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“Ned,” the king says, “I think he should go with you.”

What in the seven fucking hells, Jaime thinks.

“What – sorry?” Ned Stark asks, sounding properly horrified. Of course he would. Given how he looked at Jaime when he walked into the throne room and found him with Aerys’s body lying on the ground, this plan probably does not work well for him.

The new king shrugs, entirely too lighthearted. Jaime thinks he could have stayed in King’s Landing for Cersei, even if guarding this man isn’t a good prospect, but –

He couldn’t have been as bad as –

“I understand he paid us a service,” Robert Baratheon goes on, and Jaime wants to kick him in his fucking teeth, “but I’d rather not have kingslayers on my guard, you know, for precaution. And I certainly cannot reward him with Casterly Rock now, can I?”

As if I fucking want it. Jaime also hates how they’re talking about him as if he’s not even there.

“Never mind that his father might get ideas. I agreed with marrying his daughter, but he can’t also have the son unpunished. He goes to Winterfell with you for a while and then we shall see.”

“I imagine you will need this cloak back, Your Grace,” Jaime hisses, but Baratheon just shakes his head.

“You can keep it,” he says. “If I decide that we shall see, I might want a competent swordsman on my guard. So, pack your bags, ser. You’re going to Winterfell.”

Fuck that, Jaime thinks, but he knows he can’t refuse.

Not when it’s a miracle he’s not dead, and just because he is the reason Baratheon could claim his throne and it would be fairly hypocritical of them to kill the man who killed the king they rebelled against, otherwise –

He kind of wants to cry, but he’s not going to even assume that. Not in front of them.

Honestly, what the fucking hell, is Baratheon seriously shipping him to Winterfell like he was some kind of cattle because of course a kingslayer should not go around court, but at the same time he doesn’t want him to inherit Casterly and so his father’s kept somehow under control?

Fuck, he is.

The only positive part of it is that Stark looks more horrified at the prospect than Jaime himself is.

“Robert –”

“Ned. It’s not going to be for a long while, I’m sure.”

Stark sighs, obviously realizing it’s a lost cause to argue an already taken decision. “Very well. Ser, pack your bags. I am leaving on the morrow – I should like to see my son as soon as possible.”

“Of course, my lord,” Jaime replies. “The one that’s not the babe you’re bringing with?”

Stark stares at him with such angry grey eyes, it feels like looking inside a storm. “Ser, if you know what’s good for you, you shall never open your mouth on the topic again. Understood?”

“Understood,” Jaime spits back, and goes to pack his meager belongings.

As if there’s anything he wants to bring back from this nest of vipers.

And now he has to go North dying of cold with a man who loathes him openly and who has no bloody fucking clue of why he did what he did, that he saved the entire goddamned city, and that Aerys sure as hell was no fucking helpless maiden or harmless old man.

But what does he know.

That’s what breaking oaths does to you, Jaime thinks bitterly as he packs what clothes he has in his rooms. Of course he only gets looks of loathing as he walks through the corridors.

What do you all know, he thinks and doesn’t say.

He doesn’t even attempt to pass in front of the rooms that used to be Elia Martell’s.

He can’t fucking think about it. Of course he knows he couldn’t have done anything, not when he was the only Kingsguard around the Red Keep and if he hadn’t been with Aerys they would all have died regardless, but still –

If only I had been quicker maybe she wouldn’t have been dead, and I know my father was behind it, but of course Stark thinks I knew.

He wishes Cersei were here. But Cersei is at Casterly. Preparing to travel here, no doubt, because she’s going to marry the bloody King, but not she’s not here yet. Tyrion isn’t here either.

And Arthur Dayne is, of course, dead.

It’s sad, realizing that that’s the amount of people he wishes he could talk to, and none of them are here.

--

Jaime does try to sleep, that night.

Trying, being the key word.

--

The next day, no one asks him why he doesn’t speak or why does he look so haggard.

He wouldn’t tell them he dreamed he was too late and the entire city erupted in wildfire just as he walked inside the throne room just to hear Aerys laugh, and of course Ned Stark doesn’t ask, and Jaime can only think, I killed the man who burned alive your father and brother and scorn and judgment are all that you have to offer me?

From someone who holds honor in such high regard and who was obviously very displeased with the way Elia’s children (and Elia herself) died, sure as the seven hells he really can’t seem to look beyond his own bloody nose, can he?

He wants to nag the man and ask him what will his lady wife think when he shows up with another woman’s baby. He really wants to. But he remembers how Ned Stark looked like when he asked, and he doesn’t, because he likes to think he cares for his own skin.

Stark really was angry, though.

Could the mother have been Ashara Dayne? Could be. It might explain why he’s so sensitive about it. She’s dead, after all, and by her own hand, and he cannot imagine Ned Stark being proud of causing her demise.

Still. From what he’s seen, the infamous bastard son is all his father. There isn’t a drop of Dayne blood in him if the mother really was Ashara, and he’d know, since he’s been around Arthur for a hell of a long time.

He shrugs and rides on. As if he bloody fucking gives a damn. Stark can hang, for all he cares, and if his wife is displeased with his behavior, even fucking better. Serves him well for not caring about his precious honor when it was about him, and serves him well for judging everyone else without knowing shit about anything.

What would you have done in my place, Lord Stark? Jaime wants to ask, and then keeps his bloody mouth shut.

It’s a long ride to Winterfell, after all, and he’d like to make through it in peace.

--

What Jaime’s entirely right about is that Lady Catelyn does not appreciate Ned Stark showing up with a bastard boy in tow.

Lady Catelyn, though, is apparently more reasonable than a lot of other people might have been, and accepts it when Stark pretty much pleads her to let the baby grow up with their other son – who’s all his mother, incidentally. Jaime hears it just because his room is next to theirs, for the moment – it was the only available accommodation.

He sighs and hopes that Lord Stark is better to his lady wife than most men are, especially than Aerys was.

--

That first night, he wakes up screaming himself raw, and he knows they must have heard him, but he says nothing the following morning, and Stark says nothing either.

Lady Stark sends him a concerned look, though.

“Ser,” she asks as they break their fast, “are you doing all right?”

“Perfectly,” Jaime replies curtly. He knows she’s just being concerned, and he knows she knows he’s not, but he hasn’t told Ned Stark, sure as the seven hells he’s not going to tell her.

She leaves him to his bacon with the face of someone who’s entirely not convinced of it.

Later, he’s moved into another hallway entirely – he figures that no one wants him to wake up Robb Stark with his screaming, when he’s not up already.

He ends up next to the room where the wet nurses are staying, along with Jon Snow, of course.

He kind of hoped they’d stay awake because of both him and the blasted child, but it turns out he is the only one out of the two of them who screams at night. Whenever he hears Ned Stark’s bastard crying at night, it’s never screaming. It’s always some kind of pitiful sobbing that ends not long after it’s started. That baby doesn’t even need a bloody wet nurse anyway, but where would they put him, all things considered, since he certainly couldn’t share a room with Lady Stark?

Jaime hopes that Lord Stark pays them well, and goes back to sleep just to wake up not long late with Aerys’s face burning behind his eyelids.

--

Fuck that mad bastard, he thinks one morning after he decides he’s not going back to sleep. He’s dead and he has to come to me even after he should be buried for the entire bloody continent. Fuck him.

He slams the door behind him as he goes for a stroll.

Maybe he’ll clear his head. Some. Maybe.

--

And then he runs into Catelyn Stark, who apparently had the same idea, since she’s walking across the empty yard with her redhead firstborn clutched to her chest.

He scoffs – damn. He’s going to have to change his plans.

“My lady,” he grits through his teeth, figuring that it won’t to to be too rude. “Have a good morning.”

“Ser, wait,” she calls after him as he turns his back on her.

“What?” He thinks he’s exhausted his capacity for good manners today. Too bad, since it’s barely dawn.

“I – I would like to speak to you.”

“Here?”

“It seems like we had the same idea,” she says. “The godswood is over there. You can walk with me, if it’s good with you.”

It’s not, but he’s tired and he hasn’t slept and he did want to take a walk.

“Very well,” he says, and falls into step next to her. He glances at the baby in her arms. He thinks, she’s what, one year older than I am?

He thinks of all the times Cersei promised him that they would have a child someday.

He shakes his head and walks forward.

“So,” he tells Lady Stark, “what did you want to talk about, my lady?”

She hoists the baby up higher.

“You aren’t sleeping well,” she says, and it’s not a question.

“I’m not,” he agrees, “thanks for inquiring.”

“My lord husband doesn’t either,” she goes on.

“I beg your pardon?”

“He doesn’t sleep well, either. I had imagined he wouldn’t. But – he doesn’t scream the way you do – I can hear you all the way to our rooms.”

“My lady, are you expecting me to apologize?”

“No. I know it cannot be helped. Still, I was wondering.”

“What were you wondering?” He knows he’s being unnecessarily hostile, but she’s looking at him with pitiful eyes, as if she can’t understand whether she should pity him or scorn him or remind him that he broke his precious oath to that mad fool, and it’s not a look he likes. Any of those looks.

She stops and shakes his head. “Ser, I don’t know you. I don’t have much reason to think highly of you, given that you killed your king. However, my husband seems to think you’re an oathbreaker of the worst kind and that you do not regret your actions, but I don’t think men who don’t regret a thing they do sleep that badly.”

“Oh, now it’s clearer,” Jaime mutters. “Well, my lady, that would be somewhat correct, but you’re assuming that I regret something and that’s what causes me to keep half of your household awake.”

“Am I wrong?”

He laughs. “You’re less wrong than your lord husband is,” Jaime finally says. “But he’s right on one thing.”

“Which would be?”

“My lady, I regret absolutely nothing of what I did, and I had my reasons. But before you proceed to judge me and declare me a lost cause like your precious lord husband saw fit to do, ask him if he would have relished standing in front of his father and brother when they died. I think Lord Stark knows, but do please inform him that burned human flesh doesn’t have a pleasant smell, and seeing a man being slowly strangled without being able to lift a finger to help him because you swore your service to the man who’s murdering him isn’t much of a nice experience, either. Ask him that.”

“Ser –”

“Have a good day, my lady,” he spits, and then he storms back towards the castle.

He slams the room behind him and doesn’t get out of it for the entire fucking day, which is admittedly a very bad choice, because the only thing he can do is sleep, and if he sleeps he wakes up drenched in cold sweat and smelling burned flesh and hearing Aerys laugh and laugh and laugh –

And then he hears pitiful sobbing coming from the next room over for a while, at least until some maid or wet nurse or Ned Stark whatever comes by and calms down the poor kid.

Jaime thinks he can relate to the goddamned pitiful sobbing, except that he has some pride and he’s not going to cower in front of anyone or to show up in public when he’s not able to hold Stark’s stare and tell him where he can shove his damned honor.

Says the one who started a rebellion while Jaime saved the lives of the entire city, but he is the one with shit for honor.

Fine, given that his bloody father ordered the deaths of those two poor children along with Elia’s, Lord Stark does have a reason to distrust his family, but would it have been too much to at least ask him why?

Fuck, he could have a few choice words with his father – why kill Elia and the children when she’d have brought them back to Dorne? It’s not as if he ever guarded them since of course it was the easiest job and it was never left to him, and he couldn’t been in two places at once after Rhaegar brought all of the Kingsguard away from the Red Keep, but she had always been perfectly nice and courteous to him and Rhaenys had a lovely laugh and Aegon was a fine-looking child, and he had decided he loathed Robert Baratheon the moment he smiled when he saw their dead bodies.

And Stark disapproved, but it’s not as if he’s told Baratheon their friendship is over, is it?

And then Jaime is the hypocrite.

Stark’s son keeps on sobbing on the other side of the door and Jaime resolutely does nothing.

--

He doesn’t speak to Lady Stark for another two weeks, because he avoids her resolutely.

That is, until she ambushes him in the godswood. She’s always bringing the damned baby with, but then again he can understand she’d be loath to not have him in her sight.

“Have you asked your husband?” He asks when she sits down to him and says nothing.

“No,” she says, “but I asked him why do you sleep so badly, according to him.”

“And what does he say?”

“That maybe it’s the weight of your actions.”

“And what do you say?”

She looks at him with huge blue eyes that are the exact same as her child’s and who don’t seem to impressed with either him or her lord husband.

“That if you don’t regret it, then it’s not that. Or maybe not just that.”

“Fine. No, it’s not, by the way. I regret nothing.”

“Did you kill him because he forced you to watch my – Brandon and Rickard Stark die?”

Jaime snorts. “That certainly helped taking the decision, but no, my lady, that wasn’t why I did it, or I’d have done it a long time ago. And maybe someone else would have been more grateful than about anyone else, King Robert included.”

“Someone else?”

“My lady, pardon me for the blunt question that you will no doubt find inappropriate, but does your lord husband care for your pleasure when you bed him?”

“Ser, I don’t see how –”

“Because I can assure you, my lady, that if he does, you’re luckier than Queen Rhaella ever was. The Mad King did not care for that. Actually, he did not care if she wanted him in her bed at all. Certainly, she’d have been glad to have him out of her life. Or maybe she’d have been glad that someone in the Kingsguard raised a hand to help her, since no one of us ever did, but let your husband keep on believing that Aerys deserved anything but a sword in the back. Excuse me,” he says, and then stands up and leaves, knowing she won’t follow him with a baby to carry around.

Good riddance.

--

His room is empty and Ned Stark’s bastard is still sobbing in the next room over.

He kind of wanted to see if he could get some more sleep, damn it, and of course when he does get some, having a sobbing child in the next room over means he ends up having a very, very horrible dream about the poor children he saw draped on red sheets, courtesy of Gregor Clegane.

He throws up in his chamber pot.

The maid says nothing when she brings it out of the room.

--

A month later, Lady Stark is still watching him as if she’s trying to figure him out, Ned Stark is still looking as if he wishes he didn’t have to share his bread with the worst oathbreaker in the Seven Kingdoms, both his sons seem to be fond of each other in the way children of not even two are, Jaime is still sleeping like shit and the only thing he can reasonably spend his days doing is training. Too bad that Winterfell’s master at arms is no match for him whatsoever and about no one else is, and the North is cold, the food is all right but no match for what you can get in a warmer climate, and Jaime thinks he will have to spend at least part of the winter here and he thinks he’ll go fucking insane. Because his room is silent, except for what goes on in the next, and when it’s silent he can’t escape thinking about Aerys or anything else that he had to witness since Harrenhall, and he wishes he couldn’t, and it’s the only thing he can think of instead –

And it would help if Cersei sent him letters, but for now only Tyrion ever wrote some.

Of course.

In one, he told Jaime to go see the Wall because his books say it’s a magical place that has no equal in Westeros, and maybe he could go see it and write him about it, because of course their father won’t let him visit the North, never mind the Wall?

Jaime wishes it was, and he knows Stark is never going to let him ride off anywhere on his own, either.

--

Then, one evening, there’s a knock on the door.

It’s Lady Stark. She’s alone, for once.

“Where’s your son?” Jaime asks.

“With his father and – Jon Snow,” she settles on. “And I think I should like to talk to you.”

“Again?”

“Ser,” she says, “you’re not telling the whole truth, and it’s obvious that you think that if my husband knew why you really killed Aerys he’d change his mind about you, and I am honestly curious of why you keep it hidden, if it would.”

“So what do you want?”

“I want to know why you broke your oaths.”

She’s staring straight at him, and Jaime has an idea that this is the kind of woman you do not antagonize lest you’re a complete madman.

Is he one?

“And why do you care?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

He laughs, bitterly. “The King didn’t bother asking. My father didn’t bother asking. Your husband walked into that room and sent me such a loathing look, I’m surprised it didn’t kill me on the spot. Why should you, that’s the question, since no one seems to think my reasons are important.”

“Fine. I’m asking now.”

Gods be good. She’s staring straight at him, she’s not backing down, and she sounds like she’s willing to not think him the worst oathbreaker in the realm for now.

Maybe –

Maybe he should try her out and see if she’s another hypocrite or not.

“Fine. Then you shall have your answer. Aerys took me into the Kingsguard when I was fifteen. I meant my oaths when I swore them, regardless of what your husband thinks. Arthur Dayne knighted me, does he really think I went into the Kingsguard out of scorn? I wanted it. I thought it would be a great honor and everything else your husband most probably believes. Then I found out that being in the Kingsguard meant not ever questioning what your king does, even if it’s raping his own wife and you have to stand outside the door every other night, or killing whoever displeases him even just slightly, or roasting a man alive inside his armor while his son chokes to death trying to save him. But then again, it also means doing nothing when your king has realized he lost a war and decides to have the last laugh by blowing up King’s Landing.”

He thinks that all blood has left Lady Stark’s face – she’s white as a sheet and she’s come closer to him, slightly. “He – he wanted to do what?”

“There were stacks of wildfire under the city. I heard him talk to some maester who was supposed to carry out his orders and light them up. He was about to kill half a million people, and that poor terrified arsehole he gave the order to would have done it. I know he would. On top of that, I had just been told that I would burn like all the others if I didn’t bring him my father’s head, but that really was not the most relevant thing, against the entirety of King’s Landing dying, among which the army who was approaching, I suppose.”

“Ser –”

“It was either killing him or that. And of course I killed him. What was I supposed to do, let him burn the entire city and us with him, and the entirety of the population? And did that mad bastard even deserve to live? He tortured your husband’s brother and father as they died, and they weren’t the only ones. He was going to blow up the entire city. He was mad for a fucking reason, and I had to see him getting madder and madder for two whole years that I spent ever regretting pledging myself to that insane bastard. Yes, I killed him. No, I don’t regret it. But all of that is what I dream of at night, so pardon me if I sleep poorly, my lady,” he finishes, and to his horror he realizes that his voice has broken on the last couple of words, and that his vision is blurred, and –

“Fuck,” he blurts, wiping at his face. Shit, shit, why did he do this, why is he crying, why –

“Ser,” Lady Stark says, moving closer, putting a hand on his shoulder very tentatively and squeezing it. “Ser.”

“You can go,” he says. “Now you know. Are you happy?”

She shakes her head and sits next to him on the bed. Why?

“No,” she says. “I mean, I’m not happy that this is why you cannot sleep, because if you’re not lying – and I don’t think you are – it’s quite unfair at best.”

“Unfair?”

“It seems to me like my husband might have been very wrong about you. Or at least in assuming you care for nothing.”

“I –”

“You cared for too much, it seems to me,” she sighs. “I don’t know what anyone else might have done, but half a million against one mad king doesn’t sound like a hard choice to me. And you’re crying.”

“… Wait, are you –”

“Ser, I’m saying I believe you, what were you thinking I was doing?”

For a moment, he’s just so flabbergasted he can’t even compute it.

“You – you do?”

“Either you’re a very good mummer or you were not acting when you gave me your little speech before. Why wouldn’t I?”

He says nothing – he hadn’t thought she would, or that she would so easily.

And she’s sending him a fairly sympathetic look, on top of that.

“I – because no one else did?” He asks, figuring that at this point he might as well tell her the truth.

“They – they should have asked,” she agrees.

“As if. They didn’t even think about it. And now I’m exiled here because the king doesn’t trust me to not kill him, as if he gave me any reason to, and your husband also thinks I’m complete scum with shit for honor because my father ordered Rhaegar’s children dead, as if I knew.”

“Didn’t you?”

“How? Of course I didn’t. Gods be good, I swore that I’d protect them, if I had known I wouldn’t have waited for them to come to the throne. Did you see me taking it? And then again, Rhaegar only left me in King’s Landing. How was I supposed to protect them and keep an eye on Aerys at the same time?”

“You couldn’t. And no, you didn’t take it,” she agrees.

“That’s because I didn’t fucking want it. I saw what it did to Aerys, I was not in any goddamn hurry of following in his footsteps. I – I meant my bloody vows when I swore them. I – I couldn’t believe he actually ordered them dead. I’d have tried to do something if I had known,” he says, belatedly realizing to his own horror that he’s crying in small, harsh fits, and he wishes he could stop himself from doing it but he can’t and the thing is – is – “I couldn’t give a damn about Aerys. He deserved it. I don’t regret that. But I regret that they died.” He doesn’t think his voice has ever sounded so small in his entire life.

He doesn’t expect Lady Stark’s hand to touch the back of his head tentatively, and he doesn’t even try to get out of it when she cautiously puts an arm around his shoulders. Shit. He can’t believe she is trying to make him feel better.

“One can hear it in your voice, ser,” she says quietly. “I – I will try and talk to Ned. Maybe he’ll come around.”

“Don’t you even dare telling him –”

“It’s your story to tell, my lord, not mine. But now, can I just tell you I am sorry that no one asked you why you did it?”

“Yes,” he blurts, “fine, you can.”

He expects her to leave, but he doesn’t, not until she hears sobbing coming from the next room over and she goes rigid for a moment.

“You don’t have to be here,” Jaime tells her, tiredly.

“It’s just –” She starts, then shakes her head. “It’s just, I married him because it was my duty, he leaves for war just after the bedding, and then he comes back with another woman’s child?”

“I understand it,” he says, and it’s true, he does, “but from what I heard and from what I see, your husband is honorable to a fault. Whatever the reasons are for that baby’s existence, I don’t think you should be worried in that sense.”

“Ser, are you defending him?” She smiles.

“I am stating a goddamned fact, my lady.”

