re angry with me.  Furious.”

Pod is beet red now, eyes fixed firmly on the floor besides him.  “Not so much now, as I was,” he hedges.  “But yes.  I was…angry is as good a word as any, I suppose.”

There’s a short pause, during which Pod is obviously wrestling with himself over something and Jaime desperately tries to think of something, anything he might say that will ease the younger man’s anguish, and then Pod bursts out, “You just can’t know what it was like, when you left.”

And oh, ok, yes, they are doing this.  Jaime fumbles for a chair and lowers himself into in, gesturing for Pod to do the same.  He wishes there was a glass of wine nearby; he knows he needs to hear this, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Pod leans forward in his seat, arms resting on his knees and eyes locked on Jaime’s face now, speaking with an urgency Jaime has never before heard from the mild-mannered squire. 

“It was…it was awful, really.  You know what she’s like, how proud she is.  Your leaving like that, it devastated her.  And then she had to tell Lady Sansa, and the rest of the Northmen, and she still defended you, again and again, even after she’d stood up for you and you left her anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Jaime interjects, his voice croaking.  He’d known, on some level, that his leaving, and the manner of it, was up there with the very worst of his betrayals, but hearing it laid out so bluntly is nothing short of shattering.  “I needed…I had to go, I had to try…”

But Pod cuts him off, shaking his head firmly and ploughing on himself.  “I know you had your reasons, Ser Brienne spoke of them often enough.  It didn’t matter.  You left, and then we got word that you’d been killed, and it…it was awful.  She wouldn’t speak to me about it, she wouldn’t speak to anyone.  Just spent half her time in the training yard and the rest with Lady Sansa.  She would barely eat, I’ve no idea if she slept, and if I tried to talk to her about it she just…stopped.  I couldn’t do anything except keep putting plates of food in front of her and letting her beat me around the yard.”

Pod’s voice is quietly, bleakly desperate, and Jaime can see the strain in every line of his body, the weight of worry and powerlessness that he had carried only barely muted by the time since.

“I’m sorry,” Jaime says again, helpless.  “I wish…there’s so many things I wish I’d done differently.  Does she know?”

Pod shakes his head firmly.  “No.  And she doesn’t ever need to.  I’d do it again, twice over, and more, and it still wouldn’t be as much as she deserves.  I didn’t do it for her thanks, and I definitely didn’t do it for yours.  So you see, Ser, I can’t keep the sword; it’s never felt right that I have it at all, but it’s what Tyrion and Ser Brienne wanted, and I always planned to return it to Arta, or Alwyn if she showed an interest, once they were grown.  I was just…looking after it, in the meantime.”

Jaime sits in silence for a moment, processing, trying to find the words he needs.  “You’re a good man, Ser Podrick, and a better knight than I ever hoped to be.  I don’t even know where to start in making amends for all that I’ve done, but I intend to try.  Keep the sword.  Keep using it to defend my brother and teach my children; give it a legacy to be proud of.   Please.”

A pause, a silence, and then Pod nods, just once, his hands moving to buckle the belt at his waist, and Jaime sighs in silent relief. 

“Just…for seven’s sake, please change the bloody name.”

The days pass quickly.  The twins take it upon themselves to show him every square inch of Evenfall and its environs; the quiet peaceful wooded slopes on the inland aspect and the exposed grasslands that border the clifftops seawards.  The cove they visited on the first day is an obvious favourite, but there are any number of similar stretches of shore that tumble down without warning from the higher ground.  In the opposite direction the river meanders inland from the harbour town at the estuary mouth and spills into fields of marshy reeds.  On days when Tyrion is kept inside by the letters that the ravens bring him almost daily and Brienne is committed to her own responsibilities, Pod and the children drag him down to the reed beds where a flat bottomed wooden skiff awaits.

“We started trying to map all the channels last year,” Arta had explained as they all piled into the boat on the first such trip, Pod taking up the oar and Alwyn settling herself into the bow with a large scrap of parchment clutched in her fists.  “But then there were a couple of big storms and high tides and now they’ve all changed, so we have to start all over again.”

Neither child had looked particularly disappointed about this and even Pod had a playful, very un-knightly gleam in his eye, and had been another ridiculously golden day, the birds and the sound of the small waves lapping against their boat the only noise other than their own conversation.   The reeds were twice the height of even Jaime, sitting in the prow to counterbalance Pod in the stern, and they were surrounded on all sides by a dense forest of green, with only the blue of the sky above and the water below.  Pod was his usual good-natured self on those trips; he’s said his piece and moved on from it with typical, devastating honesty, and Jaime was slowly getting the impression that every day he stayed he redeemed himself a little more in the other man’s eyes.

He finally meets Lord Selwyn some ten days after his arrival, when the Evenstar returned from the business that had kept him on the far side of the isle for a fortnight.  The man is a giant, of a height with his daughter but broader, with an impressive beard that didn’t serve to hide his broad smile when his granddaughters launched themselves at him in greeting.  He was generally a quiet, reserved man, however; he bid Jaime welcome but made no further overtures, though some evenings Jaime can feel the older man’s eyes on him, watching, considering. 

Brienne is harder.  Despite his best efforts he can’t seem to recapture the open honesty of that first night between them again, and though she talks and laughs and smiles far more than he ever knew her to before there is a barrier there, a reticence in her every dealing with him that he doesn’t notice when she is with Pod or Tyrion.  Her father’s return should by rights free up her time a little, but if anything she seems even busier than before, and some days he doesn’t even see her until the evening meal. 

Tyrion is the opposite; his brother is as he has ever been, except more so, somehow.  He is happier than Jaime has ever known him, fielding ravens from across the Kingdoms, wrangling from a distance what he can and putting off what he can’t with a dab hand.

“I was expecting to be away for at least several weeks,” he explains when Jaime questions it, sitting on the terrace in the fading sun with a cup of wine each, as has become their custom, the evening air rich with scent from the surrounding flowerbeds.  “There were rumours, about a man fitting your description in Essos.  I discussed it with Brienne on our last visit, and we agreed it warranted looking into.  So I settled things in King’s Landing as best I could, and Pod and I came back to plan our first move.  We weren’t particularly expecting you to anticipate us quite so neatly.”

“And yet you still seem rather surprised to see me.  Speechless, if I recall,” Jaime needles with a grin, and his brother scowls.

“Well we weren’t exactly expecting you to walk in through the front gate.  And it is one thing to give credence to rumour; Brienne at least was convinced nothing would come of it.”

“I’m hurt at her lack of faith,” Jaime quips lightly, but Tyrion frowns at him.

“You shouldn’t say that,” he says, uncharacteristically grave.  “That woman has more faith in you than any Lannister deserves; you won’t regain it with japes.”

So he isn’t the only one to have noticed her reticence, then.  He just wishes he could figure out what to do about it.

But it can’t last forever, this glorious golden summer.  Tyrion finds him in the gardens one afternoon and drags him inside despite the twin’s indignant complaints, to where Brienne is waiting in the library.

“Pod and I must return to King’s Landing next week,” Tyrion says bluntly.  “I can’t put it off any longer.  We need to talk about what comes next.”

“Who knows, so far?” Jaime asks, genuinely curious; everyone he really cares about is already on the island, and he hasn’t had cause to wonder about the world beyond its shores.

“The Queens both knew of the rumours from Essos; I had not thought it necessary to update them on more…recent developments…just yet.  Queen Daenerys at least I will inform in person.”

“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to send a raven?  No one likes to be the bearer of bad news, and you know what they say about unwelcome messengers.”

“She officially pardoned you,” interjects Brienne sharply, the tone her voice takes whenever he’s too disparaging about himself.  “You have nothing to fear from her.”

“It’s one thing to pardon a dead man; quite another to be presented with the living, breathing ghost.”

“I am not worried about the Queen’s response,” says Tyrion firmly before Brienne can argue further.  “That’s not the point at hand.  I will speak with the Queen and we will send word to Winterfell and Casterly Rock, and everyone who needs to know will know.  The question is, Jaime, what do you want to do?”

He blinks at his brother.

“You can come with us to King’s Landing,” Tyrion elaborates.  “Or go on to Casterly Rock, if you wanted, it’s yours by rights anyway.”

He’s not sure which option sounds worse; King’s Landing, the home of his greatest sins and betrayals and the very worst moments of a mostly terrible life, or Casterly Rock, that dim and cavernous place he hasn’t set foot in for over a decade, that is so very far away from where he is now, hundreds of miles and an ocean between him and anyone he gives a damn about. 

Maybe something of that shows on his face, because his salvation comes from Brienne, just as it has for years now.

“Or you can stay here,” she says, low and gentle.  “If you wanted to.”

He feels like a drowning man thrown a rope, and he seizes it with everything he has.  “Here, please.  I want to stay here.”

Some dim, distant part of himself hopes he doesn’t sound as desperate as he thinks he does, but it doesn’t matter; Brienne is smiling at him and even Tyrion looks pleased, as if this were the outcome he was hoping for as well. 

He dreads it all the same, the departure of his brother and even Pod.  They’ve reached a steady sort of truce, since Pod’s confession over his failed attempt to return the sword, and Jaime thinks – hopes – that they’ll be able to have a sounder friendship because of it.  Before, Pod was too green and deferential, and Jaime himself barely spared a thought for the awkward squire other than to be glad Brienne wasn’t completely alone in her travels.  But they both understand the other a little better now, and Jaime is surprised by his own pleasure in that. 

So he’ll miss them, yes, both of them, but it’s more than that.  Despite her offer that he stay on Tarth there’s still something not right with Brienne.  She is scrupulously, diligently polite to him, and it is awful.  It’s a little easier with Pod and Tyrion around to act as a buffer; whatever reticence she has with him is lessened in their presence, and evaporates altogether with the twins, but the few times it is just the two of them, alone, she falls into an awful stilted mix of silence and small talk that he has never known from her before.  Even at the start, when she had been his keeper and he had done his level best to keep up an endless commentary of  every lewd and foul thought to pass through his head she had been more receptive to him than now. 

He doesn’t ask her about it.  She’s entitled to her privacy, from him more than anyone, and really he deserves it.  For all that she seems happy, here and now, and for all that she so blatantly loves her children, he left her to face it all alone, and she has every right to begrudge him that. 

But at the same time he needs – wants – to fix it.  It’s almost impossible to speak to her alone, however, and even if he managed to catch her thus he has no idea what he would say.

He tries Pod instead. 

“I wanted to talk to you about Brienne,” Jaime says by way of greeting when he manages to corner Pod alone in the armoury late one afternoon a few days before he and Tyrion are due to depart for King’s Landing.

“I won’t break her confidence,” the young knight says instantly, looking uncertain but also genuinely apologetic, like he wants to help, if only he could, so Jaime just shakes his head, easy and reassuring.

“And I wouldn’t want you to.  I just…she’s not right, when I’m around.  And I thought, you’re probably the person who knows her best, and I need to know it’s not just me imagining things.”

Pod pauses for a moment, obviously considering how much or little he wants to say.  “I’ve…noticed,” he allows at last.  “Yes.  You’re not imaging it.”

It’s almost a relief, in a strange way, to have it confirmed, to know that things haven’t changed so absolutely that he’s reading her completely wrong. 

“And you know why?” Jaime guesses.

Pod half shrugs, an awkward, aborted movement that Jaime thinks is more to do with his own uncertainty than fear of saying more than he ought.  “I have…guesses,” he compromises.  “She’s not said anything to me about it.”

