Chapter Text
"I'm not going to marry you," Jaime tells Brienne one night. It is just past his tenth name-day and they are in an old, unused store room in Casterly, where they would sneak off so he could show her what his arms master had taught him that day.
He offered to teach Cersei the same way, once, but she refused because their mother and father forbade her to learn. There was nobody to forbid Brienne, at least no one in Casterly, since nobody knew he was teaching her, anyway. So long as they didn't ask about it, they weren't doing anything wrong, Jaime reasoned to himself.
Brienne looks confused at his declaration. "I know."
"I'm going to be a knight and my sister and I will stay together always," Jaime adds.
Brienne flinches a bit. Cersei does not like her, they all know it, but Cersei dislikes nearly everyone.
"I know," she repeats. She doesn't look disappointed, only envious that he gets to be a knight and he hates that. Brienne is a good fighter, she should get to be a knight if she wants to.
"But we could be friends," he tells her, his heart beating uncomfortably fast.
Brienne favors him with a one of her rare, small smiles. "I'd like that."
*~*~*~*~*
He met Lady Brienne at the age of 9, when he found her crying in a corner of the garden at Casterly Rock, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. "Who are you?"
Her face and eyes were red and she swiped at them with the sleeve of her dress. "Brienne of Tarth."
Jaime didn't know why she was there and Brienne did not know for certain either. Some relation of her mother's was one of his father's bannermen, it seemed. But keeping her company would keep the septon from chasing him to lessons, and he didn't like that she was sad, so he sat down and talked to her. She was too shy to speak to him at first, so he told her about Casterly, about the mines where he and Cersei would play, about the cliffs and jumping into the sea.
Eventually she told him about Tarth, about sailing on the ships around the island and climbing mountains. She told him of her brother who had died and how her mother had died as well and her father's new wife was never happy no matter what Brienne did to try and please her.
Jaime put an arm around her shoulders as she started to cry again and told her of his own mother's death, of his baby brother who he loved despite everything.
It was Cersei who discovered them there and demanded to know who the intruder was. Jaime could see the anger in his twin's eyes at the sight of him comforting the girl, but his own anger rose in response. "This is Lady Brienne of Tarth," he snapped at Cersei. "She's just lost her mother and baby sister." He stopped himself there. Lady Brienne might not want Cersei to know everything she had told him.
He had never kept a secret from Cersei before.
*~*~*~*~*
He notices Lady Brienne observing his sword training nearly every day for a week before he dares to speak to her about it. He sees her mimicking the movements in her lap with her hands as he watches the arms master demonstrate something to the squires.
It's a month later that he offers to teach her, one afternoon as they walked in the gardens after Brienne's lessons were over but while Cersei was still huddled with her septa over her needlework.
They manage to keep it secret for a few months, but eventually one of the other boys finds out. He knows better than to fight Jaime, so instead he and several of the other boys corner Brienne in the stables. She is taller than all of them, and stronger, but that does not stop Jaime from throwing himself into the fight the second he sees it. (Tyrion had overheard the boys talking about Brienne and came to tell Jaime.)
A few of the older men finally appear and break up the fight. The squires are punished for hurting Lady Brienne and Jaime expects a lecture, but his arms master pats his shoulder and tells him a knight would always defend the innocent and he did well.
Cersei kisses him and says she's proud but her eyes are cold and angry when she does it.
Most shockingly, his father doesn't say anything.
After that the arms master says Brienne and Jaime should train together under his watch so that at the least the girl's reputation could be protected. But a month later Lord Tywin sends word that Jaime will go out to foster and that is the end of that.
*~*~*~*~*
"She's ugly," Cersei observes as they sit at the large table in the banquet hall the night before he leaves. He starts training, really training, to be a knight tomorrow, and he has been beside himself for days. But the only person who shared his excitement is sitting at a side table, hunching down and not looking up from her plate. Tyrion is pretending to be happy for him but is frightened of being left, and his sister is focused on the future, when he becomes a knight and they can be together forever.