She looks at him for a moment, two, then –

“Call me Cat if you wish,” she says, “I think we’re past formalities and you’re the only other person in this castle who’s not from the North. There’s no point.”

The last think he’d have thought this morning would be that he’d tell her, “Then just call me Jaime as well, if it please you,” but as she leaves the room, he decides it’s nothing he regrets.

Not for now.

Fuck, she believes him.

He’s so elated at the prospect that he bursts out crying again, good thing no one sees him.

--

In the next few weeks, he can see Stark looking at him strangely and he knows it’s because Cat might have tried to convince him to talk to Jaime, but he’s not doing that yet.

Meanwhile, every other day whenever Jon Snow is in the room next to his and not spending time with his half-brother, he hears pitiful sobbing all the damned time, as if everyone who sets foot in that room or is paid to look after him or whatever assumes that letting him do it is the best way to make sure he stops.

Maybe they’re right and maybe not, but sure as hell it’s not good for his nerves, and one day, after he’s been turning in his bed for a very long time and can’t even close his eyes without the constant sobbing in the background, he decides that Ned Stark needs to find new staff to look after his son, because it’s beyond ridiculous.

He leaves his own room and walks into the next one, huffing and staring down a maid who’s indeed cleaning the room without paying attention at the crying baby in the nearby small crib.

“He’s been crying for a hell of a long time,” Jaime tells her.

“No one told me he was my responsibility,” she says, and Jaime shakes his head as he moves over and looks at the baby instead – he’s sitting up inside the crib and he looks wholly goddamned miserable under his mass of dark hair and with his pitiful, large gray eyes shining with tears.

And he’s still sobbing.

“Gods, you’re useless” he scoffs, “I guess I’ll have to do it myself.”

It’s not as if he’s never done this with Tyrion a million times, he thinks, picking the baby up.

He stops crying maybe a moment later – the hell, Jaime thinks, and then the baby reaches out to grab at his hair and Jaime realizes that maybe he just wanted some human contact, poor thing. Not that he can fault Cat for not even wanting to see him, but still – he’s cute, and he didn’t choose his father, and he certainly didn’t choose the incompetent maids who should look after him and don’t.

“Sorry about your lot in life,” Jaime mutters. “Seems like you didn’t get it that great. Not that I can’t relate.” He doesn’t even have to tell the kid to be careful with his hair since he’s pulling at it but very shallowly and not enough to hurt. “Aren’t you heavy,” Jaime sighs. “Something tells me you’re at least as old as your brother if I’m not wrong –,” he says inconsequentially, and then he does the math.

If Jon Snow is as old as his brother, or at least in that same range, then who the fuck could Stark have had him with if he was off rebelling? Sure, maybe a tavern wench or a camp follower, but honest, Jaime cannot see Ned Stark screwing that kind of woman or a whore, even worse. Never mind that if he does the math, one year or so ago was about the time when Stark got to the Tower of Joy

(and killed Arthur Dayne)

wasn’t it, so how would Stark know some nameless tavern wench or whore he had screwed could have been with child?

The more he thinks about it, the more it doesn’t add up.

He leaves and moves back into his own room, sitting on the bed, putting the baby in front of him. He takes a better look at him.

Jon is definitely around the age he had placed him at. He does look like Ned, all right, but –

Wait. A year and something else ago, Ned was at the tower of Joy, wasn’t he?

His sister was at the Tower of Joy. And his sister was –

She ran with Rhaegar, didn’t she?

Jaime feels like the ground has just been pulled from under his feet. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t have.

Then he looks at Jon’s grey eyes, which are… not long as Ned Stark’s and Lyanna’s. No, he remembers her eyes. They also were longer and not as round. Nor with lashes this long, but never mind that, either.

Because Jaime recognizes the eye shape.

He does. It’s not the color – that’s all Stark’s. But the shape –

Oh, fuck him sideways, Jaime thinks as he grabs Jon and holds him up again, pulling him to his chest and realizing that unless he’s colossally wrong Rhaegar still had a last living son and he’s right there in front of him.

The baby immediately goes quiet again the moment Jaime does, and it causes a pang in his heart that he couldn’t even describe.

Shit. Shit, what was Ned thinking, Jaime wonders, and then –

Well, all right, he actually was thinking straight because Robert would not have appreciated another Targaryen in Westeros, alive, wouldn’t he? It made sense he’d pass him off as his, and admittedly he can see Stark accepting a stain on his precious honor for his sister’s and his family’s sake. That makes sense. But why wouldn’t he tell Cat? She asked him about his kingslaying, he has a feeling she’d understand and maybe then she’d be nicer to the poor kid, or at least she wouldn’t pretend he doesn’t exist, but then again fine, he’d make her complicit of treason.

Still –

He leans back. The baby in his arms is honestly looking up at him as if he’s overjoyed of his presence which makes no bloody sense because children that young shouldn’t be, but who even knows. For a moment, he thinks of how happy his brother was when he saw him back in the day (and never his father or sister), and he thinks, what if Cat never changes her mind and keeps on ignoring him, how would he even grow up.

And then he realizes –

Maybe I still do have a chance at honor, after all. He has the last of Rhaegar’s children here. He swore to protect them. Maybe he couldn’t do it for Elia or Aegon or Rhaenys and he’s absolutely gutted and he will always be, but –

“Maybe,” he whispers, not moving at all when Jon’s hand closes around his fingertip, “Maybe I could do it for you,” he goes on, his voice trembling, and –

He had thought the part of him who cared for vows and oaths was dead, but maybe seeing that someone seemed to care about his feelings on the matter didn’t kill it after all, and now –

Now he thinks, Arthur Dayne’s dead, Rhaegar’s dead, Lyanna’s dead, Elia and the children are dead, of course you ended up here. Of course, you did, and who’s even going to know except Ned Stark? He can’t help wondering why in the name of everything would Arthur have died to make sure Stark did not get to the top of the tower, though maybe it was for Rhaegar, and Jaime doesn’t know what the hell the both of them were thinking, but he’s learned enough about what people might do for their oaths when they conflict, and that it’s not usually the right thing or the smartest one.

Still.

He’s still around. He wanted to keep those vows. He loathes to be known as an oathbreaker, he does, but who even cares, if he can keep at least one of those damned oaths after all?

He has a clue Lord Stark would gut himself before accepting any pledges of his, though, but first of all he was an idiot for not telling his wife, and second thing, it’s not as if Jaime has to pledge to him.

“Fuck that,” he says, and storms out of the room, child in his arms and all, until he reaches Stark’s room, knocks and enters without waiting for a reply.

Both Catelyn and Ned Stark are in it, thankfully clothed, the lady checking over her firstborn, and Jaime doesn’t miss Stark’s horrified face when he sees he’s carrying his supposed son.

“Lannister, what are you –”

“My lord, do you think I’m bloody daft?”

“… What?”

“And most of all, when were you planning to tell her? Or were you planning to tell her at all?”

At that, Catelyn’s eyes go slightly narrow as she stares at him and then at her husband and then at him again. “What should he have told me?”

Jaime looks back at Ned Stark and is very pleased to see most blood has drained from his face.

“Ser –” He starts, “I don’t know what you think you know –”

“My lord, I was at the goddamned Red Keep and I knew when Arthur left it and I knew when Rhaegar did, and I know when you got there and when you came back. There is no bloody way you could have found time to bed anyone who wasn’t a camp whore and have a bastard child of his age – no, not even if it was Ashara Dayne, he should have been older.”

“Lannister –”

“Never mind that I might have been forced to guard his father, but you don’t think I’ve ever seen Rhaegar up close?”

Suddenly, understanding dawns on Catelyn’s face. “Ser, are you saying –”

“I’m saying your lord husband got very lucky that he could pass him for his son, but Rhaegar’s eyes were exactly the same shape as his and the timing adds up a lot better if he’s his nephew.”

Jaime can see that he has pretty much done the equivalent of opening the floor under Stark’s feet – when he looks up at Jaime again, his brow is sweating cold sweat, and he looks like someone who knows he could suffer serious consequences for this.

“Is it true?” Catelyn asks, sounding half-surprised and half-horrified, but more at herself than at her husband – Jaime can see he’s looking at the baby with an apologetic face rather than angry.

Stark sighs and stands up. “I didn’t want you to make you complicit in treason, my lady,” he says, his voice lowering. “But I guess now you are. And we should probably plan a hasty escape.”

“Why would we?” Catelyn presses.

Stark glances at Jaime. Of course.

“Ah,” Jaime says, “and the wolf judges the lion all over again.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Stark, you’re assuming that the first thing I will do now is writing a letter to my father and informing him of this.”

“… Why, won’t you?”

Jaime shakes his head and doesn’t even try to stop himself from laughing – as if. “My lord, honestly, you really should reconsider your judging ways. You might think I hold my oaths in very little regard, or that my oath to my king trumped everything. Until it did, I had to stand outside his door while he raped his wife, or to watch him murder people just because he could, or to not lift a finger while he cooked your own father inside his armor as your brother strangled himself to death, which are all very honorable things that I am sure you approve of. Then I decided that my oath to protect the weak trumped the one I owed him, and you should thank me, because if I hadn’t killed the mad bastard he would have ignited a stack of wildfire under King’s Landing and blown up the entire city and most probably your army as it got inside it, as well. If you think my father informed me of his plans, you’re sorely wrong. Why, has my little tale turned you silent?”

It – it has, because Stark is just staring at him in…

Is it shame? I hope it is, Jaime thinks.

“However,” he goes on, “that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to uphold my vows when I took them. By the way, I was your sister’s age when I took them – when she disappeared with Rhaegar, I mean. Would you have expected her or someone like her to uphold them without even questioning their rightfulness once, my lord?”

“Lannister, my sister couldn’t have –”

“Oh, she took part in a tourney, she might as well have wanted to. Don’t look at me like that, we all know who the knight of the Laughing Tree was. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I took a vow, among the rest. That vow was to protect Rhaegar’s family.”

And then he sees that Stark is finally understanding where he’s aiming at.

“Lannister, are you seriously saying that –”

“Lord Stark, I’m saying that I swore that goddamned vow, and I couldn’t keep it because I was too busy making sure Aerys wouldn’t burn King’s Landing entirely, and I know it’s my father’s fault if the other two died. I never wanted it. I would have stopped it if I could. I couldn’t. I wake up at night because I dream about what Clegane did to those poor children. I can’t do anything for them now. But he is Rhaegar’s family, and I’m not going to tell a soul, as long as you let me keep my damned oaths.”

For a long moment, they stare at each other, and Jaime knows Stark hadn’t even remotely imagined it could go like this.

“Ser, have you just said –”

“I’ve just said that it looks like your supposed bastard son is my last chance at honor, which I will only know about, and if you’ll let me keep my goddamned vow you shall be surprised at how much I can not be an oathbreaker, Lord Stark. I’m still in the Kingsguard after all, am I not?”

“I don’t think –”

“Let him,” Catelyn finally says, and Jaime releases a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding.

“Let him?”

“I’ve – I’ve talked to him a while ago,” Catelyn says. “I knew about the Mad King actually, but I figured he would rather tell you himself. I think he means it. And – my lord, I understand why you wanted to keep it secret, and I know we barely know each other, but he does have a point. Were you planning on keeping it a secret forever?”

“… The least people in the know the better, my lady,” Stark says. “After all, I couldn’t let you be a complicit in treason.”

She shakes her head, holding her own baby tighter to her chest. “Fine,” she agrees, “but – didn’t you think that maybe I would have felt better knowing that you did not betray me not even a moon after we married?” She replies quietly, and Stark finally seems to notice where he got it wrong – he does look pained at that.

“My lady,” he says, “I’m honestly sorry, but it seemed like the best course of action.”

“Maybe, but – I suggest you let him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ned, as much as this revelation changes my feelings about him and about your admittedly strange behavior, given your reputation, I think people might get suspicious if I start playing mother with him, too.” Jaime can hear also, never mind that I spent months pretending that child didn’t exist, you can’t ask me to change completely at once, but he keeps his mouth shut. “And of course you should be his father, I will not stop you from that and I never would, but you won’t be there all the time. Neither will his brother, I suppose. And I would not feel too happy knowing that he’d have no one if you’re not there. Never mind that right now he is technically complicit, too, and if he wanted to sell you out he wouldn’t have come here telling you he knew.”

“Thank you,” Jaime interrupts.

“You’re welcome,” Catelyn tells him, and then puts a hand on Stark’s wrist as she sits down next to him. “Ned, really, he’s just told you he’d give his life for that baby. He slew a madman who might have killed you and the entire city. And you were planning to lie about… Jon for the foreseeable future. Why shouldn’t he? At least he wouldn’t wander the godswood without a purpose for the entire time he’s to be here.”

Jaime wishes he could say she’s wrong, but she’s not, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Stark looks at the both of them, then obviously at the baby, then up at him, and Jaime does not look down lest he loses his battle, and he knows it would happen.

Then –

“Ser, I’ll be watching you very closely,” Ned says, “but then again I guess he could do worse than having the best swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms watching his back, if you meant it.”

For a moment, Jaime doesn’t even process it. “Wait, have you just said –”

“I shall keep an eye on how you keep your vows, Ser, but yes, I’ve just told you that if that’s what you want, please do go ahead with it. The gods know that child will have a hard life regardless, he might as well have a sworn sword with.”

Jaime doesn’t know who’s more surprised, him or Stark, when he genuinely grins at him and says, I will keep them, my lord, and means every damned word of it.

--

The maids send him very weird looks when he tells her that he wishes to move in the child’s room, or the contrary. In the end, they move him to his, because it’s apparently the best of the two. They aren’t too convinced when Jaime tells them that it’s because they’re terribly incompetent and he wants his sleep and he can calm the kid down more than them, even though it’s true.

But –

It’s no matter. They don’t have to know, do they?

Gods, on one side he knows he’s just committed treason and his father would have his head for this, or close to it, and he knows that he’s just pretty much condemned himself to stay in this cold hell of a kingdom for the rest of his life, but –

But –

He never wanted to be an oathbreaker. And if Arthur died for that child, for good or bad, maybe this is his last and only chance of living up to Arthur’s name – he can’t have knighted me for nothing, can he?

He takes off his cloak and clothes, changing into nightwear, and then he hears the usual, quiet sobbing coming from the crib that has just been pushed into the corner of his room.

He leans down and pulls Jon to his chest again, thinking Aegon wasn’t so much older than you when –

He never finishes the thought. He can’t. He sits back on his bed, looking down at the child on his lap, who’s definitely trying to put handfuls of his shirt into his mouth. He thinks, if he hadn’t been at the Tower of Joy, he’d have met that same end.

“There’s really nothing of Aerys in you, is it?” He whispers, knowing he’ll never get an answer, but honestly, the kid has such a sweet look to him, it’d be difficult to imagine that.

And he hasn’t cried since Jaime picked him up.

He’s probably being a colossal idiot all over again, he knows, but then again –

Has anyone tried to get him back? He’s been here for months, Tyrion is the only one writing to him and he doesn’t mention any effort to make him come back to King’s Landing. From what he hears, Cersei is enjoying being Queen, and of course she is, whether he’s in the Red Keep or not. His father hasn’t written him once.

It’s not as if his vows mean anything. Sure they don’t.

But –

I wanted to be like Arthur Dayne once, he thinks again. He laughs without being able to help it when Jon tries to somehow stand up and his tiny fists grasp at his night shirt.

No, he thinks, no, I’m not letting anything happen to you as long as I live.

--

Of course, Ned Stark’s around most of the time. Jaime merely shadows him. He shadows him when he brings both brothers outside or when they spend time together, and if he’s not shadowing him he doesn’t refuse offers to take a walk with Catelyn, whose stomach is turning into a rounded bulge all over again.

“I hope it’s a girl this time,” she tells him after she’s obviously showing.

“Why, the other one was too much of a handful?”

“You wouldn’t believe that,” Catelyn laughs. “And what of –” She starts, not saying his cousin nor his brother.

Of course Jaime would know better than her, since whenever Ned Stark isn’t around his supposed child, he is.

“He’s not,” Jaime replies truthfully. He’s never been around a quieter kid in his life, and the fact that since he’s in a room with him he sobs pitifully a lot less than he used to before, and that was all the handful he could have been.

“The maids tell me you’re sleeping somewhat better,” Catelyn snorts.

“Wait, have you asked?”

“I inquire after my guests’ health, Ser. Well, that’s good your arrangement is working.”

Jaime doesn’t even look at her, but he knows he’s flushing.

“It might be.”

“My husband will come around,” Catelyn replies to a question he never asked, but he thinks maybe she heard it anyway.

“What?”

“I know you’re worrying about that. He’s – he’s a good man. Maybe too stubborn, and I think he has to reconcile a lot of things from your story yet, but he will come around. I know that.”

Jaime really hopes she’s right.

If only because he doesn’t want Stark to disapprove of whatever he is that he’s doing, even if he cares little. He’s going to do his duty whether Stark likes it or not, but admittedly, it would be nice if Stark decided to get the hell over his issues with Jaime’s lack of honor and stop looking at him with distrust.

--

He does sleep better since he has someone else to worry about.

That doesn’t mean he sleeps well all of the time.

He knows it’s the anniversary of Brandon and Rickard Stark’s death same as Ned Stark does, since he’s gloomy for the entire day and speaks little, and Jaime remembers the day clear as rain, and he speaks little, too.

It doesn’t surprise him when that night he closes his eyes just to smell burned flesh that’s not here but that he had to smell while he desperately tried to think of Cersei a couple of years ago, and he knows he’s sweating and cursing under his breath, and he knows he’s dreaming but it doesn’t mean he can wake up, not until it’s done and over, not until they’re dead in the dream, too –

But then he wakes up with half a scream on his lips as he feels a tiny hand tugging at his own.

What –

He groans and turns on to his side, to find that Jon – who, at two and something, can speak but won’t to many people, and if he does it’s to Ned or Robb or maybe him, but not more than a few words at a time, and can walk fairly fast but as far as Jaime knew could not exactly manage to get out of bed on his own (not when he’s become too large for a crib and the maids brought Jaime a normal bed that’s pretty damned high – as much as his own, which means it’s taller than the poor kid) – is pulling his hand downwards probably trying to wake him up in lack of better ways.

He also looks as relieved as a two-and-something year old can be at any given moment, Jaime thinks, and for a moment he thinks he might cry for real. Instead he sits up and leans down, picking Jon up.

“Hey,” he says, “I woke you up, didn’t I?”

Jon shakes his head. “Was cold,” he says instead, and Jaime is going to check if he has enough covers tomorrow.

“Well, that won’t do,” he replies, and the kid does feel kind of cold to the touch even if Jaime is sure that he woke him up. He raises his covers and Jon readily moves next to him, and Jaime doesn’t want to say he feels like someone’s just squeezed a fist around his heart same as every damned time this happens, so he won’t.

He miraculously manages to go back to sleep again and it’s dreamless, and when he wakes up Jon is cuddling against his chest and Jaime keeps an arm around him and stays there until Jon wakes up.

He’s definitely not cold anymore now, is he?

--

“This is embarrassing,” Jaime tells Catelyn not long later.

“What is?” She sounds amused, as she always seems to be around him these days, but if it means she will support him in his endeavor when it comes to keeping his damned oaths.

“I have a question for you.”

“Ask it.”

“What – what do you happen to sing to your son?”

For a moment, she looks very perplexed.

“Why do you need to know?”

“Because – because his cousin, or brother, if we prefer, doesn’t like to talk much but I sort of understood he heard you singing to him and he might feel left out, and while I wouldn’t ask of you to do it because I understand your issues with it, if you tell me maybe I could supply for you. Or for Lyanna Stark. Or whoever.”

Catelyn stares at him as if she still can’t compute the fact that he just asked that.

“My lady,” Jaime huffs, “should I remind you that I have a younger brother and it wasn’t too long ago that he was born? I’m not that useless with children.”

“I – I noticed,” she finally says. “And – it’s not you, I just – I sing whatever runs through my mind. It’s not always the same thing.”

“Ah,” Jaime says, “then I guess he’ll live with the songs I know being fairly inappropriate, I suppose.”

“Inappropriate?”

“Catelyn, I’m not going to sing him the Rains of Castamere, but I’ve been around soldiers for a long time. I think The Bear and the Maiden Fair is the least bawdy one I can remember.”

“Oh,” she says, “I get the problem. Still, you shall do perfectly, I think.”

“I wish,” Jaime mutters, and lets the matter drop there.

That evening, he’s trying to remember if he knows anything more suited than songs he used to belt in taverns on his rare leaves from the Kingsguard as he helps Jon into his night clothes, and shouldn’t he be worried that when it comes to the ones he wears during the day he picks always dark colors, when there’s a knock on the door.

It’s Catelyn.

With Robb.

“Uhm, can we help you?” Jaime asks.

“I think,” she said, “that there’s nothing wrong if I sing them both to sleep and he’s spared your most probably off-key renditions.”

“I am not off key, but please do go ahead,” Jaime says, letting her in – of course both Jon and Robb are delighted, and Catelyn’s a better singer than he is for sure, and by the time those two are asleep in Jon’s bed she decides that she’s just going to let them be.