“And what are your guesses?”

Pod hesitates again, aligning his thoughts.  “She…you hurt her, leaving.  I’m not sure anyone else could have done it so thoroughly.  And she’s a knight; pain teaches us not to make the same mistakes again.”

It’s a blow he deserves and expects, but it is devastating all the same. 

“I don’t know how to fix that,” he croaks, hoarse and honest, and Pod shakes his head in sympathy.

“I’m not sure you can, not with anything other than time.”

“You think that will help?”

“It did before, didn’t it?”

And he has a point, but Jaime’s not sure he can face another six years of this.  Or longer, even, because last time they were starting from scratch but this time he’s already behind, the gulf he’s created stretched between them, an unassailable chasm, and she’s standing on the other side, distant and remote.

Pod must see some of his despair, because he smiles, gentle and kind, and gods when did he grow up so wise?  “It’s not as bad as all that.  She asked you to stay, and not just for Arta and Alwyn’s sake.  Just…whatever you do decide, you have to mean it.  I’m not sure she could endure it again.”

And that’s the worst part, Brienne of Tarth who survived her adolescence and camps full of soldiers and the Hound and years of trudging criss-cross through the war-ravaged Seven Kingdoms, not to mention an entire army of fucking dead people…she faced all of that and came out the other side intact and entire, and it is him, Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer, who is the one with the power to break her.

They wave Pod and Tyrion off on one of Tarth’s rare overcast days and the drizzle outside the keep well-suits the mood within.  The twins are antsy and irritable with the world and with each other, and all in all it is nothing short of a relief when dinner is done and they retreat, still moping, to their room. 

The following day dawns bright and clear again, the bad weather blown away overnight, but when Jaime enters the Great Hall to break his fast he finds Brienne alone, no sign of either of their children.

“I was thinking,” Jaime begins once they’re both seated, trying and almost certainly failing to keep the uncertainty he feels out of his voice.  “I might take the girls out to the reed beds today.  There’s still a lot of room left on their map, and I thought it might take their minds off Pod and Tyrion leaving.”

Brienne is looking at him, an odd expression on her face that he can’t read – and he hates that, hates that even after all these weeks there’s still so much of her he doesn’t know any more, and he can’t tell how much of that is due to how he has changed and how much is due to her.

“I can handle the skiffs easily enough, even one handed,” he continues hurriedly, trying to sound reassuring rather than desperate.  “But we could take a squire if you’d prefer …”

But Brienne is shaking her head, confusion warring with the small smile curling at the corners of her mouth.  “No, Jaime, that’s fine, you don’t need to take anyone with you.  You don’t…” She pauses, faltering for a moment, looking frustrated, though whether with herself or with him Jaime isn’t entirely sure.  “You don’t need to ask.  They’re your daughters, too.  You don’t need my permission to spend time with them.” 

He settles more deeply into the daily life on Tarth, without his brother’s company to act as a buffer and a distraction.  He has no idea what the wider population of Evenfall make of him or his ongoing residency, but they mostly treat him with an affable brusqueness that slowly warms into more genuine friendliness.  It helps that he is, more often than not, accompanied by one if not both of his children, who seem to be familiar with everyone they meet and are alternately welcomed and scolded by them all, their presence simultaneously an indulgence and a nuisance.

Gradually he starts to find his place.  He learns names, slowly but steadily, takes time to pass a few words with whichever man-at-arms is on duty on any given evening, laughs and jokes with Arta and Alwyn’s favourite cook when they cross paths in the yard and she teases him on the absence of his usual shadows.  There is one delightful afternoon spent in the company of the aging knight who once trained a young Brienne; Jaime discovers his presence on the island quite by accident, a passing comment of Lord Selwyn’s, and seeks the man out at his next opportunity.  Ser Goodwin is old, now, and his sight fading, but his mind is still sharp, and he takes as much pleasure in hearing the tales of his former student’s deeds from an unbiased observer – because of course Brienne hasn’t shared the whole story with any degree of accuracy when it comes to her own accomplishments - as Jaime does in hearing of her early days with a blade.

The twins accept his continued presence without comment, confident of his daily involvement in their lives and wholly unphased by it.  They never seem curious about who he is or where he might have come from, and he occasionally wonders what they think of him – if they think anything at all – until a conversation Arta starts out of nowhere, one morning when they were walking down to the harbour, ostensibly to run an errand on behalf of Lord Selwyn and in reality to keep the children out from under Brienne’s feet for a few hours.

“You’re Uncle Tyrion’s brother,” his eldest daughter pipes up, though what that has to do with their previous conversation on the merits of crab versus mussels for dinner Jaime has no idea.

“Yes,” he agrees, nonplussed.              

“Our da was Uncle Tyrion’s brother too,” Alwyn’s voice is quieter, her eyes scrutinising his as they both await his answer.

“Yes,” Jaime says again, more slowly, suddenly wishing they were back at the Keep, that Brienne was nearby, because they haven’t talked about this, not since the first day he arrived, and he has no idea what she would want him do, how she wants him to handle this. 

 “Do you have any more questions?” he asks after a short silence, looking from one to the other, searching their faces for some hint of their feelings on the matter.

“Not really,” Arta shrugs.  “We sort of figured it out ourselves anyway.” And then she took off at a run to scout the path ahead, seeking the first view of the harbour town that will greet them at the next bend. 

Jaime turns to Alwyn, who remained by his side, always quieter and more placid than her sister.  She simply looks up at him with a thoughtful expression and keeps walking, but after a few paces she takes his hand, swinging their linked arms between them and stealing occasional glances up at him with a small smile on her face. 

They don’t discuss it again, though he’d tells Brienne as soon as they return that evening, and nothing really changes; they still call him Jaime, usually, but sometimes, especially when one of them is tired or upset or excited, he gets the occasional Da, like the island smallfolk use, like Brienne uses with Lord Selwyn when she’s particularly frustrated with him, and he hordes each and every one of them, until there have been so many he finally loses track.

 But for all that things are, objectively, as good as they have ever been in his very not-good life, and although he is, on a daily basis, content, and assured of staying as such, moment to moment to moment, things still aren’t right.

And that is due to Brienne.

There are times when he thinks they’re making progress, when she seeks out his company with a question or even a whole conversation.  She asks his help in training the young recruits she and Arya Stark of all people apparently share between them, and when he gestures to his hook in protest she simply glares pointedly at his legs, and the conversation somehow ends with him spending time each morning going through every footwork drill he can remember and a few more he’s looked up since.  She is always willing to talk to him about the children, tell him stories from their earliest days, and, gradually, discuss more current concerns; does Alwyn rely on her sister too much socially, is Arta’s reading not where it should be? 

And it is Brienne who tells him of Cersei’s fate, when he finally rallies the courage to ask.

“Tyrion had her cremated, quietly,” she explains with aching gentleness.  “And her ashes spread where the Sept of Baelor stood.  He said that was where the children were.”

He nods once, eyes closed against the tears that still manage to leak through.  When he finally opens them she’s watching him with sorrow.

“She was going to burn King’s Landing,” he says eventually, in answer to the question neither she nor Tyrion have ever asked.  “When I found her.  She was so happy to see me, she started raving about the wildfire and it was…it was Aerys, all over again.  I had to stop here.  There was no other way.”

“Oh Jaime,” Brienne sighs with quiet sadness.  “I’m sorry it had to be you.”

He swallows hard, once, and shakes his head.

“I’m not.  She would never have let herself be taken alive, and at least this way I know it was quick.  I know she didn’t suffer.  Maybe she deserved worse, but I couldn’t have borne it.  And I helped her too far down that path to not take some responsibility for it, at the end.”

She shakes her head slightly at that but doesn’t try and argue her point at least. 

“I…I would understand,” she says hesitantly, “If you ever wanted to talk about her, or your children, you…you can.  If it would help.  Tyrion never does, but that’s for his sake, not mine.   He can’t bear to speak of them, but I think you can’t bear not to.”

Her kindness is as sharp as the blade she wears at her waist, clean and brutal in its accuracy, and what’s worse is she’s right.   And so he tells her, a little, snippets and anecdotes about the children at least, and whenever he does she listens and nods and asks gentle questions of her own, and that’s just another kindness he’s never going to be able to repay.

So yes.  Brienne is kind, and Brienne is dutiful, and Brienne is there, every day, to speak to and spend time with, even joke and jape with on occasion. 

But mostly, Brienne is polite, and it is awful.

Chapter Text

He wonders, sometimes, in the weeks after Tyrion and Pod’s departure, if it would have been any easier if he’d left Winterfell immediately after that first night they’d spent together, if they’d parted on quiet, hungover terms, regretful, maybe, but without the month of peculiar domesticity that followed.  Would the strange quiet politeness be more tolerable if he didn’t know what it was to wake up besides her each morning and return to a shared bed each night; the intimacy not just of sex, but of the conversation and companionship found in those grey hours.   

He wonders if Brienne thinks about it as much as he does. 

Still, for all that he hates their civil status quo, he doesn’t actually mean to break it. 

They’ve had a good day, is the thing, like most of the days before it – because the days are good, when you take each one in isolation and ignore the overriding lack in the whole.  Riding and swimming and then an evening spent arranging the twins’ soldiers into a new conformation; a book on Dothraki history had arrived from King’s Landing two days previous and so they’ve moved on to some of the ancient Horse Lord’s early conquests, testing both the limits of Alwyn’s map reading and his own memories of the geography of Essos.  

And now it’s just him and Brienne, enjoying the late evening sun on the terrace where Tyrion was sitting the day he first arrived, and it’s all so peaceful and perfect that of course he has to go and stick his foot firmly in it. 

They usually stick to safe topics during these rare moments when it’s just the two of them; the children, mostly, or how training is going with the squires and her latest batch of recruits fresh in from Storm’s End.  It’s peaceful and tranquil and domestic, a life he’d never thought would be his to lead, and for all that he loathes the careful distance Brienne maintains between them he is still about as happy as he has ever been.

But tonight he’s been cleaning and oiling his hook while they talk, the routine care that he doesn’t apply to it nearly as often as he ought, and she’d watched him for a while with thoughtful eyes before finally asking the story behind it.  He hasn’t spoken with her much about his time on the Swallow; with Tyrion, yes, because he’d asked and because he knew his brother would enjoy hearing about the mishmash crew.  But it had always felt a little too close to another betrayal, to regale Brienne with tales of the people he had found and come to love during the time she had spent alone, raising the bastard children he had left her with. 

But she seems unaffectedly interested, when she asks, and so he tells her a little about Talut and Norah, and the fight on the harbour side in Tyrosh, which leads naturally onto the rest of the crew, Ignet’s dry wit and Qyrosh’s swordsmanship and Garrett’s outlandish tales, and he can’t help but smile when he speaks of his friends. 

“Do you miss them?” Brienne asks when he’s finished, and there’s no accusation there, no condemnation for the life he lead without her, just a curiosity that sounds nothing but genuine. 

“Yes and no,” he replies, because she deserves his honesty in this as in all things.  “They were good people; it was a good way to live.  But I wasn’t…Stumps wasn’t real, not really.  Being him, I always knew things weren’t complete.  There was so much about myself I didn’t know or understand.  I don’t think it’s possible to be truly happy that way, missing so much of yourself.”