His sister noticed where his eyes had gone, of course.
"She is." Agreeing with Cersei was always the easiest choice and in this case, Jaime can't argue. Brienne is ugly, she says so herself. Even if she weren't aware of it, he feels most of the world goes out of its way to remind her just as often as people tell Cersei she is pretty. It doesn't sit right with him. It's not as though Brienne can do anything about being taller than him other than hope she stops growing, and she cannot change the shape of her face or her freckles or her teeth. Why then do people feel the need to tell her to her about her looks so often?
Besides, her face and her freckles didn't matter compared to the look in her eye when she wielded a sword.
"She's nothing to you," Cersei adds, her voice sharp.
He turns his most winning smile on his twin. "Of course. She's not you."
Cersei does not notice the relieved sigh he lets out when she changes topics.
Brienne will go to her relation's home outside Lannisport after he leaves. Tyrion is the only person sorry she is going but Jaime is relieved she will not be here alone with Cersei. Not after what happened to Melara.
*~*~*~*~*
The life of a squire is a difficult one, Jaime learns quickly. Lord Crakehall warned him in ominous tones the night of his arrival that Jaime should expect no special treatment for being a Lannister, not in his company. That was fine with Jaime. He didn't want to be treated differently. He didn't need to be. He was there to become a knight, that was all that mattered.
And if, that first night, alone in his cot in the room he shared with the other squires, he found himself shedding a few tears of loneliness and longing for home and his bed and his sister and brother, no one was the wiser in the morning.
The other lads learned quickly not to speak ill of any Lannisters in Jaime's hearing, at least. After a few months he finds, to his surprise, that he has become friends with some of them. His father had reminded him over and over that these boys were his competitors, that he had to be better than them at everything, and he tries to be. But they spend long hours together and when Jaime offers to train with a few of the other boys to help them get better instead of only gloating over his skill, he starts to have more fun.
Some nights he falls dead asleep, still dressed because his arms are too sore to lift them above his head. Some nights he lies away for long hours, thinking of home, of Cersei and Tyrion, and of Brienne.
Some nights he and his friends sneak out of their cots to listen to the older men drink and gamble do… other things. The older squires explained, in the crudest terms possible, who the women were, and introduced the young lads to the concept of fucking. It is very different than what Jaime's old septon had said about intimacy between a man and his wife, the duties of the marriage bed to produce heirs and nothing more.
Later in his life, Jaime will remember that he was the one who shared this knowledge with his sister, and he will feel responsible. He had not intended it badly in the moment. He had been showing off after Cersei said something cutting about him only being good for swinging a sword about now and he had blurted out a crude response that would've gotten him slapped had the septa overheard him. But Cersei did not know what he meant, so he explained it to her, which had lead to them kissing in a way that was very different than the childish kisses they used to share.
She had been far more interested in this subject than in anything related to Jaime's fighting skills. For the next few years, each time they saw one another, they met in secret to share new things they've learned. Jaime never stopped to ask himself where, exactly, Cersei was getting her information from. Then their father takes Cersei to King's Landing, separating Jaime from his twin.
Brienne is sent back to the Stormlands at some point, though not home to Tarth, he learns from her letters, which are always short but arrive faithfully. She talks more about the weather and the landscape than herself. She is as uncomfortable talking about herself on the page as she is in person. Jaime misses her more than he expected. She would be so happy to be with him and learning to fight too. It isn't fair.
When he wins his first melee, at three and ten, he finds paper and ink at the first opportunity to tell Brienne about it. No one will understand his elation the same way, not even Tyrion.
The evening of the day he is knighted by Ser Arthur Dayne, Jaime thinks he would give anything for Brienne to be there to hear the story, and more for her to have seen it. Instead he painstakingly writes her a description of the campaign, saving Lord Sumner's life and even crossing swords with the Smiling Knight.
It doesn't feel real until he looks at the pages of his sloppy writing spread out on the table, his new signature scrawled across the bottom, "Ser Jaime Lannister."