“Well, thanks,” Jaime tells her. “I mean, that was –”

“It was time I got over myself,” Catelyn cuts him. “It’s not as if it’s his fault and I’ve had a year to make peace with it. I don’t think I can be his mother, never mind that people might start being suspicious at this point, but it doesn’t mean I have to make him miserable.”

“You can be the nice aunt,” Jaime tells her – she snorts and asks him how can he manage to actually make anyone laugh with those lines, but she’s laughing, so Jaime ignores the question and decides that things are going a lot better than he ever thought they might.

--

He’s not too surprised when Jon asks the question at the ripe age of a moon past his fourth name day, nor that it’s what makes Ned Stark sort of come around.

Sort of.

At least Catelyn was apparently fairly laid back when she had to explain him what a bastard was, and given that she does come over sometimes to spend the evening with the both of them – always with Robb, but does it even matter when she does –, he had figured it would go over fairly well.

“Why I don’t have a mother?”

Of course Jon would ask him. He has a feeling Lord Stark isn’t going to be much forward on the topic, and Jaime knows he cannot tell him it’s Lyanna Stark.

“Hasn’t your father told you?”

“He said he couldn’t tell me.”

Jaime sighs. “Some people don’t have mothers. I don’t have a mother.”

“You don’t?”

“No. She died having my brother when I was seven.”

Jon’s large, grey eyes suddenly turn sad. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he obviously means it, bless him.

“It’s all right,” Jaime says, “it’s been a long time ago. And I – I think she’d have wanted my brother alive. No one can know, but I think she would’ve. Anyway, he grew up plenty all right and he never had one, either.”

Jon nods solemnly, even if Jaime can’t help thinking, not thanks to my father or sister, and where did that come from?

They’re having this conversation in the godswood and Jon doesn’t notice that Stark’s behind one of the heart trees – he was probably taking a stroll and run into them. But then –

“Do you know who she was?” Jon asks.

“No,” Jaime lies, even if he doesn’t want to. “I’m sorry.”

“But – if Lord Stark is my father and she’s not your sister or anything –”

“Let me guess, the question is who am I? Don’t look down, you shouldn’t look down on anyone.”

Jon looks up at him and Jaime leans closer.

“I’m your knight,” he whispers, though not so low that Stark couldn’t hear, and Jon’s eyes go wide all over again.

“My knight?”

“Sure,” Jaime smirks, “did you ever notice people call me Ser?”

“I did, but – why? Robb doesn’t have one.”

“Your brother is going to be a lord. Not many lords actually want to be knights, it’s a lesser title.” Except for me, I guess. “He will be fine either way.”

“But – the King’s children have knights. They’re the only ones,” Jon goes on.

If only you knew. “They do,” Jaime agrees, “but knights can pledge themselves to whoever they want. So, it’s the king’s children, and there’s you. Hey, everyone or mostly everyone has a mother, but not many people have knights. You can tell that to anyone who tries to make you feel bad about your mother.”

Jon smiles for a moment, but then his face falls. “Uh, could you be Robb’s too, from time to time? I mean, I’d feel bad if he didn’t have one.”

Jaime laughs openly, but of course that’s what Jon would ask first – he’s sweet like that, seven hells. “From time to time and if you ask,” he promises, “I don’t see why not. Sure. But I’m yours on loan.”

Jon quite literally beams at that, and given that he’s really not too prone to smiling the way his brother is it’s such a heartwarming sight, Jaime can’t really bring himself to regret his life choices. He ruffles Jon’s hair and notices that Stark is still behind the tree, but he’s… sort of smiling?

Wait a moment, Jaime thinks, but then Stark leaves and lets him be.

For now.

--

He comes back in the evening, knocking softly on Jaime’s door. Jon is sleeping in Robb’s room, they insisted for some reason Jaime didn’t quite catch but they let them share and Jaime is halfway sure they will share permanently at some point.

“Ser,” Stark says, “can I come in?”

“Do go ahead,” Jaime says, and lets him in. Ned Stark hasn’t been in here in years, differently from his wife, and so he hasn’t seen that there are a few fairytale books on his shelves and that his closet has a drawer full of child-sized clothes and that there’s a pair of scissors in front of his mirror, which he also uses on himself but not as much as he uses it to trim Jon’s hair.

“I – I think I owe you an apology or more than one,” Ned Stark blurts, and Jaime barely stops himself from asking, and how long did it take you?

“Well, I’m listening,” Jaime says instead. “Was it because you heard me today?”

“Partly,” Stark says. “I mean, that would have convinced anyone that you only have honorable intentions when it comes to Jon unless you’re an exceedingly good actor, and I don’t think you are. And my wife has been taking your side in this discourse for a while, and she’s fairly convincing when she wants to. I just – I didn’t realize how I misjudged you until you pointed out that you weren’t that much older than my sister, and I don’t know what I’d have done in your place. But I know you had to take a decision no one should have to take. And I can see that you mean what you say, whether it’s insulting me or not.”

“Why, thank you, my lord. Took you long enough.” He could have avoided it, but he also couldn’t resist.

“You will find, Ser, that I might be a tad too stubborn when someone’s honor is taken into account.”

“My lord, I had imagined. I also might be a tad too stubborn when someone doesn’t even bother to ask me why I did something.”

Stark has the decency to look ashamed. “It just – it didn’t look – it’s just, we thought we’d bring Aerys to justice. I wanted to bring Aerys to justice, not to kill him.”

“You’d have found it mildly amusing,” Jaime snorts, “he was completely, raving, stark mad. You couldn’t have brought him to justice. He’d have killed you first or killed himself. I would know that, since he always personally made sure I’d guard him only and not his family and Rhaegar didn’t want him to lose a crutch since he feared my father and figured that if he kept me close then nothing would happen to him.”

Stark nods and runs a hand over one of the fairytale books Jaime has on his shelves. “You’re taking this very seriously, aren’t you?”

Jaime shrugs. “I’ve read thousands of those things to my brother back in the day, until I realized he was quicker than I was so I told him we should switch. It’s nothing I haven’t done already. But yes. I’m taking it very seriously. I meant my oaths. The fact that Aerys didn’t deserve it doesn’t mean I’m not willing to keep them with people who do, and – there isn’t a inch of Aerys in that child. Of course I’m taking it seriously. And even if no one outside this castle knows that I am trying to be the honorable person, I don’t even care.”

“Gods,” Ned Stark sighs, “I really was wrong about you.”

“Apologies accepted, my lord, as long as you stop looking at me like my dishonorable person is sullying your household. Well, fine, you haven’t done it for a while, but –”

“No, I deserved it. It’s – it’s all right. And – I’m glad he’s taken to you, anyway.”

“Wait, what?”

“If you never figured it out, I would have done the same as I am doing now, and I would have been his father, but I don’t know if Cat would have warmed up to him as much as she has now. And I don’t know how happy he might have been when I wasn’t there, or his brother wasn’t. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be that good with children, admittedly.”

“Appearances lie, my lord. I told you, if you asked my brother who was the one out of his siblings who was good with children, he wouldn’t have said Cersei.”

Stark seems to consider the option with a somehow disturbed look, then he shakes his head.

“Regardless,” he says, “I – I won’t be as hostile as I’ve been until this moment from now on.”

“It’s all right,” Jaime tells him, “though I’ll appreciate it. Still, I should probably tell you that I’m also glad I figured it out, but purely selfish reasons.”

“Purely selfish?”

“I mean, before I did, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think of anything but Aerys. Or the entire realm taking me for the worst kind of oathbreaker. Or my father murdering Elia and the children. At times, I just felt like I couldn’t handle any of that. Then I found out I could still keep some of those damned oaths and – never mind. I owe that child for having kept my wits about myself without having turned as mad as Aerys, of course they’re purely selfish reasons.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, then Stark actually smiles at him?

“Ser,” he says, “do you think I also didn’t doubt for a moment about sacrificing my honor for purely selfish reasons, since I couldn’t ever risk the life of what I had left of my entire family, not counting a brother in the Night’s Watch?”

“Maybe,” Jaime says tentatively, “maybe we were more similar than we had thought, weren’t we?”

“Just keep on being his knight, Lannister.”

Stark leaves the room and Jaime releases a breath he really hadn’t known he had been holding and lets himself fall on the bed – well, that was – that wasn’t what he had imagined, but he feels so relieved he could burst with it.

That is, until Jon barges into the room the next morning.

“But if you’re my knight,” he says, “should I be your damsel or something?”

Jaime laughs for a good couple of minutes before shaking his head – Jon is looking at him as if he can’t figure out what was so funny about it.

“Tell you what,” Jaime wheezes, “I don’t think you’d make a very good damsel, but you can be my squire in a few years if you’d like.”

“Would you teach me how to best Robb in fights?”

“Sure I would, I’m in your service now, right?”

No, he thinks as Jon puts him off his balance by throwing his tiny arms around his neck, he wouldn’t change his choices for the world.

--

“I have to go to the Iron Islands,” Stark says as he shows Jaime the raven. “We can’t let Greyjoy assume that he can secede at will.”

“I understand,” Jaime says. “Does that raven say I should come with?”

“Actually, the raven doesn’t mention you at all.”

I’m not surprised, Jaime thinks. Tyrion is still the only person who writes him regularly. He hasn’t heard from his father or sister in years.

“So, what do you want to do?” Stark asks. “You can go or you can stay. Though I am sure my wife would rather have you staying, and all things considered, maybe so do I.”

“Really?”

“My wife likes your company and I’d rather leave knowing there’s someone capable defending the children, especially with another on the way.”

Jaime shrugs. “I’m staying. I don’t really care for fighting another war against another madman. You can have it, for all I care.”

“Very well,” Stark nods, “then I hope to see you as soon as this war lets me come home.”

How far have we come, Jaime thinks, and nods as he shakes Stark’s hand.

--

“Is there a chance he might not come back?” Catelyn asks him tiredly a moon after Stark is gone. They’re the only two people in her room, sitting near the fire with – Jon and Robb are most probably sharing Robb’s bed, but they’re also bunking with Sansa since it’s cold and they figured keeping them all in the same place would make the room warmer. Jaime’s drinking some fairly passable wine, for being from the Stormlands, while Catelyn isn’t, but then again she wouldn’t, not when she’s having her third child in two moons at most.

Jaime shrugs. “The Iron Islands don’t really have an organized army or anything. Most of them are bloody pirates. I highly doubt Lord Greyjoy has a chance in hell of winning his quest for independence. Their soldiers are also not adjusted to fighting on the ground. Unless he’s really unlucky, he should come back.”

She nods, her hands going to his stomach. “I hope you’re right.” It’s obvious she isn’t telling everything, but Jaime thinks he knows what the rest of the question was.

“Catelyn, I never swore myself to him. If he dies, I’m going to stay exactly where I am, unless you’d want Jon to foster somewhere else –”

“Robb would hate me for the rest of his days if I did that, and I wouldn’t want it either, not when I know Ned didn’t find someone else just after marrying me. I doubted he would, but – never mind. Well, that’s what I’d have wanted to hear,” she declares, and says nothing more on the topic.

He doesn’t tell her that it had made something inside him feel warmer at that admission

(at least someone who’s not Tyrion wants me somewhere)

and finishes his wine.

Stark should better come back, he thinks, but even if he doesn’t, he’s not going anywhere.

--

Stark does come back.

He brings back Greyjoy’s last son as a hostage, Robert Baratheon, Stannis Baratheon and apparently also some of the court, because they get a raven from King’s Landing saying the queen will come to meet the king at Winterfell before going back to the capital.

Stark arrives before everyone else though – he apparently took a faster ship. He asks for a talk with Jaime while his eldest son marches towards the Greyjoy heir, who has been sitting in the courtyard without saying a word since they arrived in the morning, with the face of someone who’ll drag the lad out of his silence kicking and screaming if he has to, which is – a thing Robb Stark would do, Jaime figures.

“Robert told me that it’s been enough time and that he might consider letting you go back to King’s Landing, if you ask nicely,” Stark tells him when they’re alone.

“If I ask nicely?” Jaime repeats, not exactly getting the damned point.

“Well, he won’t let you leave here just like that, I guess. Anyway, if you do it, he would take you back.”

“And your point is?”

“My point is, Ser, that I understand that you might want to go back if anything because your family is there, and while I’ll admit I don’t particularly want you to go because both my sons are smitten with you and you did good on your vows, if that’s what you want –”

“Stark,” Jaime interrupts him, “thank you for considering that, but I already told you, I killed Aerys because it was the right thing to do, not because I didn’t take my vows seriously. So, unless you want me to bring your bastard son to King’s Landing along, and I don’t think you do, I will stay here.”

“I think the farther from King’s Landing he is, the better. So, you won’t… ask nicely?”

“My lord, I don’t think the King has understood something very obvious about me.”

“That you don’t ask nicely?”

“I don’t,” Jaime confirms. “I’m not begging him to take me back to King’s Landing when I don’t even want to be there. And I don’t miss the Kingsguard. I shall fulfill my duties here, thank you very much.”

“No one is stopping you then,” Stark says, and does he sound sort of happy about it?

Well then.

At least he knows he’s not grating on his host’s nerves for good.

--

The next day, he doesn’t even bother being there when the rest of the parade arrives – if his father or Cersei want to talk to him, they can come find him. He’s really not in mind of being the one running after them.

Then Cersei finds him in what’s a most probably not so dignified position.

Well, he did promise Jon (and Robb, by proxy) to teach them some serious sword moves – which Ser Cassel does not approve of, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him – and Theon Greyjoy is also here because Robb has decided that he can’t be allowed to sulk around the castle and so he’s dragging him around wherever he goes, which is admittedly heartwarming, not that Jaime is ever going to voice that.

He did teach them a couple of dirty tricks that can be pulled with wooden swords, while Greyjoy stood by and watched intently, and then it kind of degenerated into some mock fight that had him and Jon versus Robb and Theon which also had somehow degenerated into Jon fighting them from his shoulders, which in turn made the entire thing fairly unfair since Greyjoy is shorter than Jaime so it was never going to work out –

And it doesn’t work out anyway because someone clears his throat from their left and Cersei’s standing there looking at him as if she’s wholly not pleased about how he chooses to spend his time.

Of course she wouldn’t.

“Cersei,” he says, smiling out of courtesy, “fancy seeing you here.”

“You weren’t receiving us with Lord and Lady Stark.”

“No one requires me to,” Jaime shrugs. “I’m not in their service or anything. Boys, you mind if I have a word with my sister?”

“You’re nicer than she is,” Robb declares as he gets down from Theon’s shoulders, “at least you introduce yourself when you meet someone you don’t know.”

Cersei’s mouth twists in a scowl and Jaime has to bite his tongue to not start laughing like a madman – he’ll have to teach Robb some extra dirty trick just for putting that expression there.

“Your father will know,” Cersei replies instead.

Robb just shrugs, absolutely not impressed with her, and motions for Jon to come with – Theon has already started leaving the scene. Jaime has a feeling the lad has understood he won’t want to be here for the following conversation.

“Can I ask you something first?” Jon asks in a tiny voice.

“Sure,” Jaime says, kneeling down, and if Cersei has to wait… well, she can afford to.

“Your sister lives in King’s Landing?” Jon asks, his voice so tiny that Cersei certainly couldn’t hear him.

“She does,” Jaime confirms.

“Does that mean you’re going back with her?” He’s obviously trying to sound as if he doesn’t mind either way, but he’s utterly failing, and he’s also sounding very displeased at the prospect, never mind that he also looks like he might cry at any moment, which – well, it’d have made anyone change their mind if they were set on leaving.

Except that he wasn’t, and he doesn’t think he could go back if he wanted to, especially if he compares what he has here to the prospect of going back to the goddamned Red Keep. The idea itself is enough to make his stomach turn on itself.

“Sweetling, I’m not going anywhere. Knights don’t take vows just for fun.”

Jon gives him a fairly grateful nod, then glances at Cersei who is staring down at him as if she’d like it if he disappeared right now and he swallows before running after Robb and Theon – Theon mutters something under his breath before ushering the both of them towards the castle.

Someone here has understood a lot, Jaime thinks.

“Well,” Jaime says, “it has been a long time.”

“Jaime, what was that?”

“Why, can’t I occupy my time making sure children in here are properly trained?”

“Be serious,” Cersei hisses.

“I’m perfectly serious. I see that regency is looking good on you.”

“Good?”

“Well, right now that scowl isn’t doing you any favors, but you look well-rested. I assume an heir is coming soon, is he?”

She shakes her head, then comes closer and her hand clutches at his shoulder. It hurts.

“Jaime, stop japing. You know the one reason there’ll be a heir with Robert’s eyes, if there ever is, is that you weren’t there to give me one.”

“Cersei, you haven’t written to me once since I was sent here,” he replies, pulling her hand off his shoulder. “For being your second half you surely didn’t seem to care overtly much, and don’t mention Father, because he hasn’t written me either. Tyrion has, but I somehow doubt you inquired after me, or he’d have told me.”

“Tyrion is a liar –”

“Not to me, he’s never been. So, Cersei, what is the damned point?”

“The point? The point is that you weren’t greeting us at the front!”

“I didn’t particularly care to,” he shrugs.

“You didn’t – Jaime, do you know how long it took me to convince Robert to pardon you?”

“Ah, if I ask nicely.”

“Well, of course I couldn’t convince him to just do it outright –”

“Cersei, maybe you forgot, but we share the same name. I don’t beg anyone to take me back in their service when I only paid them a bloody favor. I’m not begging him nicely to take me back to King’s Landing.”

“So what, you’d stay here out of bloody pride?”

“Maybe,” he replies, “but that’s not it, either. All of it, I mean.”

Cersei just stares at him. Well then.

“I found that Winterfell is not as dreadful as I had feared.”

“Not as dreadful.”

“It’s cold, indeed, but the lady is excellent company – just friendly, don’t assume I’m defiling her because I know it’d make Lord Stark angry –, the people are fairly refreshing to be with and I have responsibilities I quite enjoy carrying. Differently from the ones I enjoyed carrying in King’s Landing.”

“Jaime, you cannot possibly say you’d rather stay here in this frozen wasteland when we could –”

“Cersei, there hasn’t been a we since I never received one word from you during the rebellion or after. Especially when Tyrion informs me that you and the king are getting along decently.”

“But you’re the one that I want,” she pleads, but – her voice is pleading.

Her eyes are angry.

He wonders if he’d have noticed here years ago, or if he’s doing it now because he’s been away from her for years and somewhere he actually wanted to be, without mad kings to protect.

He moves closer and drops his voice. “Cersei, I spent two years of hell in King’s Landing and in the bloody Kingsguard, which I might have joined because I admired Arthur Dayne, but also because the payoff would have been being with you. And you weren’t there.”

“I couldn’t know –”

“You couldn’t,” he agrees, “but you could have sent word. First. After. Did I ever receive a letter? I was hoping you’d ask why I killed Aerys, I was hoping you’d ask how I was doing, I was hoping you’d tell me you were missing me, and I had absolutely bloody nothing. If Tyrion could write me, you also could. I understand why Father would not, after all he never wanted me to take the white even if he certainly didn’t complain when I killed Aerys and he could get you on the throne in exchange. But you? You, I’d have expected. And you didn’t. King’s Landing is no good for me, and I don’t want to set foot in that damned room ever again if I can help it. Forget it. I’m staying.”

She stares at him, as if she can’t believe a word he says. He stares back.

He’s kind of not surprised when suddenly she backhands him before moving back. “You’re serious,” she says.

“I’m staying,” he replies. “Enjoy your kingdom. I’m done protecting kings. I barely survived one.”

“Robert isn’t Aerys, it’s plain obvious!”

“Nonetheless, I was miserable every other goddamned day in King’s Landing, and here I’m not. Excuse me if I would rather keep things that way. Besides,” he adds, figuring that he might as well say it and make sure she understands it’s a done deal, “if I went with you I would horribly disappoint Ned Stark’s offspring. Especially the offspring who shares their room with me.”

“… You’re sharing a room with Ned Stark’s sons?”

“Just one of them. Not Robb.”

“You’re sharing a room with Ned Stark’s bastard?”

“He’s definitely better company than most of my old Kingsguard and certainly than Aerys.”

“That’s outrageous. He put you in a room with his bastard?”

“Cersei, I bloody fucking volunteered for it.”

The betrayed look she sends him would have made lesser men feel like dirt for having dared to disappoint her, but he’s had years to harbor resentment.

He can take it.

“You debased yourself voluntarily?”

He snorts. “His room was near mine. I could hear he was miserable. I also was miserable. I figured I’d see if worrying about someone else might make me less miserable. Guess what, it’s working splendidly, and I’m not ruining the arrangement for anything or anyone. Especially not when it means going back.”

He doesn’t tell her he feels cold sweat run through his back just at the mere fucking thought of setting foot in that castle again. Or in the throne room – he feels like vomiting when he thinks about that specific scenario.

Gods, he’s not giving up anything for anyone else, not even her, not when she hasn’t done a thing to give him a reason to.

He kind of expects it when she shakes her head and moves closer to him, her chest pressed against his own, grabbing his hands and moving them around her breasts.