It’s something he’s grappled with for months now, trying to reconcile the two sides of himself; he’s not Stumps, anymore, Stumps wasn’t ever really anyone to be, but neither is he completely the Jaime Lannister he was before.  He thinks he might be someone that Jaime Lannister would have wanted to be, though, and that’s as much as he can hope for.

Brienne nods like she understands what he means, even though he’s still not sure he understands it himself.  But she’s smiling at him, and she laughed at all the points in his tales when he thought she would, and all evening she has generally looked as relaxed as she ever does in his company, and he’s just thinking yes, finally, at last we’re getting somewhere, when she goes and opens her mouth.

 “But you’re not missing anything, now.  You’re Jaime again.  Do you think you’ll go back to them?”

She says it with such devastating nonchalance that he is rendered momentarily breathless by the sheer force of the punch hitting his chest.  Something of the numbing horror he feels must show on his face because she carries on hurriedly, “Not now, of course.  But when the girls are a bit older.  I imagine they’ll want to leave Tarth themselves at some point, at least for a while.  I won’t resent them that; I did it.”

It takes conscious effort to stop himself from physically recoiling, flinching from the wound she’s inflicted.  She’s staring at him, brow furrowed, obviously confused by his reaction, and it’s awful.  They haven’t spoken about the future since the day she offered him the choice to stay, and he’s been assuming – stupid, stupid – that it was a more permanent arrangement than she’d obviously intended.  But then he’s been so busy concentrating on being happy in the day to day that he hasn’t given himself chance to dwell on anything beyond that.   

“I…I hadn’t really thought about it,” he hedges, avoiding her gaze for fear of what she might see there. 

The silence stretches uncomfortably, until he finally can’t take it any longer and lifts his head to look at her.

She’s looking at him with such a mix of expressions – confusion, frustration, and something else, something more – that his heart feels, suddenly, incongruously, lighter.  It is not the face of someone who is about to throw him from her home.

“You don’t have to go,” she says at last, slowly, carefully, like she is trying to connect puzzle pieces that just aren’t quite fitting.  “I just…I assumed you’d want to, some day.”

Which…isn’t what he’d been expecting at all.  Pod had counselled time, give her time, and that’s what he’s been doing, as much time and space as he can bear to let her readjust to his presence in her life again and prove that he intends to keep it that way, this time.   And if it’s not enough, if he can’t heal those hurts and overcome the damage he’s wrought, then he’d at least hoped they could build something; companionship and mutual respect, contentment even if not the blistering happiness he’d once briefly thought them capable of. 

But apparently that’s not right at all. 

“Do you…would you like me to go?” he asks, because he has to, has to know, can’t go on with it any longer if it is just a delusion he’s been fooling himself with. 

“No,” says Brienne, firm and without hesitation, and he can breathe easy again.  “No, I don’t want that.  But I don’t want you to feel tied here, either.   No more than you are already, with Arta and Alwyn, I mean.  I know you love them.  But they’ll be grown, one day, and you deserve a life around them.”

She’s looking at him with the same earnest compassion that had been on her face when she’d suggested he stay in Winterfell after the Long Night, all those years ago, and at the time he’d been so flush on the high of them that he’d taken it as a declaration of her feelings; now, looking back, he sees it differently.  She’d been offering him an out, a safe haven, a path for him that didn’t involve marching South with an army intent on his sister’s doom, and she’s trying to do the same thing again now, offer him what she thinks he wants without any regard for her own desires, without realising how cruelly her intended kindness wounds him, too.

He wrestles with it for a moment, searching for a way to explain.  But then, maybe it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

“When I was still with the Swallow, when my mind first started waking up again…” he starts, keeping his eyes fixed on her face, “the very first things I remembered, the fundamentals of who I am…I knew that my name was Jaime, that I had a brother named Tyrion, and that I loved Ser Brienne of Tarth, the Lady Knight.”

But his next words crumble on his tongue, because her face has frozen, caught somewhere between that awful earnest smile and stark, naked shock, and oh, suddenly things are starting to make a great deal more cold sense. 

“You didn’t know,” he breaths slowly, incredulous.  “All this time.  How…you really didn’t know?”

“You never said,” Brienne is blushing furiously, staring a hole into the table top.

“I always knew that you loved me, always.  I just…I assumed you knew that I loved you too, in the same way.”

He gazes at her, helpless, because all this time he’s been working off those basic truths and if they’re wrong then he’s wrong too, and this is what he’s been missing, all this time, why things have always felt just a little off between them.

“No,” she says, softly.  “No, I never did.”

She’s staring at him now, wonder and doubt in equal measure, and so he rushes on, trying to find the words that will make her believe, that will make up for all this time, all these long years during which she has apparently never known.  He’s been playing the long game, but she’s not even been on the board.

“I love you.  I’ve loved you for years, years and years.  Since Riverrun, at least.  Maybe even Harrenhal.  I realised it that night before the battle at Winterfell, but it wasn’t new, by then, I’d felt it for so long I just hadn’t needed to put a name to it before.”

“But you still left,”

I wasn’t enough for you to stay she doesn’t say, but he hears it anyway, and this is it, this is the thing that he’s been trying to fix for so long, but now that they’re here he’s not sure he can.

“I had to,” he tries to explain, desperate.  “It was never a case of wanting.  But I had to…I had to at least try.  If I’d stayed and Cersei had died alone I’d always have wondered and doubted and maybe even resented.  Even then I’m not sure I believed she’d go as far as she tried to.  I will always, always regret leaving you, regret that I wasn’t here for you these last years, but I can’t regret that I was there, that I saw what she had become and that I was the one who stopped her.”

“You could have told me.  Explained.  I would have…I like to think I would have understood.  Better the truth than…than that.”

She’s angry now, a fury that has never been more righteous, and he is helpless before it.

“I thought…I thought it might be easier, for you, if you hated me,” he tries, meagre words and such weak reasoning, for all that he remembers thinking it so clever at the time.  “And I wanted to be sure you wouldn’t follow.”

She stares at him, shock and rage.  “It was the cruellest thing anyone has ever done to me,” she says, blunt, and he can only hang his head at that because she’s right, of course.  Other men mocked her and tricked her and took her for a fool, her entire life marked out by spites large and small, but he…he earnt her trust and her friendship and respect, and matched it with his own in return, and only when he’d taken everything she had to give him did he let his devastating blow fly. 

“I will leave, if you wish me gone,” he offers, because his absence is all he’s got left to give her now, though the very thought of leaving is a cold grip around his heart. 

But she shakes her head without hesitation.  “I’ve never wanted that.  And I wouldn’t keep you from your children.  It would break their hearts as well as yours.”

But what about your heart? he can’t ask. 

“Won’t people talk?” he says instead.  “If I stay, indefinitely.”

Brienne frowns at him. “I’ve been raising your bastard children as my heirs for five years,” she points out drily.  “I think it’s a little late to worry about that.”

The first time she’s ever alluded to any of the censure he knows she must have faced from some quarters, and he hates himself all over again.  But she’s made it clear she doesn’t want his apologies.

“So what now?” he asks.  It’s got to be her choice, he owes her that much, but they can’t return to the strange, careful dance that was the status quo of the past few weeks. 

She looks at him steadily, considering.

“We were friends, before,” she says and that’s… that’s not how he remembers it, actually; captor and captive, first, and then captives together, carer and cared-for, uneasy allies in a common goal, and then a kingdom and a war lay between them for years, until they finally came together again in a rush of terror and adrenaline and fucking.  Nowhere in there can he remember anything that could be construed as something as simple as friendship.  

But then he never was one for friends, even as a child, he had Cersei and Tyrion and they left no room for anyone else, and though later there were squires and fellow knights and officers there was always something between them, surname and status and his own determined indifference.  So maybe somewhere in all of it he and Brienne had been friends, and he just hadn’t known what that meant well enough to recognise it.

“We were,” he agrees, for want of anything better 

“I’d like it if we could be again,” she offers, frank, her eyes steady on his face.  “I’ve missed that.  I’ve missed you.”

He nods agreement; it’s more honesty than he deserves, and even now she asks so little of him for herself, how can he refuse it?  But at the same time he has to ask, because he wouldn’t be Jaime Lannister if he wasn’t constantly pushing his luck just a step too far.

“And more than that?”

He sees her throat catch, her face fall, knows her answer even before she speaks.  It doesn’t make it any easier to bear.

“I don’t know if I can,” she says.  “Even knowing…it’s too much, Jaime.  I’m sorry.”

And that might be the worst part; she is sorry, he can see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice.   His own disappointment is a knife point, hot and sharp, but he tries not to let it show.  She’s already given him more than he has ever deserved - a home, his children - but then that’s him all over, always wanting more. 

He hurt her, utterly and completely, but she hadn’t known he loved her, and maybe it actually makes it worse that he does, that he loved her and yet still could turn and walk away.  The distance she keeps between them now, it’s not just a punishment; it’s self-defence.

“You don’t trust me,” he realises, shaken, because she had trusted him from the other side of a war, when all the world was telling her not to and judging her for her choice.  The very worst of his multitude of sins hadn’t been enough to break her belief in him, that truce they had forged in shared blood and bathwater.  He’s done so many things that he regrets; of course it would be one of the few he does not that sits between them now.

But, “No,” she agrees, softly, sadly.  “I don’t.  I can’t.  Not in this.”

He’s angry, irrationally, even though he promised himself he never would be, at her apathy, so unlike the Brienne he knows.  Knew.  “And yet you let me stay, you let me get close to Arta and Alwyn, let them get close to me, all this time thinking I’d just up and disappear one day.”

“They’re your children; I knew you could never leave them.” 

And there’s something more, something she’s not saying, lurking guiltily behind her eyes, but he can’t think on that now.

“Not just them.  I could never leave you, either.”

But it’s a lie of course, he knows it even as the words are leaving his mouth, because he did, only the once compared to all the times she left him, but with such devastating thoroughness that she doesn’t even deign his reply with more than an rightfully incredulous look.

“Sorry,” he says, automatic and inadequate. 

She shakes her head, frowning, and he can see her choosing to ignore it, set it aside and move on.  He wonders how many other times she’s done the same thing and he hasn’t noticed, or hadn’t even been there to it happen.

“There were times, especially in that first year, when I would think that I could have imagined that whole month in Winterfell, if not for the twins,” she says, soft and sad and defeated, everything she isn’t.  “But I never regretted it.  Not them, not you, not any of it.  But it hurt, Jaime.  It still hurts.  And I can’t…I just can’t.”

The blows land sharp and insistent, fresh pain with every word, and even when she falls silent he can still hear them echoing, the quiet heavy with the weight of everything that lies between them.

“So what now?” she asks eventually, breaking the silence that he can’t bring himself to shatter by parroting his own words back at him.  Her voice is steady and even and so he tries to match her in that at least; he won’t force her to bear anything more of his than she already has to.

“Friends, as you say,” he insists.  “I’ll keep training your men, and be a father to our children.  A home, a family, and a purpose; how can a man want for anything more?”

She frowns at him, such a familiar mix of concern and disappointment and apprehension that he feels suddenly homesick for that long trudge through the Riverlands when everything had been so much simpler, for all that the world was falling apart around them. 

The worst part is, it works.  They settle into a routine that is devastating in its simple pleasures.  Brienne still maintains a careful distance between them, and he does his utmost to respect her desires on that front, but their honesty has at least bought them a new ease with each other.  They see one another clearly at last, for maybe the first time in all the years they’ve spent together and apart.  If the pain of Brienne’s words that evening are the price he must pay for this new accord between them then it’s one Jaime pays – not gladly, no, but willingly.    

