Chapter Text
It amused Brienne that Jaime always got a little to a lot angry by just how easy it was to get away with what was essentially high way robbery. Everyone that was anyone in King’s Landing knew that he was dangerous, that even though cloud storage was definitely not safe, physical storage wasn’t really any better.
Jaime could steal a beating heart right out of a person’s chest and they would never know until it was too late. Brienne knew this with certainty, because he had done it to her. Hearts though, were not his usual targets. If anything, Jaime had convinced her of the fact that he had only ever attempted, and subsequently succeeded, in stealing one.
His target was usually data. Data that could destroy empires, that routed out corruption, which freed the innocent, and which imprisoned the guilty. Everyone knew it was him, tearing their rich and terrible society apart, but not a single one of them could prove it.
They knew he had an accomplice, because he must’ve had an accomplice. And this was what always got Jaime so angry, because not a single soul in the world had ever guessed that it could be her, that maybe he was the accomplice. It was as though a man as beautiful as him would never think to align himself with anyone so homely.
It was ludicrous and amusing how someone as conspicuous as her, well over six foot and uncomfortable at every event they executed their heists, was getting away with nary a suspicion. For god-like Jaime Lannister to even deign to talk to ugly Brienne Tarth was preposterous. They probably thought that every time she brushed past him, it was because the simple island girl had put herself in his way for just the chance at even the slightest of touches. That there was no way that the slow and tongue-tied giant could have been the one to plan every heist Jaime enacted. It was how they had gotten away with everything for years.
Brienne had minded what they all thought at first, when her father had dragged her kicking and screaming into the bright lights of King’s Landing’s high society. It even bothered her still after she began hacking, after she began teaming up with Jaime, though never to the point that it interfered with how her and then their operations worked. She had been taught that she was ugly since she was a child, as an adult it was just a continuous lesson.
But now, now she didn’t mind at all. Because, now, the more angry Jaime got that their society couldn’t fathom his association with her, the more he felt he had to endevour to prove to her that they were wrong. His passions had always been high, but after a heist where she was in any way insulted, which was really most heists, they were even higher. She had learned after several incidents to take the day after a heist off from work, lest she stumble into her office late, sore, and covered in love bites that she had to unconvincingly pass off as mysterious bruises.
She had never thought it possible that he would choose her, fuck her… love her, but he did and she did. And gods, if anyone even thought to survey her small dingy apartment in Flea Bottom, they would see evidence of him there every night, not just hovering over her shoulder as she hacked into any files that were still foolishly uploaded onto the cloud or fucking her on the one luxury item she owned, but cooking and cleaning and annoying the crap out of her with his incessant teasing while he span her around the living room.
One day they would retire from all the subterfuge. Hopefully, it would be the day they weren’t needed anymore. Jaime promised her it would definitely be the day that the world would know he loved her. She understood the sentiment of that promise, but she didn’t need it.
She knew he loved her every time their eyes met, every time they touched, with every tile he scrubbed clean even though he hadn’t scrubbed anything in his life before he met her, and every meal he helped cook even if he always managed to burn a few things. She knew he loved and trusted her with his life every time he slipped into her hand, what was ultimately his fate.
Partners. In every way, they would always be partners.