Of course, he thinks, remembering how right it felt when he touched them for the first time, and how right it felt when she slotted against him and how it felt like kissing his mirror, how reasonable it sounded when she said, we’re two halves of a whole, and for a moment he is tempted to lean down and kiss her, but –

“Jaime, you must be japing,” she breathes against his mouth. “Come back with me. Here? Really? Sharing a room with a bloody bastard son? What kind of mad talk is this? You’re better than that. You’re – you’re my other half. I can’t live without you. Is a little pride such a price to pay for it?” she pleads, again, and what is she thinking, they’re in public, and even with that part of him does want to grab her waist and kiss her, but –

“No,” he says, and she kisses him anyway.

He moves back and breaks it off – the moment it happened, it felt different from the last time they did it.

It felt wrong.

“Would you beg Robert to let you stay here?” He asks, trying to back away.

“What?”

“Let’s say I convince Stark to let you stay here for a while. I find you a room just next to mine and I send Jon to share with his brother. Would you beg Robert to let you stay here because I am here?”

“Jaime, I’m the Queen. I cannot –”

“What if you weren’t?”

She doesn’t answer, not the moment he asks that question. And then – “Of course, but –”

“You’re lying,” he snorts.

“Sorry?”

“You’re lying. I can hear it. You had to think. I didn’t have to think before you gave me the last reason to join the Kingsguard, when you said we’d be together in the Red Keep. Now let me ask you, if you really were my half, would it matter where we’d live?”

“Jaime –”

“It wouldn’t, because it didn’t to me. I just would rather be here now. And you wouldn’t. And I would have to stop doing a number of things that make me happy, while everything I did in the Red Keep didn’t. I’m not sacrificing anything anymore. For anyone. Not even you.”

“You cannot mean it.”

“I do. I’m staying. I’m not fucking begging Robert to drag me back to the only place in Westeros I don’t want to ever see again. Enjoy your throne. I left it to Robert for one reason.”

“Fine,” she spits. “Then I don’t think you shall wear white for much longer.”

“Good riddance,” Jaime says. “If Father wants me back at the Rock, I imagine I might go one day. But not now. I’m fine right here.”

“Are you sure you’re not fucking Lady Stark on the side, sweet brother?”

Jaime laughs. The idea is so preposterous, he can only do that. “She’s my friend, not my lover. The only woman I ever was with, is you. And as it is right now, I might as well keep that celibacy vow. No, I’m not fucking Lady Stark, and no one is going to believe you if you try to convince them of the fact. Are we done?”

“This isn’t over here,” she hisses, and stalks out of the courtyard.

He should feel sad.

Why does he feel free instead?

--

“Your sister,” Robb tells him later, while the three of them are eating in a corner of the room – Jon has to be there because of his status, and Jaime went with him, and Greyjoy joined them muttering that he didn’t want to be anywhere the king would see him, and Robb came with because of course he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else –, “is not a nice person.”

“… I don’t think she is,” Jaime has to agree.

“But you are,” Jon says, obviously meaning it. “I don’t understand. Why is she so mean if you’re not?”

Jaime shrugs. “Who knows. Finish your food instead of thinking about my sister, it’s better for all of you.”

“Fine,” Robb agrees, “but she treats you wrong and I don’t like her.”

“She does what?”

“We saw you in the yard before, some,” Jon tells him quietly. “She wasn’t nice to you at all.”

He shrugs again. “I cannot disagree, I guess,” he says. “But it’s not important. As long as she’s not nice to me, and not you, I can handle it.”

He hopes so.

Neither of the other three seems to convinced, but they go back to their food and Jaime thinks that no, he wouldn’t change this for anything.

Especially a free pass back to King’s Landing.

--

King Robert obviously expected him to beg to be taken back.

Jaime just smirks and tells him he quite likes this Winterfell arrangement and no, he doesn’t wish to come back to the capital.

Of course, since he’s not begging for it, the king doesn’t press. Cersei looks like she’s seething, but Jaime can’t find it in himself to give a damn about it – she can seethe as much as she likes, he took his decisions also because of her and she can live with it.

“I think,” the king says, “that then it’s a bit redundant for you to be on the Kingsguard, Ser. Since you aren’t where you’re supposed to be.”

Jaime figures it’s fair. He shrugs his white cloak off his shoulders. “Very well. Then you’re free to appoint someone else to it.”

He hadn’t known it’d feel so damned liberating.

--

“But,” Jon asks him later during dinner, as they sit in the exact same arrangement as during lunch, “if you’re not in the Kingsguard anymore, you aren’t a knight anymore?”

“Of course he is,” Theon replies before Jaime can, “hasn’t your master taught you? You don’t need to be in the Kingsguard to be a knight.”

True, Jaime thinks, even if it would technically release me from the vows I swore.

But I don’t think I want to be.

“He’s right,” he says, “I’m still one. And I’ll be one with less obligations.”

“Like what?” Robb inquires.

Jaime stuffs a piece of bread into his mouth. Theon’s cheeks go slightly redder, and Robb notices.

“Like what?” Robb asks him.

Theon groans. “Let’s say I think he could take a wife if he so wished, and he couldn’t before. At least. Am I wrong?”

“No,” Jaime confirms, “but I don’t see any wives on the horizon, and Lady Stark will have your hide if you don’t finish your food.”

Robb seems to understand that the conversation is done, and he goes back to his food.

Later, though –

“You should get a wife, though,” Jon says from the other corner of their room.

“Wait, what?”

“You should,” Jon says. “I mean, my father is happy with – Lady Stark, isn’t he? And marrying someone makes you happy, and you should get one.”

“Why, because that’d make me happy? I’m plenty all right now,” Jaime laughs.

“Well, sure, but you still should. A nice one, though, not like your sister. Sorry, I shouldn’t have –”

“Jon, she’s not a nice person. I get it. Don’t worry, I promise that if I ever find a woman I want to marry I will consider it.”

Jon seems satisfied with it and rustles a bit in his bed – he’s obviously turned his back on him and went to sleep.

As if, Jaime thinks, he’s not going to find any woman he wants to marry, but it’s not his main worry. He’ll live. Never mind that who’d marry him right now, given that he technically should be the heir to Casterly but is not going there anytime soon and he doubts he will anytime soon, never mind that he gave it up a long time ago so who even knows if he even is, but what is even going to do with a wife? He doesn’t have his own keep and mostly likely won’t go back to Casterly for a long time, he certainly couldn’t offer much in the bargain and what would he even talk to a lady about?

He’s fine where he is, really.

--

He does get a number of ravens from his father and Cersei in the following months, finally. He’s not surprised that they remembered that he’s in Winterfell just now. He burns them all.

One year later, he’s tearing apart the latest one when Theon Greyjoy out of anyone shows up from behind one of the heart trees next to the one he was sitting on.

“Ser,” he says, obviously heading for the other direction, but he looks kind of troubled.

Jaime sighs.

“If you wanted to sit down, you can. I haven’t bought these woods off.”

Greyjoy snorts and sits down against the bark of the nearest one. He looks kind of troubled. Jaime doesn’t know if he should enquire or not – probably not, it’s not his business. Then again, he can feel uneasiness coming from the lad, and he can somehow relate because wasn’t he in the exact same situation a few years ago?

“Oh, for –” Greyjoy starts, and then, “Do you mind a question, Ser?”

Jaime isn’t surprised. “Do go ahead.”

“How do you do it?”

“Lad, I fear I could use a bit more specifics here. How do I do what?”

Greyjoy huffs. “Live here and ignore letters from your family and go on with your life without feeling like you’re betraying them just by talking to anyone?”

Jaime had a feeling it was going to go there. “Well, I wasn’t a hostage and I’m still not one, but if your father had the horrible idea of trying to rebel again, I don’t really think your head would fall.”

“Oh, because Lord Stark wouldn’t do it?”

Jaime snorts. “He would think he had to, but let’s just say that after a conversation we had a while ago, I have a feeling that the moment Robb pointed out to him it would be idiotic, counterproductive and wouldn’t eventually solve anything, never mind that it would be a complete slight to him if he killed you when he’s spent the last year attached at your hip, he would reconsider it.”

“That’s a feeling, though.”

“Don’t worry, that conversation concerned a matter a lot more complicated than such an happenstance. And he had to admit he was wrong. If he could understand why I killed Aerys, he will listen to people telling him killing you would be idiotic.”

Greyjoy, thankfully, doesn’t press on Aerys.

“Fine,” he says, “but how do you do it?”

Jaime shrugs. “I realized I was a lot better off here. For a lot of reasons. I can’t say which, but they were plenty good ones. I hadn’t seen my father or my sister in years and I hadn’t realized how better off I was for it until I saw them again. I miss my brother, but at some point he’ll be able to visit, I hope. You’ve got to put yourself first and the only question you should ask yourself is, where do you feel better off? Here or there?”

Greyjoy laughs, but it’s so bitter it’s barely even one. “If only it was that easy. Neither.”

“Now that might be a problem,” Jaime says, standing up and leaning against the tree.

“It wasn’t that great on Pyke except for a couple of people, I suppose. And it’s not that great here except for Robb, and Jon somehow, too, I guess.”

“Who you like to be with best is also a very valid question. Ask yourself that,” Jaime sighs, thinking that he does miss Tyrion like a limb sometimes and maybe he should ask Catelyn if she can convince her husband to let him visit at some point, even if he’s halfway sure his father wouldn’t let him.

Neither of them says anything else, but Jaime had a feeling the conversation was closed.

Still, when he glances at Robb and Theon the next day while breaking their fast, he sees that Theon’s looking at Robb without the residual guarded look he always has had since he arrived here.

Look at me, he thinks, what has my life even become.

--

And then, at some point, of course someone would have informed both Robb and Jon that he actually, well, killed a king. Specifically, the king who killed their grandfather and uncle. Theon Greyjoy probably knew already but never said a thing, Jaime figures because he had noticed no one seems to hate him for it.

To their credit, though, neither of them looks betrayed or anything – maybe Ned Stark did really learn a lesson when it comes to not making your kids think honor is the beginning and ending of someone’s world.

“Why did you do it?” Robb asks him, and he doesn’t sound too judgmental. Just… curious? Jon’s face is kind of unreadable, but Jaime figures he’ll deal with one problem at a time.

Jaime considers lying, then decides that no, it’s not worth it. After all, the tide turned when he told Catelyn the truth, didn’t it?

“He was a horrible man,” he starts. “He – he hurt his wife. He hurt everyone he came in contact with.”

“He killed Uncle Brandon, too, didn’t he?” Robb asks.

“That, too. I – I was there. It wasn’t something I relish thinking about. Anyhow, at the end of the Rebellion, he was about to order a few trusted men to burn all of King’s Landing with wildfire.”

Jon and Robb’s faces turn utterly horrified. Greyjoy, in the background, looks disgusted.

“I – it was either that or everyone else would have died.”

“But why doesn’t anyone know?” Robb presses. “It’s – Maester Luwin says the entire realm thinks you an oathbreaker, that’s not fair!”

Jaime snorts. “I don’t care what the realm thinks. Or what’s fair. I’m fine where I am, honestly, but – you wanted to know why I did it. That’s why I did it. If everyone else thinks me an oathbreaker for it, I cannot really care less. Just, sometimes you can’t value oaths higher than real people.”

Robb nods forcefully and says that it sounds obvious. Jon says nothing, but later he tells him that he imagines it must have taken a lot of courage and he hopes he could have half of it one day.

If only you knew, Jaime thinks, and resolutely does not wipe at his eyes before telling Jon to go to sleep already, it’s late.

If only it could be that easy explaining it to anyone else, but – he also hasn’t seen Aerys in his dreams for a very long time.

He likes to think he’s over it.

--

Time passes. Nothing of import happens except that Ser Rodrik obviously doesn’t approve of Jaime teaching both his pupils dirty tricks. Catelyn and Ned seem to have indeed the most successful marriage in Westeros, given that they’re at the fourth child.

And then Ned gets a raven from Tarth.

Chapter Text

“I think I’m going to accept Lord Selwyn’s request,” Ned Stark says. It’s just him, Jaime and Catelyn in the solar, and Jaime doesn’t know why he was called for this conversation.

“Wait, Selwyn Tarth? He has an offer for you?”

“He asked if I might consider taking his daughter in as a warden. She’s six and ten and apparently… well, he’s loathe to send away his only daughter, but it also seems like she’s not going to find a husband anytime soon, that she enjoys swordfights more than anything else, that she wants to be a knight and beat in a duel the last man who was supposed to marry her and asked of her that she should give it up and – well, Lord Selwyn says Tarth is obviously stifling for her and he knows I’m a honorable man and that the most skilled swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms lives here, even if she’s not too excited about your past wrongdoings, so maybe she would benefit from spending some time here. Which is why I asked you to be here.”

Jaime reads the letter – it says pretty much the exact same things Stark just told him, no more, no less.

“Well,” Catelyn says, “given how Arya seems to be more into asking Ser Rodrik for bow lessons along with her brothers, maybe having another girl who enjoys… that as well around couldn’t hurt. Ser?”

He shrugs. “Well, who am I to say no? I mean, it’s not as if it would change my life either way and I could do with a sparring partner who’s more my size, though I doubt a woman would be. And I suppose she’ll change her mind on my past wrongdoings. Anyway, let her come. What’s her name, again?”

“Brienne,” Ned Stark says. “Well then, I shall reply to Lord Selwyn presently.”

Fine, maybe Jaime is a trifle curious. You don’t hear this kind of thing every day.

He thinks he’s intrigued and he really wants to meet this Lady Brienne Tarth, and that might take a bit of disappointment from the moment when he asks Stark if his father has replied about Tyrion maybe coming to visit. Of course the answer’s no.

--

The first thing he thinks when Lady Brienne does, in fact, reach Winterfell, is that she doesn’t look six and ten, not when she’s as tall as he is, and he has a feeling she might get taller. The second is that she’s definitely not pretty – she has a pair of lovely blue eyes, true, but given that she has the build of a man, large shoulders, small breasts, way too large lips, a nose that’s been broken at least once and straw blonde hair that falls so straight on her shoulders it’s probably hopeless to style it… Jaime can imagine why her father might have had a problem or two with finding her a husband.

Then he notices that she’s dressed in good armor, and she’s moving like she knows what in the seven hells she’s doing, and he’s –

He’s really intrigued.

She’s perfectly courteous when introducing herself to everyone else, and she’s also to him even if she’s colder than she might have been with Lord and Lady Stark.

Then again, everyone at Winterfell knows the reasons why he killed Aerys by now, or at least, everyone who should know. She wouldn’t.

He smirks – he’ll be very glad to prove her wrong, he thinks as he notices how she moves around carrying sword and armor like a seasoned knight.

--

He also notices that she holds herself very stiff for the following day, and she’s still courteous but extremely guarded with anyone else. She also seemed very baffled at how he and Lady Catelyn are in good relations and her children don’t think him a horrible person, which is probably why she didn’t ask anyone how someone who murdered their king while in the Kingsguard is having such a great time in the household of a man known for his unrelenting honor.

Jaime is openly smirking when he finds her sparring with Ser Rodrik in the courtyard in the afternoon – she’s good, nothing to add. Or at least she seems so – as far as sparring with a master at arms goes, she’s definitely above him, she’s not disarming him because she wants to draw it out. Robb is openly whistling at the show, Greyjoy is looking at the scene as if he knows it shouldn’t turn him on but it might, and Jaime remembers enough of how it felt to be three and ten and getting that exact same sensation, and Jon’s looking at her with the same admiration. The two girls aren’t here but Jaime has a feeling Arya might be soon.

“My lady,” he says after they’re done, “I think I would enjoy a dance.”

“Are you mocking me?” She asks, not sounding impressed at all.

This one has walls higher than Winterfell, Jaime thinks. He takes his sword out of the scabbard. “No. I haven’t fought anyone that wasn’t Ser Rodrik or his son or the lovely children behind me in years. You seem capable, so why the hell not? Or do you think former Kingsguard knights are out of your league?”

She scoffs. “In your dreams, Ser. I’m ready whenever you are.”

“Good,” he says, and takes off his cloak – good thing he was wearing comfortable clothes.

Their swords touch. Ser Rodrik gives them the clue, and –

Fuck, he thinks as soon as their blades clash thrice, she’s good. She’s attacking, but not without a plan, and she’s strong, and regardless of her size she’s fast – he doesn’t crash on the ground thrice out of sheer luck and another couple because he had more or less seen her coming, but it’s obvious that she’s not playing it safe.

She wants to win, he thinks, and then he smiles, because guess why, so does he.

He dodges a blow and smiles as he tries to disarm her a bit more stealthily.

But she’s better than that, and she doesn’t let him, and it’s another long time of their blades kissing and clashing across the entire damned yard before he realizes that half of the entire staff in this castle is watching them, including Arya and Sansa Stark, from the balcony, but that’s not his problem now.

He looks back at her as they hold their ground, their blades still pushing against each other. Why, is she smiling?

Same as he knows he is?

He thinks maybe she feels the same as him, when it comes to what kind of feelings a good swordfight raises in your gut.

And –

Gods be good, she’s as good as I am, and given that he’s supposed to be the best that Westeros has to offer, he wonders how long her father was planning to keep her in Tarth and waste all this talent, but never mind.

That said, she might be as good as he is, but she’s also younger and while she might have had an excellent master at arms, he still learned from Dayne, and the moment he notices she’s mistakenly left an opening on her left side, he’s quick to take advantage of it and disarm her, and a moment later he has his sword at her neck and hers is thrown to her side – she can’t reach for it.

“My lady?” He asks.

“I yield,” she sighs. She doesn’t accept his hand when he offers it to help her up, but she’s not looking at him too horribly now.

“That was a very good fight,” he tells her, because it’s true, and he sure as the seven hells wants to do it again. “No one almost beats me on the first try, my lady.”

“I’m not a lady,” she mutters, “but thank you. And – never mind.” She looks everywhere but at him, and she’s blushing under all the freckles on her face, as if she wasn’t expecting a compliment at all.

“Why, would you rather have something less flattering? Like, wench, maybe?”

“What?”

“If my lady isn’t good enough for you,” he smirks back, winking at her. “And if you want a second round, I’m available whenever you want.”

“How about now?”

He accepts.

They spar another four times. He disarms her twice and it ends up in a tie the other two, and by the time they’re both red with effort and their clothes are soaked in sweat, the entire staff of the bloody castle is somehow in the courtyard.

“Wench,” Jaime breathes, “I think whoever you decide to fight for will be happy knowing that your father sent you off your fair island.”

She gives him a completely blank look as if she doesn’t know what the fuck she should do with his opinion, which is positive, which he has a feeling she’s not too adjusted to.

He thinks he’s going to have a lot of fun needling her, but she’s damned good for real and if there’s room for improving –

Gods, Rhaegar could have dreamed of having someone that skilled in the Kingsguard.

Good thing she’s very, very far from it.

--

He also notices that both Jon and Robb spend dinner staring at either him or Brienne and are more quiet than usual, but he doesn’t ask them what’s going on and they’re less loquacious than usual.

Maybe he should have been suspicious.

Maybe.

But then Catelyn moves up to their table, puts a hand on his arm and asks, “Ser, could you come to the solar after dinner? My husband needs to talk to you.”

Jaime nods and doesn’t like how worried she sounded.

--

“What’s going on?” He asks.

Stark sighs and hands him a raven. “This arrived from King’s Landing yesterday.”

Jaime reads it once, then twice, then –

“What. Why would they be summoning you and Jon to King’s Landing and why in the Seven Hells would anyone want to enquire to you about his birth?”

“I was hoping you would have a clue,” Stark says. “I don’t know. I have no idea. But I imagine you’d know if it was your sister writing this – I know it’s not Robert.”

“It’s her writing, all right,” Jaime confirms. “But no. I have no clue whatsoever – oh, damn,” he says, “maybe I do.”

“Do share,” Catelyn presses.

“It’s – nothing good,” he sighs.

“Do share regardless.”

“Fine. When I refused to go back – she caught me teaching the boys a few sword tricks. She asked me why would I want to stay here. I told her that I was fine where I was and I might have mentioned I found your bastard’s company better than hers. I thought she’d get over it. But – my lord, I figured it out because I saw Rhaegar Targaryen up close a fair amount of times, and because I did some math. I did tell you that given how old Jon is, you only could have had him with a whore or tavern wench or camp follower, and that does not add up when discussing you, my lord. If Cersei started asking herself why I would give a fuck in the world about your bastard son and did the same math, maybe she realized that he could also, well, not be your bastard son. If I make myself clear.”

Stark gives him a terse nod. “Ser, stop looking guilty. You couldn’t have imagined. What I’d like to know is how she convinced Robert of… summoning me. And him.”

Jaime sighs. “She can have her way with people,” he admits. I’d know. She had it with me, didn’t she?

For a moment, the three of them look at each other. Then Ned pockets the raven. “I suppose it’s unavoidable, then.”

Jaime shudders. “I don’t think that you’re meant to come back from such a trip. If not you, definitely him. I would come with you, but I don’t think I would make enough of a difference, not in King’s Landing.”

“Ned, he’s right,” Catelyn says. “This looks shady every which way you consider it. On the other side…”

“Cat, if I don’t go it’s admitting that they’re right,” Ned says, and that’s… also very true. “If I had nothing to fear, I would go.”

“I know,” she says, “but here you could defend yourself. Even if you and Jaime go with a few other men, how much good would it make?” Her hand moves on her stomach. She’s expecting the fifth, after all.

“Cat, the moment I don’t go you’re all traitors. Officially. If I go and they find out, at least it’ll be just me.”