They breakfast together, most mornings, and then Jaime heads to the yard to spend time working with the younger squires and new recruits while Brienne sees to the running of the island with her father in his solar and the girls study with the maester.  Their afternoons vary; sometimes Brienne joins him in the yard with the men, or takes Arta and Alwyn out on their ponies, to ride to this village or that holding, gentle early steps into the roles that await them as they grow.  Other days Jaime will steal his children away, to play or explore, or for teachings of his own, subjects that Brienne would never have been exposed to, the lessons Jaime Lannister learnt at Tywin’s hand and that Stumps picked up anew from gentler exposure to Talut and Qyrosh.

The evenings are their own.  Brienne had long ago reserved the hour before dinner as her time with the twins, and now Jaime joins them more often than not.  They usually start on the grassy terrace where he first saw them, wooden swords in hand, and it’s a game, mostly, one Jaime hopes will never be anything more, hopes beyond all else that his girls never need to call upon the skills they’re learning now outside of fairs and tourneys.  But if the worst should happen, if this new peace should fail and the kingdoms descend into chaos once again, then he and Brienne will see their children well equipped to face it. 

They never face each other though, even with the flimsy practice swords.  They’d sparred a few times, in Winterfell, but he has his hook, now, and years spent building on Qyrosh’s early training with it.  He wants to – gods how he wants to – but he doesn’t dare suggest it, too wary of coming up against one of the hundreds of tiny lines that Brienne has drawn between them; this far, and no further.  Sometimes he catches her watching him as he trains with the men and he sees that same want in her eyes, but she never says anything, and the stalemate continues.

After dinner is Jaime’s time with his children.  They usually retreat to the solar with the army of little wooden soldiers, or sometimes a book or some other game, and it’s peaceful, and warm, and safe, and everything he thought he’d never have.  And then, once they’ve herded the children to bed, dealt with their last minute questions and concerns and just-one-more-things …Then, it’s just him and Brienne, occasionally joined by her father.  They sit out on the terrace, or in front of the fire if the weather is inclement, and they never linger for more than a single cup of wine, but for the duration of that cup at least they are wholly themselves, at ease in the comfort of one another’s company.

And if some nights Jaime drinks as slowly as he can, dragging it out sip by sip…well, Brienne never calls him on it, and he reads no more into it than that.

It’s on one such evening that she and Selwyn discuss the issue of Watersmeet.  From their conversation Jaime gathers that it is a small hamlet further inland from Evenfall, sitting within dense woodland at the point where two separate rivers from the mountains finally come together and join for the final journey on to the sea.  As the high spring waters have dropped the inhabitants have sent reports of possible damage to one of the bridges that cross the main body of water.  There are few such crossings below the mountains and so Brienne and Lord Selwyn both give the reports due attention, but the round trip is a full day’s ride, and neither of them can spare so long away at short notice.

Jaime listens to their debate thoughtfully for a time, and then, when there is a pause in the conversation, offers quietly, “I could go.”

They both turn to look at him; Selwyn with surprised consideration, Brienne already smiling. 

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course not.  I can go, assess the damage, and report back.”

“Do you know anything about bridge building?” Selwyn asks, not with scorn but genuinely curious.

“Not specifically bridges,” Jaime admits.  “But my father believed understanding how something was built was an important part of knowing how to break it down when needed; he had the stonemasons and carpenters at Casterly Rock teach me the basics.”

He’d enjoyed the learning, too, despite it being so wholly disparate to sword play; the physicality of the subject and the lack of large books full of dense text had both appealed, and so the lessons had stuck better than most.   He spends the rest of the evening deep in conversation with Lord Selwyn, quizzing him on Tarth’s architectural history, dredging up knowledge he’d forgotten ever learning and peripherally aware throughout of the fond smile that is dancing around the corners of Brienne’s lips.  It’s only later, back in his own chambers and startling at the late hour, that he realises she must have silently refilled their cups at some point during their discussion, quietly breaking her unspoken rule.    

They set the date of his visit for three days hence, and send ravens ahead to advise the village to expect him.  In the end Jaime doesn’t travel alone; when the conversation with Selwyn carries over into dinner the following day Alwyn listens with undisguised interest, and promptly asks to join him, spending the intervening days reading through a thick and dull-looking tomb on stonework from the Targaryen Dynasty in preparation. 

They set off early, Jaime mounted with Alwyn seated before him; as yet his daughters’ are both better on water than horseback, and for a long ride it is both quicker and easier to ride double.   

“Did Arta not want to come?” he asks as they set out.

“No,” says Alwyn with unconcerned certainty and it’s a jolt because Jaime had forgotten that, the uncomplicated conviction that came with knowing beyond all shadow of a doubt how the other was feeling.  Looking back he’s not sure when he and Cersei had lost it.  He doesn’t often recognise his own twinship in his daughters, thank the gods, but this reminder of it isn’t an altogether uncomfortable one. 

The ride passes otherwise uneventfully, and they arrive at Watersmeet by midday.  The villagers are friendly and welcoming, eager to show off their unique topography and happy to indulge the flood of questions Alwyn directs at them.  It was good to bring her, Jaime thinks, keeping half an ear on her cheerful chattering while he scrutinises the bridge in question.  Her presence relaxes the smallfolk, makes his own discussions easier and far less formal than they might have been otherwise, but it’s good for her, too, to have to speak for herself rather than relying on her bolder sister to ask the questions she wants answers to. 

They’re both in high spirits when they finally leave; Alwyn chattering away about all the things she has learnt – not stonework, in the end, her attention had been wholly captivated by the waterwheel and small mill just upstream of the bridge – and Jaime warmly satisfied both with his own usefulness and his insights regarding Alwyn.  He finds himself looking forward discussing both with Brienne later.

The drizzle that had started as they left Watersmeet is almost unnoticeable under the shelter of the trees, but as they leave the woods behind them it starts to fall thick and heavy.  Jaime curses the dense trees that had masked the impending weather when they set out from the village and pulls Alwyn back against his chest, sheltering her as much as he can.  It’s no more than an inconvenience, at first, but as they crest the top of the first hill their horse slips on the sodden path and manages no more than a few more stumbled steps before Jaime pulls her up and dismounts to assess the problem.

It’s immediately obvious; her front left shoe is gone, lying several paces behind them in the mere of mud that was once the path, leaving torn hoof and broken nails behind and comprehensively laming the mare.  Jaime closes his eyes and allows himself a moment of silent, internal cursing, before smoothing out his features and turning to face his daughter.

“I’ll have to walk, Alwyn,” he explains, showing her the damage and looping the reins over his arm.  “She can’t bear the extra weight like this.”

“Which way?” asks Alwyn miserably, shoulders hunched against the driving weather.

Jaime pauses, weighing up returning to the relative shelter of the woodland they’ve just left against the exposed path ahead.  But they’re past the halfway mark towards Evenfall, now, and Watersmeet was too small for its own blacksmith, so who knew how much further they’d have to go to find one to sort the horse if they went back that way. 

“Home,” he says decisively.  “It’s closer than back.”

It’s a miserable slog.  The rain is heavy and relentless, the thick clouds darkening the sky and the water falling so thickly that it’s impossible to see any distance ahead.  Jaime keeps his gaze firmly down on the path under his feet, trying to ignore the mud plastering his legs and the wind pulling his sodden cloak this way and that.  Even the horse looks dejected, picking her way along behind him with her ears flat and head down.

It’s Alwyn who first spots the tumbledown shack from her perch on the horse’s back where she’s huddled up futilely in her own cloak, hair plastered to her scalp and water dripping from the tip of her nose.

“Da, look!” she shouts over the wind and the hammering rain, and Jaime follows her pointed finger to where he can just about make out the outline of a building.  It’s set well away from the path, little more than three walls and a roof, probably intended as a shelter for livestock, but it’s dry, and out of the wind, and they need a rest from the unrelenting storm.

“All right,” he agrees, lifting her down from the horse’s back to allow the beast her head in picking over the boggy, uneven ground.  The mud starts squelching over the top of Alwyn’s boots the moment they leave the path, his own aren’t faring much better, and he’s already cursing this decision, every decision he’s made since they left the shelter of the trees behind them, when the ground suddenly disappears from beneath his feet and then they are both falling into the black chasm below.

He wakes to darkness and the smell of cold, stale air, pain in his head, dirt and grit in his eyes and mouth.  For a moment he is back buried in the ruins of the Red Keep having lost everything, a memory he’s never before realised he’d retained.  Panic grips him, his heart pounding and his breath coming in short sharp panting bursts as he thrashes out with his arms, trying to free himself from the illusion of rubble, striking at debris that isn’t actually there.

“Da?” A quivering voice cuts through his terror and a small hand touches his cheek.  He blinks away gritty soil and opens his eyes properly for the first time. 

It isn’t dark.  The relief courses through him and for a moment he can only lie there, dazed, staring up at the little figure leaning over him. 

“You wouldn’t wake up, Da,” Alwyn is saying, clutching at his jerkin with one hand while the other rubs at her own face, smearing dust and tears across her cheeks. 

Jaime forces himself to sit up, ignoring the throb from his head and dislodging the damp clods of earth and small stones that partly cover him.  So I was buried, he thinks grimly, at least partially, and then he determinedly pushes such thoughts down and away.  No time for that now.

“I’m all right,” he lies instead, pulling Alwyn down so that she is cradled in his lap, her head against his shoulder – she’s already getting too big for it to be comfortable, really, damn Tarths and their ridiculous height, but they both need the comfort.  “How long was I asleep for?”

Alwyn shrugs awkwardly against his chest, her voice partially muffled.  “A little while.  I tried yelling when you didn’t get up, but no one came.  It’s still raining.”

Jaime peers up at the gaping hole above their heads.  It’s still dimly outlined by daylight, though the thick clouds and rain cast a murky grey over everything.  It had been late afternoon when they left the woods, so he can’t have been out long, thank the gods. 

“Do you know where we are?”

Alwyn shakes her head, but she’s calmer now, sitting up and pulling away from him slightly to look around. 

“No.  There’s a tunnel that way, but I didn’t go down it far.  It gets dark pretty quick.  I wanted to wake you up first.”

“That was sensible,” Jaime praises, gently setting his daughter back on her feet and hauling himself upright.  There’s a dicey moment when he first stands where his vision blurs and his balance sways, but he screws his eyes shut and swallows determinedly a few times, and it passes.  They otherwise both appear to be mostly, miraculously, unhurt, though Jaime’s sure there will be bruises making themselves known before too long. 

“Right,” he says, feeling steadier, resolutely upbeat in the face of Alwyn’s anxious expression.  “Let’s see where we are.”

It’s a question that is far easier asked than answered.  The hole they had fallen through is some fifteen feet or so above their heads, edges jagged with torn clumps of sod and grass and a few jutting lengths of rotten wood.  There’s more earth and bits wood on the floor all around them, and it is easy enough to piece that part together; a long-forgotten wooden trapdoor, obscured by the undergrowth and rotted through.  The rainfall must have loosened the soil to the point that his weight was enough to break right through it, dragging Alwyn down with him. 

Whoever had used the door was obviously long gone, and had taken whatever method they used to get in and out with them.  They’re in a small chamber with the yawning fissure above their heads; on three sides the walls are smooth earth and stone, no cracks or crevices for probing fingers and no sign of a ladder or rope, while on the fourth the tunnel leads away sloping gently downwards into darkness.  

“Here, Alwyn,” says Jaime, kneeling and gesturing her over.  “Climb onto my shoulders.  See if you can reach.”

The little girl obediently clambers up, her expression set and determined despite how pale her face is where tears have washed tracks in the dirt that cakes it, and Jaime feels a rush of pride for his gentle daughter. 

It’s no good; even standing on his shoulders her reach isn’t long enough to grab the edges of the hole and pull herself up, and all they gain for their troubles is a faceful of rainwater and muddy footprints all over his jerkin. 

“Never mind,” Jaime reassures her once they’ve retreated a little way down the tunnel to shelter from the rain that is driving in through the open ceiling.  “It’s drier down here anyway,”

Alwyn tries to smile up at him, but even in the encroaching gloom Jaime can see her wide eyes and chattering teeth. 

“Will mama find us?” she asks quietly, clinging to his good hand.

“Yes,” Jaime says with honest conviction.  The grey light coming through the roof is fading quickly; their absence will be noted soon, if it hasn’t been already.

Unless, a small voice whispers, unless they look at the rain and think you both have stayed in Watersmeet to wait out the weather, like a sensible man might have done. 

In that case it would at least the night before they were truly missed.  And even if the alarm was raised sooner, what hope was there of any rescuers spotting their open crevice in the dark and rain, away from the main track?  It would take blind luck; someone else stupid enough to leave the road at just the right point to literally stumble onto them.

He studies his daughter carefully, weighing up their options.  She’s shivering, and he realises for the first time how cold it is in the stone tunnel, their clothes soaked through.  He has no fears that they will be found, eventually, but it will be a long, cold night ahead of them first.

“Your mama will find us,” he continues with forced cheer, making the decision.  “But she might not realise we need finding for a little while.  Why don’t we explore a way down here first?  We might even be able to rescue ourselves.”

Alwyn eyes him dubiously – she’s too canny, his younger daughter, and for a moment Jaime has a pang of regret that it’s not Arta with him instead; she would easier to sooth and distract, thinking of nothing more than the immediate adventure of their predicament, where her sister considers the more far reaching consequences.  

But, “Alright,” Alwyn allows, and she follows willingly enough when he starts down the sloping path into the gloom.

It’s impossible to measure time.  His eyes adjust to the murk, and the passageway is wide and tall enough that they pass without issue, but there’s no natural light from ahead or behind and the dark quickly becomes monotonous.  They both warm up quickly with the exertion, and Jaime finds an apple and a few pieces of dried salted meat in his pack to tide off the worst of her hunger pangs.  He fills the oppressive silence of the winding tunnel by telling her carefully edited stories of Tyrion as a boy, and before long she is giggling along and swinging their joined hands between them. 

He hears the water before they reach it.  It shouldn’t be a surprise, really; he’s no idea which direction they’re walking in, but the passage has sloped steadily downwards all along, and twisted round on itself several times.  That they’ve reached the coast and the tideline is inevitable on an island as small as Tarth. 

They stop a few feet from the water’s edge and Jaime frowns at it in thought.  The path appears to continue on down into the water lapping at their feet.  If he were younger, and alone, and two-handed, he might have considered wading on, swimming if needed, but…no.  He’s past such exploits now, and somehow that doesn’t disappoint him much.

“What now?” asks Alwyn, quiet and unsure again in the face of this new obstacle.  Jaime pauses, considering.  The obvious answer is to turn around and head back the way they came to await rescue, but it’s been a long walk and the idea of repeating the process uphill is not a welcome one.  Besides, he’s no idea how much time has passed but night must have fallen outside, and no rescue will find where they fell in the dark.

“We’ll wait here and rest a while,” he decides, pulling his daughter back from the water’s edge and over to the wall of the passageway.  “Try and sleep for a bit.  Later we can walk back to the top and wait for your mama to find us.”

Alwyn nods, too tired now for questions or qualms.  Jaime settles her on his lap again, pulling his cloak over both of them for warmth; it’s still slightly damp, but it’s enough to keep off the chill for a little while at least, and he feels a rush of love as Alwyn snuggles closer and leans her head against his shoulder, trusting him completely. 

“Mama will rescue us,” she mumbles into his chest, though whether it’s meant to reassure him or her he can’t tell.  Maybe a bit of both.  “She’s a knight.”

Jaime smiles into the top of her head.  “Yes,” he agrees.  “Yes, she’s very good at rescuing people, your mama.”

“Sansa,” confirms Alwyn; it’s a tale Pod has told them more than once, Jaime knows. “From the bad men, in the snow.”

“Yes, she rescued Sansa.   And me, too, years before that.”

“From bad men?”

“Many times from bad men.  And once from a bear.”

Alwyn’s eyes, which had been drifting slowly closed, flutter open to squint up at him. “I thought you rescued her from the bear,” she argued, ever an eye for the details, his youngest girl. 

“I did,” he agrees easily.  “And then once I’d rescued her, she turned around and rescued me right back.”

“That’s not how mama tells the story.”

“No, well, your mama isn’t one to blow her own horn.”

“Mama doesn’t have a horn.”

Jaime chuckles. “No.  No she doesn’t, you’re right, of course.  Would you like me to tell you about the bear?”

Alwyn would like, so he murmurs a parsed down version of the story of the Brave Companions and Harrenhal and the bear pit, makes her giggle with overblown descriptions of the dress Bolton had forced Brienne into.  She’s still smiling when he finishes, which, good, he’s not scarred his own child with a tale too grim and gory for her tender age, he’s never completely sure if he’s struck that balance quite right there, but it’s a thoughtful smile turned inwards, contemplative.  

“Mama’s very brave,” Alwyn says eventually, rubbing the seam of his shirt between her thumb and forefinger and avoiding his gaze.  “And you.”

“Yes,” agrees Jaime simply, watching, patient, unsure what she’s trying to say but knowing that she’ll tell him once she’s sorted the words out. 

“Arta will be a knight,” she continues.  “We worked it out ages ago, before you came.  You knighted Mama and Mama knighted Pod and one day Pod will knight Arta.  That’s alright, I don’t want to be one anyway.  But she’s brave and I’m…I’m not.  Not at all, really.”

Jaime keeps his expression carefully blank as he digests her words.  His first instinct is to reassure her, blindly, try to convince her otherwise, but it would be the wrong thing to do; too clever by half, his watchful girl, she’d see right through his appeasement and resent him for the lie to boot. 

Because the fact is there is truth in what she says, somewhere in the heart of it.  He remembers the first time he and Cersei had realised their differences, and the diverging paths they would be forced down as a result, and the years they had spent futilely fighting it, and all the rage and sorrow and destruction it had resulted it.  He has no such worries when it comes to his children, for many reasons – there’s too much of Brienne in both of them, quite aside from anything else – but he still recognises this as a conversation that needs to happen.  Maybe one that can only happen with him.

“Arta will probably be a knight, yes,” he agrees.  “But it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to be one too.”

Alwyn shrugs a little, though there’s a hint of relief in her eyes.  She enjoys the daily lessons and drills alongside her sister, he knows, but he suspects more for the time spent with her family than any great love of swordplay itself.  She’ll be decent with a blade through early and repeated exposure, but the steel doesn’t sing to her the way it does her parents, the way it will her sister, and so she’ll never have that extra edges that elevates the truly magnificent. 

“I know that,” she grouses.  “But…I think I would like to be braver.  Not just always be the one who needs rescuing.”

And oh the way she looks at him as she says that, she suddenly reminds him of Tyrion, Tyrion of years ago, realising that no matter how much he wanted and wished he could never change who he was and with years ahead before he’d finally accept it for the strength that was.

“There’s nothing wrong with needing rescuing every now and again,” Jaime says gently, silently grateful Brienne isn’t around the hear him; she would tease him mercilessly.  Or she would have done, once, during that unspoken-of month in Winterfell.  He shouldn’t assume, now.  “Even the best and bravest knights need rescuing.  And sometimes it’s other knights who do the rescuing, like your mama and me, but sometimes it doesn’t need swords at all.  Sometimes swords just make things worse, and you need words and cleverness and quick thinking.  Your Uncle Tyrion has saved hundreds of people, maybe even thousands.  He rescued himself with nothing but words at least once.””

“Really?”

“Really.”

She’s still squinting at him dubiously, but he can see the want there, too, the desire to believe what he says, so he settles his arms around her little body and pulls her close against his chest and starts the story of Tyrion and the Eyrie and the Mountains of the Moon.             

He talks until his mouth is dry and his voice cracking, and when he finally looks down Alwyn is asleep in his arms.

He must sleep himself at some point, because he wakes to a litany of aches and pains, bruises from the fall and strains from sleeping sitting up on the hard ground.  Alwyn is still asleep in his lap, and for a while he just sits there, looking down at her face in the gloom.  He’s not worried, still; hungry, yes, and sore, but not concerned.  He’s seen Brienne of Tarth perform far more impossible feats than retrieving two souls lost almost within sight of her own keep. 

He hopes she’s not worrying, though, for all that he knows it’s a futile wish.  She would have been concerned when they didn’t return as planned, even accounting for the weather, and if enough time has passed now for a message to reach Watersmeet and back then she’ll know them to be truly lost.  He’s suddenly grateful that Arta isn’t with him as well, thankful beyond words that he hasn’t disappeared with both her children without warning.  She’ll contain her worry, for Arta’s sake.

Alwyn stirs while he thinks, rubbing her eyes and stretching uncomfortably under the cloak. 

“Oh,” she sighs, blinking into the dark around them.  “I thought it might have been a dream.”

“Not a dream, little one, but still an adventure you can tell your sister about when we get home,” he reminds her as they both struggle to their feet. 

Alwyn hums, unconvinced, but she seems better for the sleep, picking her way carefully down the passageway with curious feet while Jaime shakes out his cloak and refastens it around his shoulders.  “Watch for the water, Alwyn,” he cautions, glancing at her retreating back.  “And we’re going up, remember?”

“It’s gone, Da,” Alwyn shouts back.  Her voice echoes in the confined space, but even so it sounds further away than it should have done for how close the water had been when they stopped.

Jaime hurries after her, and sure enough there is nothing now but open, albeit wet, passageway. 

“It must be the tide,” he muses aloud.  “It was high when we arrived, and now it’s going out.  What do you think, Alwyn, shall we keep going down, or turn back?”

“Down,” Alwyn says determinedly.  “Then I can tell Arta we rescued ourselves.”

It’s slow going; the path is steeper here than it was before, and the ground is slick with seaweed and puddles.  At one point they reach the new tide level and have to stop and wait for it to recede further, but shortly after that they round one final bend and see daylight flooding in ahead.  The ground levels out and there is still a foot or so of water in the bottom of the passageway, so Jaime swings Alwyn onto his back and splashes through it, too busy laughing at Alwyn’s joyous whoops to care about the cold saltwater soaking into his boots. 

They burst out onto the wet sand blinking in the sunlight, all traces of yesterday’s storm blown away. Jaime turns to examine their surroundings; they’re on a small pebbled beach at the foot of a towering cliff, enclosed by steep rocky walls.  The small cave mouth they’ve emerged from is tucked away in one corner, almost lost in the shadows and probably completely invisible from the sea.  The high tide mark is far above their heads, and he guesses they’re somewhere south of Evenfall, where the tidal range of Shipbreaker Bay is far greater than along the somewhat calmer straights. 