“My lord,” Jaime says, “I don’t think it’d be worth that much, if your head isn’t on your shoulders.”

For a long moment, neither of them says a thing.

Then –

“I think I should ask everyone else,” Ned finally says, sounding so weary, Jaime feels a pang of sympathy.

“You mean –”

“I should tell the boys, and everyone else in Winterfell. If they agree that we should stay, I will ask my bannermen if they would stand with me. If they would not, we should prepare to run. If they would, well, we shall cross that bridge when we reach it. But – Cat, I don’t want to risk –”

“Ned. Don’t worry about that. I don’t think there’s another way you might solve this. Tonight, we’re telling them.”

The sentence is so final, Jaime can’t argue, and neither can Ned.

He doesn’t like how this situation is shaping itself to continue.

He doesn’t like it, at all.

--

Jaime had imagined that after Lord Stark told his piece, the entire room would fall silent. Jon looks aghast, Robb looks shocked but not in the bad way, the Cassels and everyone else in the Starks’ service are grim but not too surprised, Greyjoy looks like someone who knows this might end badly and Lady Brienne is also looking fairly shocked, but she’s staring at Jon with a knowing face, as if she can imagine that he’s feeling like shit right now.

“You can’t go to King’s Landing,” Robb says, exactly as Jon says, “We should go then,” sounding extremely defeated.

“… Now this would make things hard,” Jaime tries to joke, but it kind of falls flat.

“Are you insane?” Robb doesn’t sound too impressed with his brother’s ideas, or maybe, his cousin’s. But it doesn’t seem like he cares about that. “If you go, they’ll kill you.”

“But if we don’t there will be a war, won’t it?” Jon says, his voice small. “I don’t want to – cause one,” he says, his voice slightly trembling.

“My lord,” Rodrik Cassel interrupts, “we’re going to do whatever you wish. I cannot in good conscience counsel you to do either thing, but if you choose not to go, we’ll defend this castle to the very last breath.”

“And what about you?” Right. Mikken never warmed up to him, not that Jaime minds.

He sighs and stands up. “What about me,” he snorts. “Now that it’s out in the open, I can just say it the way it is. I swore I’d protect the royal family back then, or that I should perish in the attempt. I killed Aerys because he would have blown up King’s Landing otherwise and I was the only Kingsguard in the Red Keep – I couldn’t be two places at once. I – I always regretted not being able to do anything for Elia. And – only Lord and Lady Stark know, I guess, but I figured this out not long after I arrived here.”

He expected the collective gasp. He goes on. “I realized that, actually, one of Rhaegar’s children lived. And I realized I could keep my vows. Why do you think I lingered here, amusement? I swore an oath. That oath says that I would lay down my life for Rhaegar Targaryen’s children, too, and there’s one right here, and I intend to keep it. I intended to keep it without telling the truth behind it, but if now it’s out then very well, you know why I lingered here and you should know that I will keep it or perish trying. My loyalties are not the ones you have to worry about.”

He shrugs as no one has a word to say in reply.

But when he meets Lady Brienne’s eyes, he can see that they’re wider than before, and is she looking at him with admiration?

“My lady,” Ned Stark says, “I know you’ve just arrived, and this is unfortunate –”

“Lord Stark,” she says, quickly, “apologies for interrupting you, but if it was not clear, I take – I take my choices seriously. I want – there’s nothing more than I want to be a knight. A proper one. And I can see that you have the right in this dispute. I shall stay here, I think.”

“My lady, you’re committing treason by doing it. I wouldn’t take this lightly.”

She glances at Jon, then at Jaime, then back at Stark. “Inform my father of it and that if he so wishes, he can respectfully distance himself from my decisions. I am staying.”

“Very well,” Stark agrees, sounding very surprised. Then he turns towards Theon Greyjoy.

The lad clears his throat. “My lord, I have just a question.”

“Fine. Ask it.”

“Should you go to war, would I risk losing my head if my father does something exceedingly stupid?”

“No,” Ned replies at once. “The North wouldn’t be part of the Seven Kingdoms anymore, which nullifies any obligation I might have towards Robert, and your father’s rebelled against him, not me?”

The lad shrugs. “Then I suppose it’s all the same if I stay here or go back home, and Pyke is… probably not a good idea right now. Fine. I’m coming with you. Or staying. Whatever it is.”

Jaime hadn’t expected that – maybe he should inquire about it later.

Still, it’s not what’s holding his attention right now. They all turn towards Ned, who looks pained at he stares down at the table, and then –

“I’m going to ask Robert why exactly should I go there and why couldn’t they come here while I send my other bannermen a few ravens to see if they would stand with me should this go badly. If the answer isn’t satisfactory, I would stay.”

Everyone realizes what it means.

No one disagrees openly, though. Everyone’s face is grim, including the children’s, but no one is saying he shouldn’t.

How ironic, Jaime thinks, that he’s going to have to go to war again.

--

“Ser, may I have a word?”

Jaime stops on the way back to his room – he wasn’t expecting Brienne to follow him, but then again she was looking at him kind of strangely before, or at least differently.

“My lady. Please, do go ahead.”

Her cheeks go slightly redder and she looks to her side – she really does have a problem with being called such, hasn’t she – and then at him again.

“I owe you an apology.”

What?

“For what?”

“I – I was unnecessarily rude to you before. And I might have misjudged you on principle, and given what you have just done before, I was sorely mistaken.”

Now, he was not expecting that.

“What I’ve just done?” He thinks he knows what she means, but –

“Ser,” she says, “when my father told me I’d come here, I was – if you are not aware of that, the realm at large still considers you an oathbreaker of the worst kind.”

Jaime snorts. “Right. I tend to forget not everyone lives here and is aware of my motivations.”

“No,” she agrees, “no one is. I – I imagined you wholly different. And I hadn’t thought – I said before. I grew up dreaming of wearing a white cloak and knowing I never could or would. No one has ever heard of women doing it. And not many people take me seriously. You did, before, but… I never – when it rarely happens, one tends to assume it’s not meant for real.”

“I can imagine,” he says, diplomatically.

“Anyhow, what you just said – that makes you the entire contrary of an oathbreaker.”

“I suppose –”

“Ser, you let the entire realm think the worst of you when from what I hear you paid it a favor when you killed the king, for the sake of keeping your oath, and – the best part of it, because from what I see of course the right choice is protecting an innocent child, not a madman. And you’re willing to forsake your family and your title, and you gave up the white cloak for it even if you swore that vow when you took it. If that’s not what being a knight should be about, I don’t know what it would be.”

For a moment, he’s left completely speechless. And it’s not even that she’s told him everything he might have hoped to hear once upon a time, but she held his stare as if she completely forgot about her previous embarrassment just moments before as she said it. As if she means it so thoroughly she’ll get over her obvious discomfort.

And thing is – it was one thing getting recognition for what he did from Catelyn or Ned Stark, after he made them ask, and it’s another thing to get it from Jon or Robb who know him and would have heard him out regardless.

But from a total stranger who, he thinks, understands what’s at stake, who has just said she’ll fight for their just cause when she hasn’t been here three days and who is obviously feeling like a fish out of water anywhere but with a sword in her hand –

Shit. He’s so shocked he doesn’t even know what the hell he should reply, and it’s obvious she’s waiting for him to say something, and –

“My lady,” he says, and she doesn’t flinch at that, good, “I – would you believe it if I told you that you’re the first person who’s put it in these fairly lovely terms so quickly and I had been expecting everything but that?”

“I could,” she replies. “I – would you believe you’re the first person who actually didn’t laugh before challenging me?”

Well then. “Well, your apologies are accepted. And I should hope you will challenge me more often, because if we’re really going to war we’ll both need training.”

“That – that would be my honor, Ser.”

Shit. She means it. As in, she sounds like challenging him is the best thing that has happened to her in the last ten years or so.

Well, fuck it. “I think,” he says, “that given the circumstances, you can drop the honorifics. As in, you obviously hate it when I call you my lady and admittedly I don’t care that much. Jaime will do, if you’re in agreement. Or should I just keep on calling you wench?”

She goes red in the face, again, but – she obviously understood he was joking. “Then Brienne will do,” she says, resolutely. “As for that other one, do as you please.”

She hasn’t told him no, he notices. “Then shall we meet in the courtyard tomorrow morning?”

“Gladly, S – I mean, Jaime.”

“I will be there,” he says, and then she bows shortly before leaving, and he thinks, is she even for real?

He winces as he realizes that the bruise her sword left on his arm this morning is still hurting – yes, she’s for real.

And honestly, he’s quite glad of it.

--

The room is empty when he walks inside it – of course it is, Jon is in Ned Stark’s solar with his brother and Catelyn and his other siblings, they also needed explanations, Jaime fears. He changes into his night breeches and shirt – he can feel all his damned bruises, but he hadn’t gotten any while sparring in years and he can’t help grinning at the prospect. If anything, before this whole situation goes to shit he’ll have fought someone who can keep up with him.

He’s almost looking forward to meeting her in the yard next morning when the door opens and Jon walks in, his shoulders slightly cast down.

“How – how are you doing?” Jaime asks, figuring it can’t be too well.

Jon shrugs. “It’s – fine,” he says. “I – I hadn’t even imagined,” he says, sitting up on his bed. “And now – I don’t want to be the reason people die,” he finishes sadly, his hands twisting in his lap.

“No one said people will die,” Jaime tells him.

“Didn’t they during the Rebellion?” Jon asks, and – right. He has a point.

“This isn’t the same thing,” Jaime says. “Maybe Robert can be reasoned with. More than Aerys could, for sure.”

Jon shakes his head. “Maybe, but – Father said that he didn’t dare tell me or anyone else except, well, you and Lady Catelyn, also because of what happened to… my half-brother and sister, I guess?”

Jaime shudders.

“If he was happy they died, wouldn’t he want me dead, too?”

Shit, his lower lip is trembling. Jaime wants to tell him he wouldn’t because he loved your mother, but then again who says it wouldn’t make things worse?

Fuck that. He stands up, kneels in front of the bed and puts his hands on Jon’s shoulders.

“Maybe,” he admits, “but – I just, listen to me a moment, will you?”

Jon nods minutely. “And look at me,” Jaime says, “how many times did I tell you that you shouldn’t let anyone stare you down?”

Jon does look at him at that. Good.

“Right. Now, I don’t know what in the Seven Hells Robert is thinking of. He might want you dead. He might not. We can’t know yet. But no one here wants you dead. We – we’ll do what we can to avoid a war, but if it comes to that, there isn’t a single person in this castle who wants you to end up like Elia’s children.” Maybe his voice croaks a bit on that, and Jon does notice.

“Did – did you know them?”

“As much as one can in those circumstances,” he replies, truthfully. “They were nice kids. They didn’t deserve to die, and not in the way they did. I – I know I couldn’t do anything for them, not when I was the only one in there and I had to keep an eye on their grandfather.”

“You were alone?”

“I was,” Jaime sighs.

Jon stares at him. Then –

“Robb would say that my father, well, not Lord Stark, wasn’t…” He’s obviously trying to not say something rude.

“Jon, say it.”

“He’d say he was an idiot. You don’t leave one person to protect four people,” Jon blurts.

“I – well, I don’t know what he was thinking, either. Anyway, let me just say this. I swore an oath to protect Rhaegar’s family, back in the day. Other than the king, but it all went together. I thought I had botched it completely. I wasn’t – let’s just say that when the king told me to come here, it was supposed to be a punishment and it wasn’t a very good time altogether. Then – I don’t know if your father told you, and just, it would be ridiculous if you didn’t consider him as such at this point, but I figured it out.”

“He did, but he didn’t go into details.”

“Right. When I realized that actually one of the people I was technically sworn to was still living, I thought that I could fulfill that oath. And I like to think I’ve tried, but what I want to say here is that you’d make proud any man who calls himself your father, and that I’m glad I tried to kept my oath not because you’re related to Rhaegar but because you grew up to be someone anyone would be happy to guard. Or die for. And if I have to fight another rebellion I’ll be glad to be on a side I actually want to fight for. Just – it’s not about Rhaegar. It’s about you. All right?”

“All – all right,” Jon says, and Jaime’s not too surprised when he throws his arms around his shoulders.

He holds back.

Gods, he really hope this doesn’t end in a bloodbath.

--

“I inquired.”

“And what was the result?” Jaime asks, even if he can guess it from Stark’s face.

“He said that if I have nothing to hide I should go.”

They stare at each other. Then –

“My sister is there,” Jaime sighs. “My father is there. If I were you, my lord, I wouldn’t go.”

“I don’t think I would, either,” Stark says. “And – Ser, it’s been years. I think it’s high time we drop the formalities.”

“Why, Ned, I was just waiting for you to give me permission,” Jaime smirks.

“Jaime, shut the hell up unless it’s for giving any good advice you might have, because this is not boding well.”

Jaime sighs. “Have you inquired with your bannermen?”

“Some of them are willing to fight. Others are not, but they’re willing to… well, stay neutral. Anyway, I cannot ask anyone to secede or fight.”

“That’s not good,” Jaime sighs, “but you can hope the king might have the same problem.”

“People cannot refuse their king,” Ned says.

“No, but they can go with him unwillingly. I doubt many people are willing to go to war over a ten-year-old bastard boy from a long-dead dynasty, Ned. I would stall and see if they actually have the numbers to do anything.”

“That – that might not be bad advice. Very well. We shall see.”

Jaime tries to ignore how gloomy Ned sounded and heads for the yard.

Brienne beats him four times but then scoffs at him and says that he hadn’t been paying any effort, and it was true – when he does, the fifth, it’s a tie all over again.

--

A raven arrives not long later.

The crown officially accuses Eddard Stark of treason for having hidden Rhaegar Targaryen’s last son.

Ned stares at it.

“I’m not going to deny it,” he finally says.

“Are you sure?” Catelyn asks. She’s showing plenty, by now. She looks so worried, she’s pale as a sheet.

“It’d be useless. I have no way to disprove it. We might as well own up to it.”

--

Not long later, the entire realm knows the truth. Jaime braces for the worst.

--

Except that the worst somehow does not happen, or at least, not immediately.

--

“Ser, my lady, I have a favor to ask of you,” Catelyn tells him and Brienne a month later or so. “Hopefully, one that might get us out of this conundrum without anyone dying uselessly.”

“How?” Jaime asks – he wants to hear it.

Catelyn hands Brienne a raven, and Jaime another. He opens it.

“Have you written Stannis Baratheon?” He asks. “Asking him for a truce?”

Catelyn shrugs. “Ned doesn’t know. But – you were right. We don’t have enough men to do anything but defend ourselves. But at the same time, it seems like the king doesn’t have many who are motivated to storm it, which is why there’s that small army at the border with the Kingsroad but that’s about it. I know Ned isn’t taking this well – he’s friends with Robert, after all, but he won’t certainly ask him for a truce or to talk. And Robert – can you see him listening?”

“No,” Jaime immediately agrees.

“Which is why I asked Stannis if he’d be amenable to set up a meeting on neutral ground, given that Stannis is about the only person in that family with any amount of sense to them. My lady, please share with Ser Jaime what the answer says.”

“He – he says he agrees with you that this sort-of war is nonsensical and he agrees to setting up a truce, but he couldn’t leave King’s Landing without anyone suspecting it. However, he’s willing to send a middleman to discuss the agreement and who might meet you midway. Well, this is good news then.”

“It is,” Catelyn says, “but as you can see, the baby is due in less than a moon. I cannot go myself.”

“Do you want one of us to go?” Brienne asks.

Catelyn sighs. “I would much prefer if both of you went. I know it might be riskier, but two people can watch each other’s’ backs and – my lady, I know you can take care of yourself, but as you can see, Stannis’s middleman would leave from Dragonstone and meet you at some tavern named Crossroads Inn, near Darry, in three weeks. It’s a fair distance, but you’d have to pass through what army King Robert has left just under White Harbor, and you’d be a woman among soldiers. Ser Jaime here has some more experiences dealing with armies.”

Brienne nods. “It’s – sound reasoning. I am amenable if Ser Jaime is.”

“Of course I am,” he says, “I want this over, too. What do we need to come back with?”

“A date, a place and a time for the meeting. Stannis assured that his middleman is good at negotiating and in between the three of you, you should find a satisfying solution for all of us. If you agree, you should leave on the morrow – the sooner you’re there the better.”

“My lady, if you agree –”

“I will be ready at dawn,” she replies.

“Thank you,” Catelyn says, sounding relieved. “I – I just want this to be over. For all of us. Try to set up a meeting and tell him that we don’t want a war. I’ll have Ned writing a list of request you can give Stannis’s middleman, then.”

I want it to be over, too, Jaime thinks, and tells her he’ll be in his room to receive the list when she has it.

--

The next morning, Brienne meets him at the stables – she’s not wearing full armor, but she has her sword under the dark cloak that’s covering her from head to toe. He chose a similar attire – on one side, he’d rather be armored. On the other, they’d attract a lot more attention.

“Are you ready, then?” He asks.

“I have everything I need. Are you?”

He thinks of how Jon made him promise that he’d come back alive and in one piece the previous night before giving him a bone-crushing hug.

He doesn’t think anyone made her promise any such thing.

“I do,” he says, throwing his pack over his horse’s reins. “Shall we?”

They ride out of the gate near the servants’ graveyard. Better to not be seen from the front entrance.

--

Their first couple of days of travel are thankfully uneventful – they are careful to not go through the Kingsroad but to trail it through the woods, they don’t light fires up at night, they take the long way whenever it looks like they might run into any kind of soldier.

Brienne isn’t much of a talker and Jaime’s too worried with the note nestled in a pocket against his breast to goad her too much, but he notices that, young as she is, she can handle a fire, she can hunt, she can roast their game passably and is generally very, very competent at what she does.

Which is why on the third day, as they make camp for the night midway through Moat Caitlin, he asks the question – fine, he’s also bored and he’s cold and he needs to distract himself from wondering how are they going to avoid whatever army King Robert put on the borders just under White Harbor.

“Who even taught you all of that, wench?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He scoffs. “At your age, I was very proficient with swords, as you might know, and I guess I could hunt, but I think you’re somewhat more skilled.”

She shrugs. “I understood early on that women’s craft were not where my skills lied. And I grew up on an island. It would be ridiculous if I didn’t know how to do all of that, nor handle a boat.”

Well, that was more than she’s told him in one sitting since that time she apologized to him.

“So, sewing wasn’t your favorite activity, growing up?”

She almost scoffs, then she holds up a hand. “Ser – Jaime, I think you might have noticed the gods did not bless me with tiny fingers. I always was terrible at sewing, and only marginally better at playing instruments. My septa used to rue that I was better at reading.”

“And why’s that?”

Brienne shrugs. “Because she thought that was what put in my head that I should be a knight instead. She wasn’t wrong,” she admits, “but then again, I think I am a far better swordsman than seamstress.”

“That you do,” Jaime agrees. “I mean, if you were a better seamstress than swordsman, you would be sewing cloaks for all the maidens in Westeros, I think.”

She does laugh at that, not too loud, not too much, but enough, and he wonders, why does it sound like she never does laugh?

“Perhaps,” she agrees. “Nonetheless, that wasn’t what I wanted to do. And it’s not as if dancing was a much better effort.”

“Wench, dancing requires coordination. Anyone who fights the way you do couldn’t be too terrible at it.”

“Not many men want to dance with a woman who’s taller than them,” she says quietly. “I think only one ever did.”

“Who?”

“Lord Renly Baratheon,” she sighs. “He came to Tarth a year ago. He didn’t bat an eyelid before dancing with me, but he was the only one who ever did.”

She can hear a sigh in her voice and he smirks. “Am I wrong or are you maybe somewhat fond of Lord Renly?”

She goes red in the face at once and sends him a look that’s obviously meant to make sure he doesn’t want to mock her, but then she sees that he’s not – all right, he’s teasing, but that’s all there is to it.

“I might have thought I was,” she sighs, curling tighter in the blanket she’s covering herself with. “But word is, he’s to wed Margaery Tyrell. I don’t like to delude myself.”

He shrugs, standing up straighter. It should be his turn to keep watch for the next few hours.

“If it’s worth any, from what my brother writes me, Lady Margaery might also be deluding herself, if she hopes for him to fancy her.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tyrion assures me that most people at court know that the only person Renly Baratheon’s ever fancied is Loras Tyrell, not his sister. I have a feeling the both of you would have been disappointed.”

She says nothing for a long time. He thinks she’s gone to sleep, but then –

“It is somehow consoling,” she scoffs, “but I don’t think I would be suited for giving in to those flights of fancy. I know what I’m good at, and it’s not being anyone’s wife.”

“Is slaying bandits more your thing?”

“Isn’t it yours?”

Jaime snorts. “I cannot disagree with you, I suppose. That’s why you didn’t even blink before accepting Lady Stark’s proposal, did you?”

She’s not looking at him as she replies, not that he expected her to. She seems to be more talkative if she doesn’t have to look at her opponent in the face.

“Ser, she trusted me to accomplish this task. It’s – it’s what I always dreamed of since I could hold a sword in my hand. Of course I would accept. And it didn’t take you much longer to do the same, did it?”

“No,” he admits. “Maybe I also was hoping for quests when I took my vows,” he sighs. “Anyway, it’s late. Catch some sleep. We have a lot to ride on the morrow.”