The sun is high and bright above them, and he guesses it must be midmorning - they’ve been gone an entire night, Brienne will be furious –and so with one last look around he trails after Alwyn to the closest shelf of rock, where she is already starting to scramble up and over.  The beach on the other side is wider and sandier but still bordered by high cliffs.  They walk the entire length, climb through a further two rocky outcrops and cross two more coves of varying size, before they finally reach a stretch of coast where the cliff drops down to meet the sand and they can climb off the beach and onto solid ground.  They find a well-worn path that turns inland, and not very far along that they come upon a row of neat little fisherman’s cottages.

There’s a woman kneeling in the front garden of the third house along; Jaime is about to hail her when she looks up and sees them.  She leaps to her feet, dropping the vegetation in her hands in her haste, and rushes out the gate to meet them.

“Ser Jaime!” she exclaims, and then, spying Alwyn hanging back just behind him, “And the child, oh thank the gods.”

She appears to remember herself then and takes a step back, brushing her hands down on her apron and bobbing a small curtsey.  “Sorry, Ser.   I just… folk have been so worried, when you didn’t come back last night, my man’s out with the rest searching for you both.  What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” Jaime says, drawing Alwyn to his side and holding her close.  “And now isn’t time for it.  Can you show us the most direct route back to Evenfall?  I’m rather turned around.”

“Will you not step inside and rest a while?  I’ve stew leftover from last night, and the poor mite looks done in.”

Jaime glances down at Alwyn, who has visibly brightened at the suggestion of food, but guilt still gnaws.

“We need to get back,” he hedges.  “If there are people out looking then we’ve been gone too long, and I need to get Alwyn back to her mother.”

The goodwife wavers, obviously caught between her conflicting maternal instincts - to feed a hungry child, or to abate an anxious mother’s fears.

“You wait here,” she compromises on.  “Go inside and warm up.  I’ll go up to the hall and let them know you’re here and safe.”

Jaime acquiesces with some reluctance.  On the one hand he is desperate to return Alwyn to Brienne as soon as feasible, in a hopeless attempt to make up for the worry he knows she will have suffered through all night.  But on the other hand (stump), he is exhausted, hungry, and in no small amount of pain, and the idea of the long walk up to Evenfall (because it doesn’t matter where they are, from sea level the only way to get to Evenfall is a series of, in his opinion unnecessarily steep, ups) is almost enough to make him weep. 

The woman hustles them both inside, pulling out blankets and clean dry clothes and showing them the pot of stew before finally taking her leave and rushing off.  Jaime quickly helps Alwyn out of her damp clothes and bundles her into a blanket close to the fire with a steaming bowl of the delicious smelling stew, before repeating the process for himself.   Alwyn is asleep almost before she finishes her meal, nodding into the mostly empty bowl, but Jaime forces himself to lay out their musty clothes and exchange his blanket for the ill-fitting trousers and tunic the goodwife had found for him, before sinking gratefully back into the warm chair and letting his eyes drift shut.

He’s woken by the door opening.  He twists awkwardly on the settle, trying to see who it is without disturbing Alwyn, who has slipped down so that her head is pillowed on his lap, and blinking against the sunlight that silhouettes the figure standing in the doorway.

Brienne is frozen, staring at him, and it’s…it’s devastating. 

Because the thing is, he’d forgotten, somewhere along the way, forgotten how much she feels everything.  She presents the world with a front of stoicism and bland ill humour and most of the world believes it; fuck, he’d believed it, back at the start.  And then he’d uncovered the well of honour and kindness and humour that lay just below the surface, and he’d thought that was it, with a smug pat on the back well done for finding the chinks in her well-guarded walls.

And then he’d realised that even that was a front, of sorts, that underneath all of it there was an endless untapped chasm of feeling; that every pleasure and hurt alike resonated so deeply it was a wonder she survived it.  Maybe burying it deep behind layers of honour and loyalty and friendship was the only way she could survive it.

But sometimes even that wasn’t enough.  He’d caught glimpses of it, the depths of her love and belief and the shattering breadth of her disappointment when he failed to live up to them, but this new life they share is so gentle, so pastoral, so careful, that he’d truly forgotten.

Until this moment, with their daughter’s head warm on his knee and sunlight filling the little cottage and her eyes locked on his.

There’s fear there, still, not quite abated, but mostly it’s relief, and joy, and, yes, love, and maybe he’s a coward, but he can’t face it all right now, can’t process and respond to the myriad of emotions shining in her eyes, so he ducks his head instead, pressing a soft kiss to Alwyn’s forehead and shaking her gently to wakefulness.

“There’s someone here to see you, Alwyn,” he murmurs, and their daughter stretches, grumbling, into wakefulness.   He can tell the exact moment she realises her mother is in the room because she snaps to alertness and practically flies from his side and into her arms, blanket trailing like a cape behind her.

Brienne catches her and sweeps her up into a tight embrace, burying her face in her daughter’s neck and rocking her back and forth.   Jaime knows there’s probably a silly, dopey smile on his face as he watches them, and, frankly, he doesn’t care.

“We had an adventure, Mama!” Alwyn exclaims, pulling back from her mother’s hold, and then, peering over her shoulder, “Where’s Arta?”

“Arta is waiting for you at home,” Brienne says with a shaky laugh, and Jaime notices the tears in her eyes even if Alwyn doesn’t.  “If you put some clothes on we can go find her.”

Alwyn wriggles down and hurries to where her clothes are mostly dry in front of the fire.  Brienne’s eyes follow her for a moment, tender and starkly relieved, and then they’re back on him and her expression doesn’t change an iota. 

He stands and starts to approach, resisting the temptation to pull the blanket further round himself like a shield and instead letting it drop to one side.

“I’m sor…” he starts, standing in front of her, but she cuts him off, grabbing his shoulder with one slightly shaking hand and pulling him in for a short, hard embrace.   It’s the most she’s touched him in literal years, and for a moment his brain is too thrown by that to register anything else.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” she says in a voice deep with sincerity, releasing him and finally stepping back far enough that he can concentrate again.  Alwyn is there before he can say anything in reply, dancing between them and practically vibrating with eagerness to see her sister, and Brienne ushers them both back outside without another word.

The goodwife is waiting at the gate with two horses; she smiles and bobs several curtsies in their general direction and takes the coin Brienne presses into her palms with thanks and yet more curtsies.   Brienne swings up into her saddle and then Jaime lifts Alwyn to settle in front of her, because after a day and a night’s anxious separation he’s not about to be the one to try to keep Brienne apart from her child, before mounting his own ride and, at last, they set off for home.

They tell Brienne the whole story on the ride back; or rather Alwyn does.  Rejuvenated by rest and a full stomach and the comfort of her mother’s presence she eagerly recounts their adventure with none of the disquiet that she had shown during it.  Brienne smiles and gasps and nods in all the right places, indulging her daughter’s enthusiasm, but Jaime doesn’t miss the way she keeps one arm firmly around Alwyn’s chest, nor the dark smudges under her eyes.

Arta must have been looking out for them, because she comes clattering down the front steps of Evenfall while they are still dismounting, her grandfather following at a somewhat more sedate pace behind her.   The twins fall into each other’s arms with obvious relief and Jaime smiles, realising with a jolt that this was probably the first time they had ever spent a night apart. 

He’s so distracted by his daughters’ reunion that he doesn’t notice Lord Selwyn’s approach until the older man is standing beside him, reaching out to grip his shoulder in welcome.

“Ser Jaime,” he says in his steady, quiet way, “It is good to see you well.”

Jaime starts, surprised and touched by his obvious sincerity, but Selwyn is already moving on, approaching his granddaughters to catch Alwyn up in a hug, as if his simple pleasure in Jaime’s return hadn’t been anything remarkable at all.

He’s distracted from these thoughts, however, by Arta, who having at last released her twin has instead hurtled herself at his legs and wrapped her arms firmly around him. 

The rest of the day passes in somewhat of a blur.  Jaime and Alwyn head to the baths to finally remove the layers of dust and dirt and saltwater that still cling to them, and Arta, apparently unable to contemplate letting her twin out of her sight again, follows.  The family bathing chamber is small, one bath in the middle of the room, and the only ornamentation are the hundreds of sea shells embedded in the walls and the half-moon window that lets in the sunlight, but the bath was obviously built with the ridiculously tall Tarths in mind, and it’s more than big enough for one grown man and his child.  Arta sits perched on a bench at the side of the room, legs swinging but uncharacteristically quiet, while Jaime splashes in the water with his younger daughter, until Alwyn finally goads her sister into joining them, and the three of them pass a silly half hour that leaves all of them feeling much better than they did at the start.

The process of getting back to their rooms and finally changing into clean, dry clothes that actually fit proves unexpectedly protracted.  Everywhere they go they are stopped, by servants, guards, squires, what feels like the entire population of Evenfall and half of Tarth besides, all expressing their pleasure at seeing the two of them safely home.

What keeps getting to Jaime is that they seem to genuinely mean to include him in their well-wishes; not just Alwyn, who as both a child they have watched grow up amongst them and the daughter of their respected Lady is understandably loved, but him as well, despite his recent arrival and arbitrary status within the household, never mind his dubious past and the stories he is sure must have circled here, for all that Brienne might have tried to suppress them.  It is something of a shock to realise that the people here, as a whole, seem to genuinely like him. 

But finally, Arta swinging off his good arm while Alwyn clutches his hook, they make it back down to the yard where Brienne is waiting with fresh horses and a small group of men ready to ride out – and here too they have to pause again while each man comes forward to shake his hand or clasp his shoulder, and by the end of it Jaime is sure some of his confusion must be showing on his face, because Brienne is smirking over at him in that annoying knowing way of hers, as if she’s amused, of all things, by his surprise.

In the bright clear sunlight it’s a depressingly easy ride back out to where they fell.  Jaime leads the way with Arta sitting before him; Brienne and Alwyn follow close behind with the rest of the group on their heels.  They dismount when he spots the rundown stone hut, and, each holding a twin firmly by the hand, pick their way carefully over the field to where the jagged hole gapes.  It’s a fair distance from the track and completely invisible in the long grass until they’re almost on top of it; Jaime is doubly convinced, now, that he made the right choice, exploring  the tunnel to its other exit.  He doesn’t doubt they would have been found here, eventually, but it would have been a long wait.

“It was likely a smugglers tunnel,” says Lord Selwyn, eyeing it thoughtfully.  “You say the other end is blocked at high tide?”

“And almost completely invisible even at a low one,” confirms Jaime.

“There are a few similar tunnels marked on some of our old maps; there’s one below Evenfall meant as an escape in the case of invasion.  But I wasn’t aware of one here, and I don’t think any of the ones recorded travel quite so far inland.  It must have been boarded up and forgotten about long ago.  I’ll have to look into it further; we certainly don’t want any more unsuspecting people taking tumbles down forgotten pits.”

He frowns as he speaks but Jaime can’t help but stifle a smile; the Lord of Tarth loves nothing more than pouring over old books and learning more about the history of his island. 

They set up the ladder bought along for the purpose and then everyone gets a chance to scramble down and have a look at the chamber and it’s tunnel; everyone that is apart from Brienne, who stands guard at the top of the ladder and spends the entire time frowning down at it, until the last man is back up and the ladder removed.   She seems more herself again once they start rigging up a new cover with fresh lengths of wood, smiling at the men’s jokes and keeping Arta’s curious fingers away from the hammers, but watching her Jaime doesn’t think she breaths easy until they’re all riding home in the fading light.

Brienne is longer than usual taking the girls to bed that evening.  Jaime doesn’t begrudge it; he’s noticed the way her eyes have been following both her children all day, the momentary stark relief when they’d returned from the baths, the only time they’d been out of her sight.  He suspects the twins will recover from the shock far sooner than their mother will.

He sits before the small fire in the solar while he waits, nursing a cup of wine and luxuriating in being warm and dry.  He’s survived far worse, of course, even setting aside the year he spent living on Robb Stark’s hospitality, but he’s old, now, and his body appreciates the small luxuries in a way he would never have even considered before. 

Brienne joins him eventually; he smiles over in welcome but she just pulls the door firmly closed behind her and walks over to the little table.  She pours herself a cup of wine, downs it, and then pours herself a second, moving to stand beside the fire and stare broodingly into the flames. 

Jaime pauses, his own cup halfway to his lips, staring with a sort of morbid fascination at this most un-Brienne-like creature before him.

“Are you all right?” he tries when it becomes clear she’s not going to speak. 

Brienne huffs into her cup and takes another drink, though to his relief it’s only a small sip this time.  He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her drink more than a single cup of wine in a sitting, with one large Winterfell-shaped exception, and it’s somewhat disconcerting. 

“No,” she says shortly, with typical brutal honesty.  “No, not really.  It’s been a very long day.”

She finally looks at him, then, and he sees it all; the exhaustion and fear and anxiety that she must have tried to keep at bay all through the preceding night so as to not alarm her remaining child, barely mitigated by their safe return.  He aches with the need to go to her, touch her, wrap her in his arms and give what comfort he can, but it’s not his place and he’s not sure she’d take it even if he offered.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly instead, paltry words that are all he has.

She frowns at him.  “Why?” she asks slowly, eyes boring into his own.  “That’s the second time today you’ve tried to apologise.  Why are you sorry?”

“For…for disappearing, and taking Alwyn with me,” he scrambles.  “And for not getting her back to you sooner.  I knew how worried you would have been.  Arta too.”

She’s staring at him with blank incomprehension and he shifts uncomfortably under her gaze, aware he has misstepped but unsure where or how.

“You kept her safe,” she says slowly, as if talking to an imbecile.  “You kept her from panicking, you stopped her from worrying, you turned something that could have been terrifying for her into an adventure she can boast about, and you bought her home as soon as you could.  You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Jaime blinks at her.

“I was…unsettled…when you both weren’t back as planned,” Brienne continues.  “But I told myself you must have stayed in Watersmeet to wait out the storm.  Until one of the stableboys came in to say your horse had just returned, missing a shoe and trailing its reins, and without a sign of either of you.  Jaime, I can’t remember the last time I was so scared, and the only comfort I had was that at least Alwyn was with you, because I knew you’d do everything in your power to keep her safe and bring her home as soon as you were able.”

She pauses, taking a slow, shaky drink from her cup.  Jaime’s frozen, transfixed, unable to do anything but stare as the stress of the last day and night finally takes its toll and Brienne crumbles before him. 

“But then as the night went on and you didn’t show up here and the riders who went out couldn’t find you…I started to think, then, that it must be you who was hurt, thrown or fallen somewhere, maybe the river had burst its banks and you’d be caught up in the floods.  Because if it were just Alwyn hurt I knew we’d have found you quickly, bringing her home.   But it was like the storm had swallowed you both up and all I could think was that I’d lost both of you, lost you again…”

Her voice cracks and it’s too much, Jaime can’t bear it any more.  He sets his cup aside and scrambles to his feet,  taking her hand in his good one and forcing her face up to look at his.

“I’m ok,” he says quietly, urgently.  “And so is Alwyn, she’s just upstairs with Arta where you left her.  We’re both fine.”

She nods at that, but her eyes are still filled with unshed tears and her face lined with anxious exhaustion, so he does the only thing he can think of and tugs her into his arms, wrapping her in a tight embrace and letting her bury her head in his shoulder while his stump traces slow soothing circles on her back.

He’s not sure how long they stay like that, him rocking her gently back and forth and trying to make appropriate soothing noises in the back of his throat while her shoulders shake and he feels the dampness of her tears soaking through his tunic.  He wonders when the last time she let herself go like this was, how long it’s been since she sought such basic human comfort. 

Eventually she pulls away slightly, wiping her face with the sleeve of her shirt and looking ruefully at the stain on his.

“Sorry…” she starts, but he cuts her off, catching her hand in his own and settling it between them.

“I thought we’d just discussed not apologising for things that don’t need apologising for,” he grouses, pleased when that elicits a slightly damp chuckle.

They stand like that for a moment, hands linked before the fire, and Jaime is just starting to panic a little, because one of them needs to break this tension and he’s not sure he can, not in any way that is appropriate for the lines they’ve drawn between them, when Brienne speaks again.

“I realised something, too,” she says slowly, carefully, not quite meeting his gaze – and oh that’s his Brienne all over, so forthright and frank with a weapon in hand and so self-conscious without.   

The silence stretches, broken only by the gentle crackle and occasional pop from the fire.  Brienne’s eyes remain fixed on their linked hands, his thumb skittering over her knuckles, back and forth, back and forth.  It’s the only part of himself he dares move; the rest of him is frozen, caught in a moment of fraught anticipation, leaning forward in desperate need to hear her finish that sentence. 

He can’t be the one to break the stalemate – both their current silence and the longer, immutable one that they’ve been trapped in since his return.  He’s done too much damage, hurt her in too many ways.  This has to be her decision, and somehow he knows that whatever choice she has made now is one they will never be able to go back on. 

“I realised,” she continues at last, the words stretching and bending in the air between them.  “I realised…it made no difference.  You were gone, again, and for all I knew today we were going to find you and Alwyn both, broken and bloodied at the bottom of some cliff or fished out of the river.”

Her hand is trembling in his but her eyes are clear, still gazing down at their hands with something like wonder on her face.

“I have never been so scared,” she repeats, finally lifting her head to look him straight in the eye, such that he has to tilt his own head up ever so slightly to meet her, in the way that’s always given him no small thrill.  “And I realised it made no difference.   If you were dead, if the only thing that came back to me was your body, if I had to write to your brother as he once wrote to me, it would have broken my heart.  Loosing you once was the worst thing I have ever lived through, and I thought that I could save myself from having to ever face it again.  I thought if we were just friends it wouldn’t matter so much, that it was a way that I could have at least a little bit of you without risking the rest again.”

She pauses, swallows, and continues with grim certainty.  “And I was wrong.  It didn’t matter.  All it does is make both of us just a little bit miserable, every day, and it saves me nothing.”

He doesn’t have words.  She’s still staring at him, the firelight dancing golden over her face, and he’s finally realising how wrong he’s been, all this time.  Knowing that she loves him and assuming that it just wasn’t enough, not enough to make up for all the wrongs he’s committed, all the ways he’s not the man she deserves to have.  Even after she’d told him he’d never truly believed that it was only her own guarded heart that had made her keep her distance. 

It had blindsided him, the first time he’d realised the extent of his feelings for her; that night before the battle at Winterfell, seeing the look on her face as she rose before him, knighted and equal, and he had finally realised how deeply he’d fallen.  But she had lived with her own feelings for years before then, lived with them with no expectation or hope of return, and then he had returned it, or at least he’d thought he had, but instead he’d just taken all she had to offer, that endless capacity for love and loyalty, and never even thought to ensure she knew he felt the same.

He remembers the blunt shock on her face, the first time he’d so casually thrown his own feelings at her feet.  No wonder she’s stood such determined guard over her bruised and battered heart. 

“I love you,” he says, helpless, because what else is there?  She won’t accept his apologies and everything else he has to offer is already hers. 

“I know,” she smiles, watery, the same stark joy that had been on her face when she’d risen before him a knight at last and he’d realised just how fucked he was.  It’s having a similar effect now, especially when she follows with, “And I love you.”  Because the thing is he’s known it for years, but she’d never said, before, and hearing it is something altogether quite different.

He raises their linked hands, and he’s the one trembling now where she is perfectly steady, pressing his lips to her bare knuckles, because he promised himself this would be her choice, her decision, but he’s got to do something, and that’s as much as he’ll allow himself.

They’re frozen like that a moment longer, her hand at his lips, and then he’s not sure how it happens, because he doesn’t move and she doesn’t move but somehow they’re in each other’s arms, pressing their faces together in the firelight, not caring that their hands are still trapped between them and their noses and foreheads keep bumping.

It’s Brienne who breaks them apart, lifting her head away slightly, and he takes a step back instantly.  But she just frowns at him a little and shifts her grip under his palm so that she’s now holding his hand, and then she’s turning towards the door and tugging him along behind her.

He follows.  He thinks he would always follow her, now that he can.  It feels like he’s spent a lifetime watching her walk away from him; he needs another to make up for it, striding confidently at her side, sure he belongs there.  He’ll spend the rest of his life trying to earn that right if she’ll let him.

He follows, through the darkened hallway and up the silent empty stairs, past the closed door behind which their children are sleeping, to the chamber that he knows is her own, though he’s taken great care to never go near it. 

She pushes the door open without releasing her grip on his hand, and he clicks it softly shut behind them with the heel of his foot. 

She’s facing him now, smiling at him with that ridiculously fond, open expression on her face again, and it’s all he can do not to touch her.  But he promised, he promised, and though it’s one oath he’ll never be sorry to break he needs her permission to do so.

“Can I…” he starts, reaching out towards her in an aborted move.

But she just keeps smiling and steps closer.  “Yes,” she says simply, like it isn’t the most precious word left to him in any language.  And then again, closer still, one hand on his cheek and the other linking their fingers once more, “Yes. Yes.”

He wakes later, much later – so late it’s early, judging by the soft glow coming in through the open window.  They’ve drifted apart in the night, but when he rolls over she’s still lying there besides him, one arm under her head and the other thrown out across the sheets towards him.  He captures it with his good hand and just holds it there, lying in the space between them.  He studies her in the dim light, taking stock of the changes he had noted in passing the night before.  Her scars are older and more faded, though his old friends’ on her shoulder from the bear’s claws stand out starkly.  She’s still fit and muscled, but softer in places now than he remembers, from years of peacetime and good food.  And from their children, who have rounded her belly and left marks of their own across her skin. 

His stump brushes one of these new silvery lines near her breast, where it snakes out above the covers, the physical proof of the strength of her body that had carried and protected their daughters; proof too of the time that has passed since the last time they lay like this.  They were both different people then.

He doesn’t intend to wake her; she’d been evidently exhausted the previous evening and it hadn’t exactly been an early night, but he’s underestimated her again, of course; five years of peacetime and she still sleeps like a soldier.  Her brow furrows, though she doesn’t open her eyes - and that’s its own gentle thrill, she’s so at ease with his presence, with him here in her bed – and she mutters “stop staring at me,” in a croaky, sleep-drunk voice.

“I can’t help it,” he protests softly, which makes her huff even as her lips curl in a small smile and she finally opens her eyes to stare back at him. 

“It’s early,” she grouches at him, eyeing the very faintest sliver of pink that is lighting the dark sky outside, like she didn’t spend months all through the Riverlands shaking him roughly awake at gods-forsaken hours to get him up and moving for another day of relentless trudging.  He much prefers her like this.