She doesn’t ask more and he doesn’t sleep until she relieves him of his watch a few hours later.

--

Everything goes fairly well until they reach Moat Caitlin.

There is indeed a small line of soldiers camped just outside, where the border technically is.

It’s not a huge number, admittedly.

“Can we go around them?” Brienne asks.

“If we waste a day in the woods near the fortress,” Jaime sighs. “Unless we manage to pass through like the farmers I’m looking at right now.”

“And how? People might know you.”

“As I am? Most probably,” he sighs. “But –” He thinks of the small village they circumvented before. It’s not far from here. He smirks. “I think I know how to manage that, though I’m afraid you won’t like it.”

“I – I won’t?”

“Let’s go back to that village we left behind. I need a seamstress. Or a tall woman.”

“You need what?”

He doesn’t reply to her and mounts on his horse. She follows.

--

“Jaime, this is insane,” Brienne tells him a few hours later as he takes off his breeches.

“No, it’s a very good idea, because no one is going to look for me if they think I’m a woman. Good thing the lady will let me shave.”

“How – they’ll hear it!”

“Just say that I’m your mute wife and I cannot talk, and try to change your voice a bit – if you tie your hair and wear a cloak, people might take you for a man without batting an eyelid. You’re a hedge knight, I’m the mute maiden you saved a while ago and we’re going back to where your family lives in the South. There, help me lace this thing.”

Brienne shakes her head but does come closer, lacing the dress in the back – it’s fairly simple and the farmer’s wife that he asked had no quibbles selling it to him for a few golden dragons, but it does fit him and while it’s of a dreadful light brown color, it doesn’t look too bad on him. Surely better than it would on Brienne, and if he wears a good cloak no one is ever going to know if they don’t look too deep into it.

“Doesn’t – don’t you feel – isn’t it demeaning?” She asks, not sounding too convinced.

“Wench, is it demeaning that you’re wearing breeches?”

“I should hope not.”

“Then it can’t be demeaning to wear a bloody dress. There’s nothing demeaning in skirts.”

“I know there isn’t,” Brienne quips back, “but not many men would agree with that notion.”

“Good thing that there’s most probably no men like me around Westeros. So, shall we take the Kingsroad?”

“Gods, I really hope you’re right about this,” Brienne sighs, and pulls her heaviest cloak from her pack.

--

To her surprise, it works perfectly.

Jaime smirks all the way down to the first woods they find where they can reasonably go hide and go back to their old garb and where he can put his sword back on his hip.

He can see that Brienne’s blushing as he takes the dress off carefully.

Well then, he thinks, at least I didn’t grow old hideous to a maiden’s eyes. He packs the dress. Who knows if he might need it on the way back.

--

That is, until he realizes that the Kingsroad would bring them directly to the infamous inn.

“Brienne, I should just wear the damned thing all the time. At least until we get there.”

“What?”

“The Kingsroad would be faster and safer, and we don’t have too long before our meeting time is up. If I wear the damned dress and keep my mouth shut, no one’s going to ask questions and we’ll ride a lot more swiftly.”

“I – well, I don’t have to wear it, so if it’s all right with you –”

“Wench, I’ve been through too much shit to give two fucks about whether my father would approve of me going around in a peasant’s dress for a good cause. Tomorrow we’re going for it. And mind that you’ll be the only one with a sword, so be alert.”

“Jaime, I’m always alert.”

The way she says it, no one could have doubted it if they did in the first place.

--

Miraculously, it works. No one stops them, they travel fast, Brienne more or less lies convincingly about it when anyone stops them and asks them question, and they’re at the Crossdroads Inn a day before their planned meet-up. Jaime changes in the woods – they’re not going to try that ruse inside the inn – and they order something to eat after bribing the owner to let them sleep in the stables. Gods, hopefully tomorrow they can have their meeting and hightail back to Winterfell.

“What did Lady Catelyn tell you when she gave you the list?” Brienne asks him as they eat, in the table in the farthest corner.

“That she already told Stannis she had in mind of sending at least me, if not you, and his man should recognize us. And he might probably even be early to the meeting, so we should just linger around until someone approaches us.”

Brienne nods as she eats her stew, glancing around the inn – it’s halfway full but she’s sat in a place that allows her to keep her eyes on the door and most possible ways out. She’s good, Jaime thinks for the umpteenth time.

“Then we should wait,” she sighs, and they eat in silence until someone clears her throat from behind his shoulders – good thing she had been covering for him.

“I’m looking for two knights,” the man says. “A man and a woman, of similar height, one of which is formerly Kingsguard. Am I right or do I have to run in the opposite direction?”

“You’re not wrong,” Jaime says, turning to look at the man – he’s in his forties, with a short well-kept gray beard, wearing nondescript commoner clothes and a glove on his left hand, along with a small pouch kept around his neck. “I imagine, uhm, the court sends you, Ser…?”

“Davos Seaworth,” the man says, sitting next to Brienne as she makes space for him.

“The one who saved Stannis’s hide during the siege of Storm’s End?” Jaime asks with admiration – he should have known Stannis would send him out of everyone.

“Am I this famous?”

“People dub you the Onion Knight, Ser, I think you might be.”

“I find nothing shameful in it. All the same, I do not think we’re here to discuss my previous feats, are we?”

“No,” Brienne agrees. “And if I were you, Ser, I would order a drink. We should not look suspicious.”

“The lady has the right of it,” Ser Davos says, and orders ale for three.

They wait until the owner has brought it over, and then Jaime sighs and takes his precious letter from his pocket.

“Ser, I imagine we should just tell things the way they are.”

“I entirely agree with this way of thinking.”

“If you want to look at what Lady Catelyn has written –”

“Ser Jaime, I might have risen in my ranks, but I still was born in Flea Bottom a number of years ago and I’m afraid literacy was not what I could afford when I was a young man. But if the lady and Lord Stark trust you, then I trust you as well. And the lady’s father has an excellent reputation in the Stormlands, I think I have nothing to fear.”

“Very well,” Jaime says. “Of course, we both want the king and Lord Stark to meet and negotiate this mess.”

“Indeed. I can tell you in advance that there isn’t one single bannerman of His Grace’s who wants to fight this war.”

“Not one?”

Davos shrugs. “As far as they’re concerned, the Targaryens are all as good as dead and a bastard boy growing in the North under Ned Stark out of everyone won’t be what brings them back to life. They’ve sent men because they have to, but those same men certainly don’t want to die for such a cause.”

“Why, this might bode well, because in the North the situation is… well, someone would fight, but no one wants to send men to die again just after the Greyjoy rebellion. Let’s just say a solution without blood being shed would be amenable for everyone.”

“Well, this certainly is something I like to hear. In between us, Lord Stannis thinks that his brother is being an immature idiot about this and, in between us, I think I agree. But, may I hear what your side would like to obtain?”

Jaime knows the list by heart, but he reads from it just in case he ends up forgetting something, not that it’s that long.

“Lord Stark would not wish to secede or to harm the realm in such a way. He realizes that he has committed a crime against the crown, which is why he would be amenable to relinquish his title as Warden of the North and give it to someone that both he and the King might deem fitter for it. But he wants his family alive and his… nephew alive, or son, however you would prefer to see it. If the King is so worried about him, Lord Stark can promise him that the boy won’t set foot in Westeros outside the Northern borders, but exiling him is absolutely out of the question, and his death even more so. If the King wants any guarantee of his intentions, he’ll agree to a match in between his children and either the King’s or Stannis’s in order to prove his good will. What is your opinion, Ser?”

Ser Davos takes a long drink from his ale, then puts it back on the table and clears his throat.

“My opinion, on a personal level, is that your terms are entirely too much in the king’s favor – I mean, Stark is losing a lot by laying them down like this, and if I was the king I’d accept them without even blinking. Stannis’s opinion was that punishing children for their parents’ mistakes was ludicrous and Robert cannot live his life wishing Lyanna Stark had her child with him, but that at the same time Lord Stark still committed treason and therefore should receive some kind of reprimand, and I am sure he would content himself with maybe Winterfell losing a few holdings and a promise of good behavior, and possibly he’d send a man to live over there keeping an eye and making sure he’s not raising a new ruler without giving someone else such a title as Warden of the North.”

“So,” Brienne says, “I imagine our problem is the king’s opinion, isn’t it?”

Ser Davos nods and sighs deeply. “The King is really angry about this. And –”

“Let me guess, Cersei’s making it harder, keeps on poisoning him against Lord Stark and is really encouraging him to bury that poor child with his half-siblings?”

“… Yes,” Ser Davos says. “You do not mince words, Ser. Anyway, what Stannis told me to assure you, is that he will do his best to convince the king to meet Lord Stark somewhere near Moat Caitlin or anyway, a midway location so they could discuss this. He would champion your terms and as it is, we could meet in maybe a moon’s time, given that you should be given time to go back to Winterfell. But there’s a chance the king might not be swayed. As it is, the most he’s willing to concede is exile but only for the child, not for the entire family.”

“… Does he want the poor lad to go off to Essos alone?”

“Lord Stark might choose someone to send him with. But yes, that was his only proposal.”

“Fuck this sideways,” Jaime sighs, “it’s not going to work if this is how they think when they meet. Fuck. Brienne, do you think our innkeeper might lends us quill and paper?”

“… I suppose so,” she says. “Why?”

“Because I have to write a message to Ser Davos’s liege lord.”

Brienne stands up and goes to find the owner – she comes back not long later with both paper and quill.

“The quality’s poor,” Jaime sighs, “but I guess this’ll have to make do. Ser Davos,” he says, “I’m going to write your liege lord a fairly long note. In which I will share information that might change the King’s mind when it comes to listening to my sister. You seem like a good man and one that could be trusted, so please give this to your lord before giving it to the King.”

“Of course. Is there a reason?”

“That I want my brother to live,” Jaime sighs as he writes the note down.

“How would that harm your brother, Ser?”

Jaime sighs, signs the note and blows over the ink, then folds it and puts it inside the one from Lady Catelyn, then hands them both to Ser Davos.

“Because I’ve just written Stannis Baratheon that the one reason my sister wanted me in King’s Landing was that she wished for me to give her a child and reprise our previous relationship, that we’ve been in since – since I can remember, at this point. And if Robert knew that was why she begged him to pardon me for Aerys, he wouldn’t listen to her half as much. But I know that if that comes out in the open it’s going to cause an upheaval and so I would rather know that Stannis would make sure my brother doesn’t get hurt in the process before making that information public.”

“I – I see,” Ser Davos says, and without even blinking thrice. And he’s not looking at Jaime as if he’s completely horribly disgusted, which is a nice surprise. “I will bring your letter. You can tell Lord Stark to camp at Moat Caitlin in a month. Lord Stannis will make sure the king is there.”

“Good. We’ll make sure Lord Stark is. Now, it’s late and we’ll head back on the morrow. Would you care to dine with us, if they lady agrees?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” Ser Davos agrees, and they order some more food.

--

Ser Davos leaves just after sunset, his letters tucked safely into one of his pockets.

“I like him,” Brienne says as they watch him ride away. “Do you?”

“I wouldn’t have trusted the man with that kind of information, if I didn’t think he was reliable. But Stannis has definitely better taste in bannermen than his brother, that’s for sure. So, shall we try to get some sleep?”

She nods and they head towards the stables – there’s a loft, and there’s hay on it. It’s good enough, Jaime figures as he puts his pack to the side and lies down.

Of course, there’s barely space for the both of them so they end up almost touching, with hay tangling in their hair and their legs pressed against each other.

“What,” he jokes, “don’t worry, your honor is safe.”

“I wouldn’t,” she starts, and then, “you’re japing, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” he snorts. “And you’ve been wanting to ask me something since Ser Davos left. Come on, spill.”

She shakes her head. “It’s just – you didn’t even hesitate before writing that note. And you knew it would ruin your reputation even further.”

“It was worth it,” he shrugs.

“But – you also –”

“Possibly ruined my father and sister’s reputations, too? I know, but they didn’t deserve it in the first place. And that’s not the point. If I cared about my reputation more than my oath, I’d have left Winterfell a long time ago. Or better, I’d have told Robert as soon as I found out.”

“I know that,” she sighs. “I just find it horribly unfair that you’re the finest knight I’ve ever met and no one is ever going to know.”

Jaime wishes he had something worthy to reply.

Except that he’s completely without bloody words.

“Wench, you need to learn to warn a man before springing this kind of wisdom on him,” he laughs, but she laughs back, and –

Maybe, he thinks, maybe as long as she knows and the people who matter know, he really cares little for what everyone else thinks of his reputation.

--

Thing is, he had figured that now that they had the meeting, the way back should come easier than the one out of the North, so he decides he’s not going to bother with the whole husband and wife charade and they should just go straight back taking the backroads, since they don’t have to hurry too much.

Which is why they make camp a day’s ride away from the inn after having ridden in their usual clothes, and that’s where he fucks up thoroughly.

He doesn’t know he has as he lights a fire to cook the rabbit Brienne caught earlier.

He does the moment he hears noise coming towards them.

Shit, he thinks, putting out the fire, but it’s too late – moments later, they’re surrounded by five soldiers with Baratheon colors on their cloaks.

“Look at that,” one of them says, “it’s unusual to find two lone travelers around here these days. Given that there’s unrest and all. Are you sure you’re not deserters?”

“My wife and I are traveling to her father’s farm,” Jaime replies, feeling Brienne go tense next to him. “We’re no such thing.”

“His wife?”

One of the men goes towards Brienne and grabs her by the arm, pulling her upward.

“Shit, she looks more like a man than he does – are you sure she’s really a woman?”

Brienne says nothing and Jaime is plenty grateful for it. “She really is, where it counts. Now, we don’t have much food, but if you want to share –” He starts, hoping to maybe get out of this with little.

But then –

“Fuck me,” one of the guys who hadn’t said nothing until now speaks, “farmers my arse.”

No, Jaime thinks as he walks forward – before he can reach for his discarded sword, the other man has grabbed him by the wrists and pulled down his hood.

“Look at that,” the arsehole in front of him says, “we’re rich.”

“We’re what?” The last of the group finally says.

“Don’t you recognize him? He’s the split copy of our dear Queen,” the guy who found him out says, “and I think he has no idea whatsoever.”

“Of what?” Jaime spits, not even bothering to deny it. It’s obvious. He has a Stark cloak in his pack and one of the free soldiers has taken it out, showing it to the others.

“Your sister, Ser Jaime, has made clear that anyone who brings you back to King’s Landing will get at least a keep, if not a fair amount of money.”

“She put a bounty on my head?”

“What can I say, Ser, you did betray your king by siding with the Starks. Nonetheless, that wasn’t all she has written in her decree.”

Jaime does not like where this is going.

“Why, what else should she have said?”

“She said that if you opposed resistance, you might be subdued any way we saw fit, since she wants you to be tried, not to beg for your life.”

She really couldn’t accept that he didn’t want the same things as she did, huh?

“Therefore,” the man says, “I think we shall bring you back to King’s Landing. But I couldn’t have the Kingslayer free to try anything and run away.”

“What –”

“Osmund, fetch me a block, won’t you?”

The man who had been rummaging through his pack grunts and says they’d better fetch Jaime, and then grabs him by the arms and drags him over to a tree stump – the other three are holding Brienne still, while she obviously tries to get out of their hold, but she’s also screaming and no one’s coming, and Jaime can see that she’s trying, but –

He’s thrown in front of the tree.

“Osmund, hold his arm out. The right one.”

The arsehole behind him does, and –

No, Jaime thinks. No, they can’t be doing this, they can’t really be thinking of doing this –

They just want to scare him.

Do they?

The man takes out a curved, sharp blade. Osmund moves so that he’s keeping his wrist still.

No, he thinks, no, as the blade comes down and down and down –

Jaime screams.

--

And then he screams more, because he’s never felt this kind of pain before, but then he realizes someone else is screaming, and it’s not him, it’s –

He turns his head through a blur of tears, because of course he’s crying, he had to, that’s his goddamned right hand that’s flown to the ground after the bastard cut it off, and sees someone moving and one of the men shouting and swords meeting each other, and –

He blinks, shakes his head even if he feels like fainting, and –

And he sees that Brienne managed to free herself and she’s killed two of the three men, and she’s just stuck her knife in the third’s throat – the other two come at her at once, but she grabs the knife and does the same with Osmund, good riddance, and then she’s in front of the arsehole who cut his hand who’s looking at her as if she’s seen some kind of demon.

“Who are you,” he snarls, grabbing at his sword.

“Someone you shouldn’t have underestimated,” she breathes, and then she disarms him in one smooth move that Jaime would have admired fully if he didn’t feel like bloody fainting and if they hadn’t cut off his right hand, but he’s present enough to appreciate it when her sword goes through his gut and comes out of it.

The bastard’s dead before he hits the ground and Brienne’s suddenly standing there with the sword in her hand

(gods, didn’t she say she’s never killed anyone before and now she’s killed four men at once?)

and then she throws it away and runs where he’s kneeling – by now he’s not even feeling pain anymore.

He just wants to pass out and not look at his bloody wrist, where there’s no hand anymore –

“Jaime!”

He turns to look at her, blinking, but he can barely focus.

“Jaime, for – oh gods, I’m so sorry, I’m –”

“Nothing you could’ve done,” he blurts, but his heart’s not in it. “Where – it’s not – it’s not –”

Her eyes go wide in fear and then she shakes her head and forces him to lie down. She grabs the cloak he had been wearing, then tears it into a few pieces and ties them around his bleeding stump of a wrist – his hand, his sword hand – and does it tightly enough that he feels pain through the cloud of numbness that had just descended over him.

“Shit,” he curses, “shit, this hurts –”

“I know,” she says, “I know. Gods, we need a maester, let me wrap it.”

“No – no maesters,” he croaks. “Brienne, we can’t lose time. Go back to Winterfell.”

“And what? Leave you here?”

He snorts. He thinks he wants to laugh, and he wants to cry, and his hand hurts –

“Brienne, that was my sword hand,” he wheezes. “I’m near useless. I’d slow you down. We can’t – go back. They need to know, they –”

The last thing he expects is a slap to the face that does feel fucking painful, but at the same time it sort of throws him out of his admittedly horrible train of thought, but then she grabs his face in between her hands and shakes her head.

“Jaime Lannister, you listen to me. I’m bringing you back to Winterfell if it fucking kills me, but it won’t, and you’re right, I can’t afford finding a maester. I’ll just have to ride faster.”

“What –”

“Hold on,” she says, and then lifts him up strongly but way more gently than he’d have thought, not when they’re in a hurry. She reaches the strongest of their horses, it was her own, and helps him climb over it. He holds on to the reins desperately with his left hand while she goes back for their packs and throws them over the horse, as well. Then she climbs up behind him and puts an arm around his waist, and – shit. She has a strong grip. Enough that he wouldn’t fall.

“Lady Catelyn sent us together so we’d keep each other alive, too,” she says quietly. “I’m bringing you home, ser.”

He’s – he can barely think, but he can hear the finality of her words, as if she’s not doubting that she will, and thing is, he thinks he believes her.

If he doesn’t die first, he thinks before passing out.

--

He doesn’t know how long he’s unconscious after – he only knows that when he comes back to, it’s night, everything is hurting, he feels like he’s burning up and Brienne’s tying new bandages around his right wrist and it all hurts like the fucking Seven Hells.

He groans.

“You’re awake,” she says, sounding relieved, as she secures the last knot.

He wants to ask her where they are or how far did they come, but then he doesn’t because he can’t seem to put a couple words one after the other anymore, and then she’s holding his head up and holding a cup of water to his mouth. He drinks half of it and the rest runs down his chin, but he’s too out of it to care.

He passes out again.

--

He comes awake from time to time while they’re riding. He can barely make out the woods around them or guess where they are, but she’s always grabbing at his waist and keeping him secure on the horse in front of her, and he can’t help thinking, she’s warm.

And not just that – she’s warm but she’s not harsh, her grip has something gentle in it that he can’t quite place, and he passes away again knowing she won’t let him fall.

--

He knows she forces him to eat whatever he can, if anything because at one point he throws up over his damned clothes and he knows she has to help him out of his shirt and into another one. Water is a better bet, at least he can drink, but he knows he’s running a fever, and it’s bad, and he knows he’s spent a hell of a lot of time unconscious until he wakes up hearing a stream nearby and sees Moat Caitlin in the distance.

But –

They’re on the right side of it, are they not?

“How – the soldiers?” He croaks.

Brienne’s near him, changing his bandages again. “I wore your dress and pretended you were my sick husband. They didn’t recognize me,” she says quietly. “You threw up on one of them. That helped.”

“I – well, at least,” he groans, and then his head starts spinning and he feels like he could throw up again.

He does. His shirt is a mess after that, and that’s when he realizes that it’s not the only thing he’s wearing that is filthy.

“Wearing reeking clothes helped, too, but – it can’t – wait.” She helps him out of his shirt and fucking piss-soaked breeches way, way too gently and slowly.

“Brienne, we don’t have time, we have to go back –”

“Winterfell is not far and you’re sick. There’s a river here, we can wash.”

“I can’t fucking stand.”

“I can. What, are you so craven you won’t even bathe?”

“Fuck you, wench,” he groans, and then he sits up.