“I should go back to my chambers before people start waking up,” he points out with some reluctance.

“If by people you mean our children,” Brienne clarifies, her eyes dancing, and still, after all this time, it still gives him a little rush to hear her say our children like that, so open and unconcerned.  “Then yes, you should.  Arta will be looking for you when she wakes.”

He remembers Arta’s clinginess from the previous day and sees it in a new light; it’s not just Brienne’s attachment he’s been underestimating.

“I’m sorry to have scared her,”

“She’s young, and you’re back.  It will pass quick enough, but she’ll probably stay close for a few days yet.”  She pauses for a moment, a faint flush on her cheeks, and then ploughs on with steady determination, “I can understand the feeling.”

He smiles wide at that.  “Then, Ser, I shall do my utmost to remain present and available to you at all times.”

She scowls and rolls her eyes at him, but the effect is somewhat ruined by the way her hand tightens in his and the smile the tugs stubbornly at the corners of her lips.

He doesn’t want to ruin the warm peace that has settled between them, but he’s learnt the hard way what can go wrong when there is too much unsaid between them, and he can’t risk that again.

“You said, once, that you didn’t want me to feel tied here, beyond how I already was with the girls.  But that’s…that’s not right.  I stayed for them, of course, but I’d have stayed for you, too.  If they hadn’t ever existed, I would still have wanted to be with you, in whatever guise you’d have me.” 

He pauses, watching her watch him, her eyes steady and calm, needing her to understand this, understand that his choice was made long before that endless suspended moment when she’d first said yours and mine.

“On the way here, I promised myself I would leave if you asked it.  If I found you and you wanted nothing more to do with me after everything, I swore that somehow I’d find it in myself to walk away.  But only if you asked.  That was the only way I was ever leaving again.”

She nods thoughtfully, listening to him carefully, and he loves her anew for that, for always taking him seriously. 

“For the longest time,” she begins, then stops for a moment, faltering and rallying again, “I knew you cared for me.  Respected me, as a friend, and an equal in everything that mattered.  I think that’s what I mourned the most, when news of your death first reached Winterfell; I had never expected whatever was between us there to last, I knew about the euphoria and lust that can follow a victory, but I hoped our friendship might survive it, and the thought of never again having someone who knew and understood me like you did…”

Her voices catches and he squeezes her hand, gentle reassurance, fighting down the instinct to refute the words he disagrees with.

“But that wasn’t the worst part.  The worst part was watching you choose to ride away believing in all the worst things you’d ever thought about yourself.  I don’t need you to promise you’ll never leave; I just need you to promise you’ll talk to me first.  Not try to sneak out like a thief in the night.  Not even if you think it’s for my own good.”   

“I promise,” he swears, maybe the easiest vow he’s ever made.  She smiles at him, his favourite smile, the new one he hadn’t recognised when he first came to Tarth, and he feels a surge of such love that for a moment it leaves him breathless.  He had loved Brienne so driven in her quest to see the Stark girls safe, Brienne of the Riverlands, Brienne of Winterfell, and now he loves Brienne of Tarth with an absoluteness that eclipses all else.  They neither of them are who they were five years before, but he loves her still, loves her anew, for all that she was and will be and is.

Maybe some of that shows on his face, because she doesn’t speak, just lies besides him with her eyes on his and her thumb rubbing soothingly over his knuckles as the wave of it crests and abates.

He would be content to stay as they are forever, talking and teasing and touching quietly in the pre-dawn light, but he should be back in his own chambers before the servants start moving round or the twins come looking and find him absent.  But there are still things he needs to know, first.

“What now?” he asks, quietly serious, echoing that fateful conversation that feels so long ago now.

“Now…now we get up.  We’ll have breakfast, and then I think we’ve all earnt a day off.  We can ask the girls, but I was thinking a ride, maybe to the cove for a swim.”

He smiles at that, because it’s a good plan, and it’s exactly what they’ll do, but, “you know that’s not what I mean.”

“Then you’re asking the wrong question,” she says calmly, looking at him with placid eyes.

His grin widens, becomes teasing, all the weight of their earlier conversation suddenly dissipated; maybe it is that easy.  “Now hardly seems to time for that.  You’ve got me naked and debauched in your bed, that’s a terrible story to tell the children.”

“Like you care about that!”

 “Don’t you want me to do it properly?  Sweep you off your feet?”

“As if you could!” she glares, and he laughs, delighted. 

She bites his nose.  “Ass!”

He lets his chuckle fade and just lies there for a moment, staring at her and lifting his hand to trace the dearly familiar contours of her face. 

“I’ve never asked anyone before,” he confesses, like it’s a secret she doesn’t already know; like he’s got any of those left.

“I’ve never said yes before,” she reminds him.

“Maybe that’s what worries me,” he counters.  “I heard what you did to the last one.”

She rolls her eyes at him in exasperation.  “Like that would put you off.”

That’s fair; the idea of her knocking him to the ground and standing over him does quite the opposite, in fact.  Though he could do without the broken collarbone.

“I don’t want to give you my name, or the girls, unless you want it,” he hedges, suddenly needing to get that out the way.  “You belong to Tarth.”

“So do you,” she says fondly.  “I’m sure we’ll find a compromise in there somewhere.”

“You think?  We’ve never been very good at compromises.”

He tries to keep his voice light still, but there’s real fear there too, because this is forever they’re talking about, and it’s all he’s wanted for so long now he’d mostly given up actually hoping to get it, and it’s not just the two of them they’re risking here.  Maybe Brienne had been right to fear and fight it, all this time.

She reaches up to stroke his face in turn, gently pushing his fringe back of his forehead and carding her hand through his hair. 

“You were my enemy the day we met, and for so many of the days that followed.  I think compromise is something we’ve been quite good at.”

“We have done things a bit backwards I suppose,” he quips, mollified by her simple confidence. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Maybe you should listen to me more,” she agrees, smiling, and then there’s just silence again, the good, contented silence of two people who are just happy to be together.   He keeps stroking her – shoulder, arm, waist, not with any intent, just enjoying the fact that he can – and her eyes are just starting to drift shut when he says softly, “Brienne?”

“Mmm?”

“Marry me?”

Her eyes flutter open again, clear and deep and blue, and her answering smile could eclipse the sun.

“Yes,” she says, calm and sure and as confident in this as he has ever known her with a blade in hand.  “Yes, I think I will.”

The Soft Epilogue - Somewhere at sea, nearly one year later...

He’s woken by the click of their cabin door closing.  The space next to him in the bunk is empty but still warm, as it has been every morning of this voyage, but judging by the light coming in through the porthole it is at least past dawn, which is better than the previous few days.

He lingers under the sheets a few moments more, knowing his presence won’t be welcome sooner, before pulling on his jerkin and padding off in search of his errant wife.

He finds her in the same spot she’s been for the last few mornings, up on deck tucked away near the stern of the ship, huddled over the rail.  He says nothing, just stands beside her with his stump resting gently on the small of her back until she eventually lifts her head from where it was resting on the wooden rail and straightens up beside him.  He wordlessly hands her the cup of water he had carried out with him; she takes it with a smile of thanks and swills her mouth out.

Only when she’s finished does she relax, setting the cup down and leaning into his side, letting him slip an arm around her waist.  He turns his head and presses a soft kiss into her hair, breathing in the smell of salt and sweat and leather that clings to her even after days at sea.

“Better?” he murmurs into her scalp, smiling when he feels her shiver in response.

“For now,” she grumbles.  “I don’t understand.  It was never this bad with the twins.”

“You didn’t spend any time on a boat, then,” he reminds her; they’ve been having variations on this conversation every morning since their voyage began.

“And I’ve never been sick on a boat before,” she continues, heedless.

“You’ve never been pregnant on a boat before.”

She turns to glare at him, but the effect is somewhat mitigated by the small smile he can see tugging at the corners of her mouth.  

“I suppose,” she allows grudgingly, resting her head against his and taking a few deep, slow breaths.  He knows she hasn’t enjoyed this journey, has found the nausea a persistent and unwelcome companion even if the actual vomiting seems to confine itself to the early mornings, but he has secretly savoured it.  The simple pleasure of being back on a boat, yes, but also tracking the as yet minute changes in Brienne’s body that signals her early pregnancy; seeking out all the things he missed, before, and hording them greedily.

They stand in silence for a while, watching the sun creep higher over the horizon.  It’s a rare moment of peace, with most of the crew and their own children still abed.  Jaime had forgotten how busy life on board can be, though it’s a good distraction, mostly.

He’s quietly apprehensive about what reaction might await him at the Fair - he cannot trust a Targaryen monarch, and he is not so stupid as to not be wary of the grudges that Sansa Stark quite rightly holds against him - but the worry is muffled, distant.   On his last visit Tyrion had claimed that the Queen in the South was rather indifferent to the news of his return, and as for the Queen in the North Brienne had sworn that Sansa’s letters contain nothing but good wishes.  Arya Stark at least had seemed genuine enough when she had travelled over from Storm’s End for the wedding, but that genuineness had been mostly focused on being just as silently terrifying as she had been in Winterfell all those years before.  She didn’t slit his throat as he slept, though, or take him down in the moments before Brienne entered the sept, and when she joined him in the training yard with the squires it was only to add to his tuition, not amend it, so overall he counts that one as a win.

But still the worry is there, quietly persistent.

They're sailing straight to White Harbour, at least; he knows he'll have to face King's Landing again some day, but he is in no rush for that particular trip. And it will be good to see his brother, and Pod.  And if everything else is horrible, well, autumn is in the air, so it’s a fair chance that by next year no one will want to leave to comfort of their keeps and castles anyway.  Summer has lasted barely two years and the Citadel are confident of a short, mild winter, and Jaime finds himself, strangely, looking forward to it.   All he wants is to return to Tarth, to spend autumn and winter in the warmth and safety of Evenfall with his wife and his children.  To welcome their new babe, who will be born in winter just like his sisters but this time with Jaime there, like he should have been all along. 

There is something viscerally thrilling about the knowledge that everything he wants is everything he can have, that he doesn’t have to keep carving out pieces of himself trying to appease too many different masters and only succeeding in failing all of them.  There are worries, of course, large and small - the threat of autumn storms, raiders harrying their northern shores, the summer cough that took Selwyn weeks to shake, Arta’s reading, Alwyn’s reticence - but they’re steady, domestic concerns, compared to what they’ve faced in the past.  The practicalities of a life they live together, have carved out and claimed for themselves.

The early morning light is casting a soft glow off the sea and doing frankly marvellous things to his wife’s face, and for a moment Jaime just basks in it. To think, they’ve made it through everything, Riverrun and the Brave Companions and Harrenhal, King’s Landing twice over, the bloody North and all that happened there, his own stupid decisions and all the consequences there of…through all that to wash up here on the other side of it all, whole and together with their daughters sleeping safely a few paces away.

“I love you,” he says suddenly, because he wants to and because he can.  He says it most days; he doubts he’ll ever tire of it.

“I know,” she agrees, quiet and sure.  “And I you.”

She’s resting her head against his now, soft with content drowsiness he would have once not have recognised on her and now treasures as dearly as her sword arm, and so he feels rather than sees her smile, all the affirmation he’s ever needed.   They stay like that in the peace that precedes their children waking, Brienne’s body warm against his own, each of them shoring up the other’s weaker side, and the boat sails on, sure and steady, into whatever the next day holds.