“Good,” she says, and is she smiling? He can’t ponder it any further – she helps him up to his feet and then into the shallow stream, keeping his right wrist out of the water, and he lets her wash his back and his neck while the water around him turns grey. Hell. He should shave. His beard is also filthy. He reaches down with his shaking left hand and gives it a basic wash, feeling marginally better for it, and then he realizes he has completely exhausted all his strength for this, but –

Then Brienne drags him out and lays him down on one of the blankets, and he’s not so out of it that he doesn’t realize that while the smallclothes she puts on him are his own, the clothes are definitely hers.

“Yours are all ruined,” she says, apologetically. “I threw them away.”

“Good riddance,” he agrees. Shit, he doesn’t want to know the conditions they might have been in. Besides, her clothes are slightly larger around the shoulders but not too much and they fit him fine. Now if only he didn’t feel so light-headed –

--

He’s sure he’s seeing his mother.

Something tells him it doesn’t make sense and he shouldn’t be, but he can only see blonde hair and large eyes and someone’s running their fingers delicately over his brow along with a cold wet cloth, and so who else would it be? Certainly not his sister.

If it was his mother, though, she’d be singing. She always used to.

“Mother?” He calls out.

Someone replies. A woman. He can’t distinguish what she’s saying. He feels cold and burning at the same time, he feels halfway sick and his wrist is on fire and –

He says something else. He doesn’t even know what.

He thinks he hears someone singing not long after, and it’s a pretty voice though it doesn’t sound like his mother, or maybe it does –

He passes out.

--

“ – how she laughed, the maiden of the three, she spun away and said to him, no featherbed for me – Jaime, Jaime, are you awake?”

“Gods, Brienne, was that you singing?” He groans as he opens his eyes and he realizes, from how red her cheeks are, that he probably guessed right. She looks sideways.

“You – yesterday, you thought I was your mother. You talked a lot. It just – it sounded like you wished for her to – well. Do it. I guess.”

She’s re-doing his bandages, and he’s definitely wearing her clothes still, and he’s covered in cold sweat and he wants to retch.

And she was singing to him because she thought it would make him feel somehow better.

He kind of wants to cry, which he might be doing given how much pain he’s in and how much he just wants to curl up and die.

“Stop sounding embarrassed,” he groans again. “You have a pretty voice.”

“I – what?”

“You do. Seems like there is at least one womanly skill you have, wench.”

“I don’t really do it often,” she sighs. “I’m somehow rusty.”

“Didn’t sound like that. How – how long until –”

“Three days or four, if we keep on riding at this speed. You will make it.”

“I hope,” he says. “Shit. I’m cold.”

“You have all the blankets,” she says apologetically.

“I’m not accusing you of anything. Hells, you’re going above and beyond your duties.”

“I’m not. It’s the least you’re owed.” She breathes in. “Maybe – there’s a way to make you warmer. It’s – not decent, though.”

“Brienne, I don’t give a fuck about decency by now.”

She breathes and then moves down next to him under the covers, her arm going around his chest so that they’re pressed flush against each other, and – yes. She’s warm. She’s really warm, he decides, and so he turns so that he has his head against her shoulder, and he cannot believe that he’s doing this with a girl of six and ten who hadn’t even killed a man before she had to for his sake and who apparently thinks he’s the most honorable knight that ever lived and who probably aspires to that same position.

But she’s warm, and she’s tall, and she’s large, and he’d be dead if it wasn’t for her, and suddenly he feels tears spring to his eyes all over again without being able to control them.

“There’s nothing indecent about this,” he finally says. “Who even told you?”

“My septa,” Brienne says quietly. “She’d be horrified if she could see me right now.”

“Why?” Maybe if she talks about her septa he’ll think about anything that’s not the throbbing ache in his right arm.

“She said – the truth was in the mirrors, not in what people told me. Which – was a good lesson, I suppose.”

What, to make sure you’d assume anyone complimenting you was a filthy liar?

“She – well, she always used to speak of weddings. That was before I started training with swords. She – she said I should be grateful to find a man who wouldn’t look at me and that in the dark all women look the same.”

“Wench, your septa sounds like the worst kind of cunt.”

Brienne snorts. “She was right.”

“How was she right?”

He feels her shrugging. One of her hands presses against the small of his back.

“I was betrothed thrice. The first died before I ever met him. The second looked at me, said he’d never marry someone so ugly and threw his flowers at me before leaving –”

“In public?”

“Yes, where would it have happened? The third – he was in his sixties. It happened just before I left for Tarth. He – he said he would marry me if I gave up swordfighting. I told him I’d only marry a man who could best me.”

“Let me guess, he didn’t,” Jaime snorts.

“Of course he didn’t,” she replies. “I’m not married to him now, am I?”

“That still doesn’t make your bloody septa right. I imagine she’s also the reason why you don’t sing more often, or what?”

She shrugs. “I did, once. But I saw people laughing because the voice didn’t match the face. And I always looked badly in dresses. I just – I wouldn’t. And honestly, would it have been appreciated if I had joined an army?”

“Men sing all kinds of shit, Brienne.”

“All the same, I don’t – no army would take me seriously if I did any such thing.”

But you like it, Jaime thinks, and fuck me thrice over, I liked it, too.

“Finish that bloody song,” he chuckles.

“Sorry?”

“Finish it. I happen to like your voice and it happens to help with my bloody headache.”

Brienne doesn’t look too convinced, but then she goes on,

I'll wear a gown of golden leaves, and bind my hair with grass, but you can be my forest love, and me your forest lass,

and Jaime would like to ask her why is that song apparently the one she remembers, but he’s too tired and she’s too warm and he’s too sleepy, so for once he closes his eyes of his own accord and lets himself drift off.

--

Then one day he wakes up feeling really cold all over, and as if he could throw up all over again except that there’s nothing he can throw up, and he’s still riding in front of Brienne, with her left arm keeping him steady, and he glances at his wrist – the bandages are stained in crusty red, and he wonders, how long since I was awake?

For a moment he thinks, I can’t last that much longer.

“Brienne,” he blurts, “Brienne, I don’t know –”

“What?” She asks, not slowing down. Gods, how fast is she pushing that poor mare?

“I think – I’m cold, I – I don’t think I can –”

“Jaime, don’t you fucking dare die now and look up ahead.”

He tries, with enormous effort, and –

He doesn’t even try to stop himself from bursting out in tears the moment he sees Winterfell in the distance.

“How –”

“I can ride fast. Now just hold on and you’d better be alive when we get there. Understood?”

“Yes, my lady,” he croaks, and sags against her chest, and he tries to keep his eyes open, but then it’s all dark again.

--

He wakes up for a short time, still feeling cold and miserable, but he thinks he’s on a bed, and people are going out and in around him, and his wrist hurts but not as much, and he thinks Brienne’s holding up a cup of milk of the poppy to his lips and he wants to say he doesn’t want it, but he can’t say anything, and he goes back to sleep thinking that if he dies, at least he’s going to go in a proper darned bed – though maybe a death on the road would have been more knightly.

Maybe.

He passes out again. He’s sure someone’s brushing strands of hair away from his forehead. He thinks someone’s singing,

for you shall be my lady love and I shall be your love, I’ll always keep you warm and safe and guard you with my sword,

but he could be making it up, he thinks as he passes out –

--

He hears birds.

He blinks once, twice, and when he opens his eyes, he sees sun shining from the window of his room in Winterfell.

He’s lying on his bed, with his comfortable feather mattress under his back and a whole lot of blankets on top of him. His throat is absolutely sore, he feels so weak he doesn’t know if he could sit up without help and when he turns to look at his wrist, it’s –

It’s still there, without a hand attached to it, but it’s wrapped in white linen and there’s no red or pink stain on it. He doesn’t feel filthy anymore, and he’s not running a fever anymore.

Seven hells.

I made it, he thinks, and then the door croaks open and Maester Luwin slips into the room, and his expression turns relieved as he sees that he’s awake and breathing and aware.

“Ser,” he says, “have you been awake long?”

Jaime shakes his head and nods towards the cup of water on the nightstand – Luwin immediately comes to his side, helps him up and puts it to his mouth.

It’s very efficient, he thinks.

Not the same as when she –

He shakes his head. “Not long,” he croaks, finding his voice. “How – how long was I asleep?”

“The lady Brienne brought you here a week ago. You weren’t too well-off, and you had to fight off an infection on your wrist, but you’re still young and strong and you pulled through. Admittedly, I don’t know if you would have if she hadn’t taken as good care of your wound as she could on the road.”

“I don’t know if I’d be here if she hadn’t dragged me kicking and screaming,” Jaime sighs.

“It was admirable,” Luwin agrees, “and by the way, she’s been here until a few hours ago. The Lady Catelyn and I had to forcefully send her to get some sleep, same as we do every day.”

“What?”

“She seems to be very invested in your recovery, ser.”

“About that. How – how bad is it?”

“Well, not counting the hand loss, you will be up and about in a few days, I think. You lost some weight, of course, and you’ll be weaker than usual for a while, but there’s nothing else you won’t come back from. It was a clean cut, at least.”

At least, Jaime thinks, wanting to laugh hysterically.

“However,” Luwin says, “the Lady Catelyn said she was to be warned first thing when you woke up. Lord Stark has left for Moat Caitlin as soon as he could after the lady Brienne delivered her message, but he said to tell you that he’s never been happier to be so wrong about someone in his entire life, and that he will thank you properly as soon as he’s back.”

“Well, all right then. Call the lady. Might as well not displease her.”

Luwin leaves and not long later Catelyn is almost running through the door. Jaime isn’t surprised to see her with her latest child in her arms – he must have been born while they were on their little mission. And she looks utterly relieved at seeing how he’s faring.

“Jaime,” she says, sitting at the chair next to his bed, “gods, how – how are you faring?”

“Not counting that,” he sighs, shrugging his right shoulder, “it seems like I will fare plenty well in the near future. Right now, I feel like utter shit, but better than the previous weeks.”

“Gods,” she says, “when Brienne arrived with you in those conditions, we all thought you wouldn’t pull through. Well, she was convinced you would, but – you don’t want to know how Jon took it.”

“Badly?”

“Terribly. Robb, too, but Jon – we had to insist to convince him to not be in the room while the maester was working on you, and he’s been sharing with Theon since then because Robb insisted to go with Ned to the parley and there was no way we could convince him not to.”

“Robb went to the parley?”

“So it seems. I’m just praying that it doesn’t end horribly, but Brienne said that it looked… like it might not?”

“If Stannis had to run things, it wouldn’t. Gods, Cat, your son is a handful, isn’t he?”

“He is. Anyway, I should probably tell someone to get Jon, he’ll want to see you, but – there are a few things we should discuss first, I think.”

“Do go ahead,” Jaime groans, sitting up straighter.

“First – your – your note to Stannis.”

“Let me guess, the entire realm knows.”

“It does. Your father did not appreciate, from what my uncle’s ravens tell me. Your sister hasn’t, either. The king has not, but – well, he agreed to discuss Ned’s terms, so – it seems like this is the umpteenth time we have to thank you for your service even when you singlehandedly destroyed your reputation for it over and over.”

“I knew what I was doing,” Jaime says. “At least it did work. So, what’s the rest?”

“I don’t know what are you planning now,” Catelyn goes on, “but just in case it wasn’t clear already – unless we all get exiled, you are welcome to stay here for the rest of your life, if that’s what you wish. It’s the least you’re owed, unless you wish to leave.”

“Well, given my current state, I doubt I’d have much luck going anywhere. I think I shall be glad to accept for good.”

“Good. And – I’m – I’m sorry,” she says. “If I hadn’t sent you –”

“Cat, we both agreed to that mission. We knew there was a risk. I – I wish it hadn’t happened, of course, but I don’t regret having gone if it meant not going to war. I’ll live.”

“I know you will, you’re entirely too stubborn to let anything other than old age kill you, but you – you didn’t deserve that on top of everything else.”

He snorts. “Knights don’t take their oaths for the glory half of the time. I know I’ve done my part.”

“Nonetheless, thank you. Now I think I shall fetch both Jon and the lady Brienne, before they attempt to murder me for not having warned them as soon as you were awake.”

“Blasted – I didn’t even ask. What’s his name?”

“Rickon,” Cat replies, “and he’s even more of a screamer than his siblings put together.”

“How enchanting,” Jaime snorts. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” she says, and then slips off the room.

--

Brienne arrives first – she about runs towards the side of the bed, looking so relieved she could weep.

She also has obviously not slept much in the last few weeks, she’s wearing a night shirt that leaves half of her chest showing and she doesn’t even seem to mind, and then she stops abruptly before lowering herself slowly on the chair.

“How – how are you doing?” She asks. “I mean, other than –”

“I’m fine,” he tells her, “and it’s most probably thanks to you, so I think I owe you at least a few debts. Don’t worry, disgraced as I am, I’m still going to pay them.”

“No,” she says, “if I had been more alert maybe they wouldn’t have gotten to you in the first place. It was the least –”

“Brienne. We were outnumbered. You killed all of them while they were distracted, but you couldn’t have surprised them if they were not. I couldn’t blame it on you. But – but you did bring me back, and not many others would have managed. So, thank you.”

“I – I didn’t – you’re welcome,” she finally blurts, not quite looking at him, and why’s that when she did look at him plenty enough while on the road?

Maybe then, she was too worried keeping him alive.

Then he smirks. “I think,” he said, “you’re forgetting the salient point of all those songs you like.”

“As in?”

“I don’t know, the saved maidens usually thank their knights properly.”

“How – I don’t need –”

“Brienne, my back hurts and I can barely stay upright, so how about you lean the hell down and let me be courteous for once in my life?”

She does, slowly, as if she can barely believe it, and he doesn’t know why he shivers – and not from cold – as he kisses her cheek before she leans back, blushing furiously, but – it’s a good look on her, he thinks.

“Never mind that I guess you are the knight out of the two of us now.”

“… Why?”

Jaime stares at her. “I don’t have my sword hand anymore. I think my career’s over.”

And then she’s not blushing furiously anymore. Actually, she’s glaring at him.

“You have a left hand, you know,” she says.

“I can’t do anything with my left hand.”

“You can do anything if you put your mind to it. No one says you can’t be a knight anymore, ser, and if you decided so, it would be a – a sorry loss, because you’re still the finest one I’ve ever run into.”

For a moment, he can’t bloody believe her. She still thinks that?

“… Gods, you’re serious.”

“I’m wholly serious,” she replies.

“Fine,” he says, “I can consider it, but not right now. I just want to fucking sleep for a month at this point.”

“That’s understandable,” she says, nodding, and then –

“Snow, they’re talking, let them,” he hears Greyjoy groan from outside the door.

Brienne smiles. “I think I should let Jon in before he bursts.”

“Before he bursts?”

“You don’t want to know how worried he was before,” she says. “Welcome back, and – I’m glad to see you up and about, Ser. Truly.”

He doesn’t have much time to ponder things, because a moment later she’s opened the door and Jon and Theon Greyjoy just walked in, and a moment later Jon’s thrown himself at him and there’s relieved tears on Jaime’s naked shoulder, and has he moves his left arm around Jon’s back Jaime thinks that he’s relieved, too.

“You promised you wouldn’t die,” Jon sobs.

“Well, I’m not dead, am I?” He replies. “All right, I’m lacking a piece, but that’s it.”

Jon nods, and then moves back to look at him, then at his wrist, then back at him. He looks like he’s about to cry again.

“Hey,” Jaime says, “it was just a hand. I’ll live. I guess you’ll have to find yourself another knight though, I don’t know how –”

“I don’t want another one,” Jon interrupts him. “If it’s not you, I can do without.”

Jaime laughs in spite of himself. “So what, should I work on using the left if I want to keep my job or you’re left on your own?”

“I’d prefer the first,” Jon says resolutely.

Well, fuck that. “We’ll see,” he promises.

He really has doubts about how it might work out, but he has a feeling they just won’t let him not try and maybe it’s a good thing.

--

“Your son did what?” Jaime about can’t believe what Ned just told him.

“My son,” Ned sighs, sounding halfway proud and halfway shocked, “after seeing that me and Robert were not making any progress and that both of us were not doing it just because we couldn’t move past, well, preconceptions, first yelled are you both serious, at which we immediately stopped arguing. Then he proceeded to point out that his aunt was dead so there was no point in fighting over her, and that Rhaegar was also dead and therefore the same was valid. Then he proceeded to say that Stannis had been the only one who said something sensed back at the beginning of the meeting and that it sounded petty and not very royal to ask to ruin the life of a ten-year-old just because Robert didn’t like his father, while on my side I couldn’t apparently get beyond wanting my terms accepted. Then he said that whatever the king decided, he would have killed anyone even thinking of harming his brother who was in fact the least likely person to stage a rebellion in Westeros, and by the way, we were supposed to be friends and we’d kill each other over something that ridiculous?”

“And you’re telling me it worked?”

“Apparently everyone inside that tent except for Stannis suddenly realized how fucking stupid we were being,” Ned snorts. “Anyway, as they told you already, there’ll be no secession and no war. We really were being stupid, and if I have to send Bran to foster at Stannis’s when he’s the right age and host Davos Seaworth regularly so that he comes checking that we’re not planning any rebellions, well, there’s plenty worse I could have endured. However, there are a few things I didn’t write in that raven that I wanted to tell you in person.”

“Do go ahead.”

“Your sister is going back to Casterly. I think your father is arranging to find her a suitable husband who will not mind that you two were, uh, involved. Your father was not happy about it. Cersei looked unhappy just because she didn’t get her revenge on you, not at leaving Robert, but never mind that. I’m afraid that your father has written you off as a lost cause.”

“As if,” Jaime sighs, “I’ll live.”

“Of course, as Catelyn might have told you already, you’re welcome to stay here indefinitely. I can’t even begin to thank you for – for what you did. I don’t know if you can ever be repaid for what you lost, but –”

“I knew the risks,” Jaime cuts him off. “I made my choices.”

“Very well. And then – would you care to follow me downstairs?”

“Sure,” Jaime says, feeling thankful that he was fully dressed already. “Why?”

“We had a busy parley,” Ned says as they walk downwards – Jaime goes slower, but he’s still not back at his full strength. “There were a lot of people who came, including one who had a message for you, but then I just figured they were better off relying it to you personally.”

“What? Who would have a message for me?”

Ned stops in front of a door on the lower floor, then shakes his head. “Just get in and you’ll see. Consider it a way to start repaying you, ser.”

Then he turns his back on Jaime and goes back the way he came from.

Jaime shrugs and opens the door, figuring he’ll find out, and –

“Jaime. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

So, it might be fairly embarrassing to admit that the moment Jaime saw Tyrion sitting at a table obviously waiting for him the first instinct he had, which he immediately followed, was kicking the door shut, rush to the chair and take him into his arms, but they haven’t seen each other in years, he had the right.

“How – how?” Jaime says, moving back.

“Father never let me visit because he wanted to make you miserable, I suppose,” Tyrion tells him, “and then I insisted to go to that parley just to give Stark a few letters Father didn’t let me send, either. Imagine my surprise when Stark told me I could take a long vacation here and give them to you, but since I would rather not be in Casterly when Cersei is there, I thought it was a very sound proposal.”

“Oh gods,” Jaime laughs, “what – he didn’t warn me.”

“He didn’t? Well, I suppose it’s high time you introduce me to everyone else, don’t you? Especially the infamous bastard son that according to Cersei was the beginning and end of all evils.”

“He’s not,” Jaime snorts.

“Anyone that Cersei dislikes is someone I will much probably get along with. So, will you?”

“Introduce you? Of course,” Jaime says. “In a moment. You should probably meet the lady first, though.”

“Who, the one who singlehandedly brought you back here almost intact?”

“She did her best. And – I think you’d like her,” Jaime says, thinking, I hope you like her, and as they leave the room he decides that maybe – maybe he might not have that hand anymore

(the one you killed Aerys with)

but if it means he gets to have in his life what of his family he still cares for and that he makes his damned choices and that he gets to share it with people he actually wants in it, maybe he will be able to handle it.

Chapter Text

“Excuse me, I should do what?”

Theon thinks he’s heard wrong.

Very wrong.

Except that both Jon and Robb are staring at him as if he’s their last hope or something and it’s just – weird. Very weird.

“Talk to them,” Robb groans. “I mean, the lady Brienne is usually… not that daft, but she won’t listen to me.”

“And Jaime won’t listen to me,” Jon grumbles.

“If he doesn’t listen to you why the hell would he listen to me especially when it comes to – to the matter at hand?”

Jon sighs. “Because maybe they think we’re imagining things but with you they wouldn’t,” he says.

“And you’re a lot more blunt than I could be,” Robb adds. Ah, so that was the point.

“Just – how do you even expect me to convince those two they should kiss already if you didn’t and when they’ve been making eyes at each other since I can remember?”

“I don’t know,” Robb says, “but when I tried with her she kept on saying that such a honorable and distinguished knight who could have anyone in the realm if he only told the truth about his deeds would never even think about her in that way. I think I want to write her father and tell him that he chose a terrible septa for her,” he goes on. “I mean, Septa Mordane doesn’t tell Arya that she should be lucky to find a husband who’d have her at all.”

Oh, seven hells.

“You think she’s ridiculous,” Jon says, “but you haven’t heard him. Because of course such a noble maid with her entire life in front of her shouldn’t get saddled with someone almost ten years older and who’s also a cripple to boot and whose reputation is ruined to the seven hells and back, never mind that they spend the day sparring in the yard so he gets better at using a sword with his left hand. I love him, but he’s just – he won’t listen.”

“If anything it sounds like they’re bloody made for each other,” Theon agrees, “but again, if they don’t listen to you sure as hell they wouldn’t listen to me?”

Seriously, the lady and Robb did spend a fair amount of time doing swords practice (with Arya trailing, too), and from what Theon noticed Robb decided that if Jon had his knight then he could train with the other one, and – ah, right, because Lannister actually knighted her the moment he could walk around with relative ease, and she looked at him with eyes of a woman totally smitten – more than usual – for the entire next week.

“Because maybe if someone they don’t talk to all the time points it out to them they might think about it?” Jon shrugs.

“Please?” Robb asks, staring at him in that frankly unfair way that makes you feel like a proper arsehole if you deny him.

Fuck this.

“Fine, but if it doesn’t work out, that’s your problem.”

Robb quite literally throws himself at Theon in thanks, Jon thanks him profusely without such hugs but with the same sentiment and Theon decides that at this point he might as well give it a try.

--

He goes to find her first – he has a feeling she’d be the harder to convince, but he said he’d try, so better have it out of the way.

“My lady,” he tells her, finding her sitting under one of the heart trees, good thing she’s alone, “do you mind if I have a word?”

“My lord,” she nods, “whatever you need.” She sounds surprised, but then again they don’t talk too often – because they have no reason to, outside of when he ends up joining her sparring lessons with Robb and Arya.

“This is embarrassing,” he sighs. “But – very well. My lady, I’ll just have it out of the way – I’m here because Robb sent me, or I’d have never presumed to not mind my own business, but he would quite like it if someone who’s, er, not involved in the matter, pointed out to you that Ser Jaime looks at you the way people make Florians look at Jonquils during mummers’ farces.”

“My lord –”

“And I would like to inform you that, as someone who’s not involved, he definitely does.”

“He does not,” Brienne denies.

“He very much does,” Theon presses. “My lady, honestly, no one looks at people the way he looked at you when he knighted you in front of the entire village when they only admire them.”

“Well, I did save his life, it’s just – gratefulness, my lord.”

Gods, Theon thinks, I’m not going to have much luck here. “I’m of the opinion that it’s not, but – never mind that. I would stop assuming that, if I were you.”

“And how are you so sure?”

Theon shrugs and stands up, figuring he can share some truth. “My lady, you probably aren’t aware, but I did hear Lord and Lady Stark tell Robb that being friends with me was a bad idea, first because my father started a rebellion and second because if he tried it again the king would have wanted me dead, and at the beginning not many people around here seemed to want to look beyond that. If Robb could do it and still somehow not have a problem with being friends with me, I think Lannister can see beyond your admittedly not very pretty face. And by the way, you haven’t said once that you didn’t want him to look at you like that.”

She stares at him as if he’s just told her something she hadn’t even dared entertain thinking about, and he leaves.

Right.

He needs to talk to Lannister.

--

“Ser Jaime,” he says, without preambles, “Lord Tyrion. Do you mind if I have a word with your brother?”

“Well, given that you just barged in like it was an important thing, do feel free to. Should I leave?”

Theon considers it, then decides that maybe he could be an ally.

“Not necessarily. I don’t need much time,” he says.

“Fine,” Jaime agrees. “So, what’s the problem?”

“The problem,” Theon says, “is that the situation in between you and the Lady Brienne has turned so ridiculous that Jon and Robb basically begged me to convince you to tell her that you only have eyes for her.”

“Excuse me?”

“Lannister, for the love of everything you hold dear, she looks at you as if you’re the incarnation of what people think Kingsguard knights should be, you look at her as if she is that incarnation, when you knighted her half of the audience thought that you would propose to her, you aren’t under obligations to not marry anymore and she’s sitting under heart trees telling herself she’s too ugly and not enough highborn for the likes of you.”

“Greyjoy –”

“While, from what I’m told, you’re here telling yourself she wouldn’t want someone older and crippled and whatever else, never mind that she saved your hide, so I doubt she’d mind that you lack a hand, and given that it’s entirely fucking stupid that you’d both keep on doing that when you could be at least fucking and having a much better time, maybe you should consider changing your mind. There, I’ve said my piece.”

Lord Tyrion is quite literally bent in two for how much he’s laughing, and then –

“Jaime,” he wheezes, “he has a point. Same as Jon did.”

“Tyrion, there’s no bloody way –”

“Seems to me like there is.”

“Ser Jaime, I just had this exact same conversation with her. And you know what she hasn’t told me once?”

“What?”

“That she doesn’t want you in her bed. That said, she did seem convinced that you only look at her kindly because she saved your life.”

“What the – I don’t -”

“Everyone’s point exactly,” Theon concludes. “No, you don’t, so just fucking tell her and spare me from being those two’s mouthpiece. Have a great day.”

He leaves both Lannister men behind, closing the door behind him.

He can still hear Lord Tyrion laughing, good for him.

Well, he’s done his piece. Now he can rest, and if it doesn’t work, well, he did warn both Robb and Jon, didn’t he?

---

On one side, Jaime is fairly sure that this is going to end terribly.

On the other, after Tyrion stopped laughing his arse off and after Greyjoy left the room looking like a man who would have rather been anywhere else, he had to admit to himself that maybe if four people kept on pestering him about it, maybe it wasn’t all a flight of imagination of boys under the age of two and ten.

He glances at the mirror in front of him.

He’s taken to wearing gray lately – red and gold doesn’t seem fitting anymore, and he doesn’t want to wear white ever again as long as he lives – and it doesn’t… not suit him, he decides. He might be closer to his twenty-eighth name day than not, but not counting the extra lines on his face and the damned hand, he’s still fairly in good shape, especially after putting on the muscle he lost while recovering from the loss of the right hand. He can’t really look at the fake wooden one he’s wearing these days for practicality, so he doesn’t, but other than that, his appearance certainly isn’t repulsive.

Still –

He’s gotten better at fighting with his left, mostly because Brienne’s spent every other day in the yard saving at least a few hours for him, and he’s vastly improved, but he’s nowhere near the swordsman he used to be.

Finest in the Seven Kingdoms. Yeah, well, not anymore.

On top of that, he certainly has nothing to offer to an eventual wife – his father made sure that the entire realm knew he’s disinherited, as far as he’s concerned, so he doesn’t have a much of a name or riches or anything he might have brought to the table years ago. He feels ridiculous as he leaves the room.

(He asked Brienne before if she’d be amenable to talk to him later in the afternoon and she accepted, and so she’s probably there already.)

Gods, she’s meant to go out in the world and be a proper knight and fight for the right cause and for people who might need one, not to – to get saddled with the likes of him, he can’t help thinking.

And yet –

If all of them were right –

Sometimes he still wakes up during the night remembering how gentle and soft could her fingers be when she held his head up, or how they did seem to fit perfectly against each other even while sharing a horse out of necessity. He remembers how pretty her voice sounded while she sang,

(for him, when she wouldn’t for anyone else)

he remembers how sincere she was when she told him she thought he was indeed the finest knight she ever knew, he remembers how she didn’t care a bit about her guard and her walls when it came to keep him alive, and every time as he wakes up alone and remembers all of that, he wishes that she was on the other side of the bed.

Gods, he had never thought that after Cersei he would ever want another woman sharing it, but every time he wishes she was in the bed with him, there’s a stronger ache somewhere near his heart, and thing is, she might be ugly, true, but what does he care? He never judged people on how beautiful they are, and he’s loved uselessly a beautiful woman once – just on the outside, though, isn’t she?

There’s nothing in Brienne of Tarth, on the inside, that he doesn’t find utterly beautiful, and if her face doesn’t match it, who even cares? Surely, her eyes do.

He thinks of what she told him about her previous betrothed.

Seven fucking hells, how could both of those idiots have failed to see what they were losing by forcing her to be someone she’s not or worse, refusing her on account of her looks? How, when now he’s desperately trying to come up with a decent speech and to make sure she doesn’t punch him in the face or assumes he’s mocking her same as those two arseholes?

A part of him is saying that he should not even try and that he should let her go whenever she chooses to either go back to Tarth or roam Westeros doing what she’s born for, but another part – the selfish one – is telling him, but if she really does want you, shouldn’t you try?

What had Jon told him, years ago? That he should get a wife? Because he deserved one?

He snorts and walks downstairs. He doesn’t have much hope, not really, and he wouldn’t have gone for it if not –

If not for that bloody dream he had last night in which he woke up beneath Casterly Rock and everything was dark and he couldn’t find his damned way out, and he was utterly alone until she showed up asking him for a sword and it suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and the sword glowed, and he had followed her until they found a way out, and he just –

He woke up with tears in his eyes and had to hide his head in the pillow so Jon wouldn’t wake up if he made any noise, and he had thought, I really don’t want to miss on it if I could have it, and so he asked her while they were breaking their fast and now he’s approaching Sansa Stark’s room.

He knocks – any other day he could have asked Jon or Robb, but he doesn’t want them to know he actually is caving.

Sansa opens the room, looking very much delighted, her friend Jeyne Poole standing right next to her.

“My ladies,” Jaime says. “Do you, uh, have –”

“Of course,” Sansa replies, giggling. “Here you go. We picked the nicest ones.”

Jaime takes the small bundle of flowers that they put together according to his indications, which admittedly were just, blue flowers and no roses, and it’s indeed quite lovely – it has a few different kinds of, all different shades of blue, all neatly arranged, tied together with one of Sansa’s blue ribbons.

“It’s perfect,” he says, taking it.

“Good luck!” Jeyne tells him as he leaves the room, and –

Yeah.

He’ll need it.

--

Brienne is in the godswood, all right, and why does she have a small sack next to her feet? Jaime pays it no mind and keeps care to hide the flowers under his cloak – he doesn’t want to give himself out too soon.

“Brienne,” he tells her.

“Jaime,” she replies – he notices that she’s wearing still men’s garb, but… better than the usual old shirts and breeches she dons during sword practice. “You said you – wanted to talk about something?”

“If I may,” he says.

“Very well. Just – I also have something to tell you, but please do go first.”

He should have prepared a speech. Instead he’s staring into her large, lovely blue eyes and he can’t come up with anything, and –

That’s probably why he says the one thing he should have not.

“I was thinking about what you told me a while ago. On the road to the Crossroads Inn.”

“What exactly?”

“Didn’t you say that as far as you’re concerned, you will only marry a man who can best you in a fight?”

And he was supposed to not get straight into it.

Her eyes go slightly wide, and then she nods once, almost cautiously. “I said that. Why? Has my father –”

“Your father hasn’t written anything,” Jaime says, “and our hosts haven’t been discussing any marriage when you’re concerned. Still,” he goes on, “still, then would any time before the present count?”

“Any time? Why?”

He sighs, letting his cloak fall to the side and revealing the flowers he’s holding in his left hand.

“Because I don’t think I could beat you in a fair fight now,” he says, “but I did beat you a few times before our small journey in the Riverlands, didn’t I? Before you ask me, no one put me up to this. Admittedly, a few people pushed me to, well, tell you the truth, but no one is playing a practical joke on you, my lady.”

“I – I didn’t think you would,” she breathes, her large, rough fingers reaching out to take the flowers. “Do – are you asking what I think you’re asking?” She asks, her voice trembling, not at all steady as it was on their trip to the Inn. Gods, she does look like a maid of ten and seven right now, entirely, and –

“Brienne, I’m saying that I think you deserve far better than the likes of me, especially now, and that I have a feeling you wouldn’t want to saddle yourself with a man of any kind, never mind one who’s way past his prime in any sense at this point, but in the case you actually did and you would take me, you’d make me far happier than I’d have any right to be.”

“And what if,” she says, slowly, as if she’s testing the waters, “in case the times before the present didn’t count and we should challenge each other for – for my hand, I think I would lose to you purposefully?”

“You – you would?”

“Then again,” she goes on, “I would decide if they count or not. I’d say – they count.”

Oh.

Oh.

He –

He hadn’t actually expected her to say yes, even if he should have known, given that he was warned plenty, and now she did and –

“Good thing that,” he blurts, “knowing you lost on purpose would have been embarrassing.”

“It’d have been worth it,” she says, sounding so really sure of that, and shit, she’s still blushing crimson but she’s also looking at him without breaking eye contact and he wants to kiss her, he really wants to kiss her, and he’s put the left hand on her neck before he has even thought about it, and then he reaches out with his useless fake one and lets it drop to the side.

“Wait,” she says then, and – she places the flowers delicately on the ground, then grabs his wrist and undoes the straps holding it to his wrist. “Actually,” she says, not letting it go, “at this point maybe I should give you something.”

“What?”

“It’s – what I wanted to talk you about. Well, actually, your brother told me I should do it today, and now I know why, I suppose. Did he know you would –”

“I think he had good reasons to suspect it.”

She kneels down and grabs the small sack. “I – I talked to him some, a few times. I didn’t know he could draw improved saddles and the likes.”

“Oh, yes, he did one for himself a while ago. Why’s that?”

“I thought – I noticed you didn’t like that hand. He also did. We talked a bit, and then he came up with a solution, sort of, and then he asked me about it because since I also spent my time doing the same things you did I’d know what you’d need more than he. And – then we went to the blacksmith. Here,” she says, opening the sack. Jaime reaches with his left, grabbing what’s inside.

It’s metal – he can feel the iron under his fingers. He holds his breath as he takes out of it a fake iron hand which is miraculously not as heavy as it could be, and looks silver in the sunlight, and it’s –

It’s some damned work of art – it would cover half of his forearm, it has just one leather strap that would attach it to his arm and gods, the fingers can bend.

“How –”

“Mikken apparently knows a very good blacksmith at the Wall. He went a few weeks ago and they both worked on it. The fingers can bend and be locked again, so you could hold things in it fairly easily. I tried – it can hold a sword. A quill, too. It wouldn’t be the same as the real thing, of course, but – still better than the other.”

Gods, it is miles better than the other. He could hold a sword with it, he thinks, and suddenly he feels like he’s bursting with something he can’t even name – it’s too much, too much, he can’t believe they went as far as putting such a thing together, and of course he proposes and she springs this on him, and –

“My lady, it somehow seems fit that I would ask you to marry me and you would have the proper gift out of the two of us.”

“Ser, I quite liked the flowers,” she smiles uncertainly, and –

He doesn’t have anything on his right wrist, but he suddenly can’t care anymore, and a moment later his left hand is cupping her face and his right arm is around her waist and he’s moving closer, and –

“Is this the first?” He asks.

“Yes,” she confirms, her voice so low he can barely hear it.

“Good,” he says, “I’d have hated for it not to be a good one.”

And then he kisses her without leaving her time to reply – he doesn’t press, but he doesn’t go in too gently, and when she opens up her mouth to his he takes his time, running his tongue along her lower lip before finding hers, and her hands go to his face as she presses closer and kisses her deeper, and gods, he thinks, I could do this for an entire damned hour.

When he moves back, she’s smiling, properly, and fine, her teeth are crooked, but to him it’s downright lovely and so he kisses her again, and another time, and then –

“Not that I’m not happy,” she says, “but – I was wondering, was – did you propose because, uh –”

“Because Jon and Robb sent Theon to convince me? That helped, but I didn’t think I’d ever find the guts to do it. But then something happened tonight and I just – I changed my mind.”

“Oh? What happened?”

There are a lot of things he could have replied. But none of them seems appropriate so he shrugs and says, “I dreamed of you,” and he’d have kissed her again, if –

“Finally,” he hears Robb say from somewhere on their right, and the jump apart, even if she keeps a hand on his arm.

Well, fuck.

Robb and Jon are standing there looking very smug, Theon is standing behind them looking like he shouldn’t know whether to be smug or shocked or mortified, and Tyrion is there too and he’s smirking in a way that’s entirely too satisfied for Jaime’s taste.

“Indeed,” Jon agrees. “See, we were right, weren’t we?”

“Someone like him could never look at me like that, didn’t someone say?”

Brienne groans in utter mortification. Jaime does the same.

“Jaime, I have a feeling they earned the right to mock the both of you until your old age,” Tyrion says, still sounding too much like he’s gloating.

“Well, you’re welcome,” Theon finally says before grabbing both Robb and Jon by the shoulders. “And now let those two live, they have to make up for lost time.”

… Jaime will have to thank him later, he decides, and then as Tyrion joins them, he grabs back the iron hand that he had put on the ground before.

“I imagine you would like to do the honors?” He asks.

“Why not,” she smiles, and she makes a quick work of helping him put it on. And – it’s heavy, but no more than he had imagined, and it’s nothing he couldn’t handle with enough exercise, and the fingers really do lock in place if you need them to. It’s the same silver as a sword blade, he thinks, unable to keep himself from smirking.

“Gods,” he says, “I could really use a sword with this. Maybe we could chase bandits once in a while, how about that?”

“That’d be a good wedding gift,” she agrees. “Well, it fits. I suppose you want it out of the way?”

“Not yet,” he decides. “There’s something I need to do with it first. I want to – I want the first thing I do with this damned hand to be something I could never regret.”

“As in?”

“This,” he replies, and then he puts it around her neck and brings her closer and kisses her again, and as she moans a little into his mouth, he decides that yes, it was absolutely worth it.

And then –

“Gods,” she says, moving back, “I don’t – where should we even do the wedding? Here? On Tarth? If I go back to Tarth with a husband, my father won’t be that happy if I want to leave again. Gods, who do we invite?”

Jaime had not considered any of that.

But then again –

“And who says we need to have a wedding?”

“Sorry?”

“This is a heart tree. Don’t you know how it works here?”

She positively grins the moment she realizes what he has just suggested.

“… Now? Really?”

He shrugs. “How did that song you liked go? You can be my forest love and I can be your lass? Well, whichever of the two you’d like to be.”

“That’s – somehow appropriate,” she says. “All right. All right. It’s a good idea.”

“Hm, would you consider singing it again so that it’s a proper wedding, or –”

“After the vows,” she smiles, and she keeps her promise, and maybe others would have arched their eyebrows as she said, for you shall be my lady love and I shall be your lord, but he doesn’t blink once. It fits.

Either way, it fits.

--

“I cannot believe you did it when no one could see you,” Robb groans at dinner, when they announce that the deed is, in fact, done. “We wasted so much time trying to make you see it and then you marry without anyone else around to see it?”

“He’s right,” Jon agrees. “That was absolutely unfair of you.”

“Teaches you both to meddle in others’ business,” Theon sighs as he reaches for more food, and everyone else snorts or laughs – it’s fairly all right. They did deserve it.

“I won’t be the one being offended if you marry a girl that way,” Jaime tells Jon. “Except that I’d like to be notified in case I can be around. Wouldn’t want anyone to try and kill you if you go off alone in the woods.”

“I can fight,” Jon scoffs, “you taught me, didn’t you?”

And –

Thing is, he realizes as he tries to find a comeback, he did, didn’t he? And he did it fairly well, all things considered. He shrugs and admits it, to Jon’s utter delight, but then Catelyn clears her throat.

“He’s right, it was downright rude of the two of you to not even inform us. We could have put a small feast together, that’d have been the least.”

“Cat,” he says, “it’s really not necessary –”

“Well,” Sansa says, suddenly perking up – she had been very displeased that she hadn’t been able to attend a wedding –, “why don’t we? Pull a small feast together, I mean. No one says it can’t be done. And feasts are after the wedding, anyway.”

“My lady,” Brienne says, “there’s no need –”

“Oh,” Catelyn says, “I think my daughter is very much right. And I think it’s doable within tomorrow.”

Thing is – everyone is against the two of them, and that’s why that evening they find themselves seated at what’s usually Cat and Ned’s place, with about everyone in the village and in the castle in the main hall, eating better food than usual and being congratulated left and right by the few lords who had news and rode here as fast as they could. He wore the silver hand and the nicest set of clothes he had – it’s a set of gray Stark garments that he was given after his definitive recovery but that he never had a chance to use, while she’s wearing a blue tunic that really looks great on her, and of course at some point they’re strongarmed into dancing. Jaime tells the musician to play The Maiden of the Tree, at least Brienne’s going to like it, and he’s not surprised to find out that she can dance regardless of all her talking about it, and that she’s entirely better at it if she leads.

“I told you,” he says, “that no one who can fight like you do can’t dance, Brienne.”

“You did,” she answers. “You know, I – I never thought someone would dance with me if not for pity, after Renly.”

“Why,” he smiles, “then I guess I shall be happy to ask you for a second round. Or a third.”

“And I’ll be glad to say yes,” she whispers, the fingers on her left hand bending against his silver ones while her right keeps still on the small of his back.

He takes a look around. Ned and Catelyn are also dancing though out of the main light, Robb is dancing with his sister, Jon is admirably trying to do it with Jeyne Poole even if she’s better than him at it, everyone is obviously enjoying themselves, his brother is looking delighted and eyeing one of the washerwomen who came with him from Casterly since he had left with a small retinue and none of them have been sent back yet, and she’s eyeing him back which is all good as far as Jaime’s concerned, and as she does he knows that if this is the ending he gets, well –

Then he’s glad that this is where his decisions have taken him. He’s very glad of it, indeed.

End.