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Chapter Text

Jaime is in Pakistan when he gets the message.

He’s on a plane out of Karachi before his CO gives him permission, but he doesn’t care.

Tyrion leans back grimly in his seat and takes a sip of bourbon.  The sun is setting over the Pacific Ocean and somewhere his sister and father are being wheeled into a morgue.

The bourbon does not taste as good as he thought it would.

Jaime logs onto his facebook account, shelling out five dollars for the airplane’s slow internet connection.

He goes to his sister’s page.  There are posts from friends about how she will be missed, and how they can’t believe she’s gone.  (He can’t either.)

He clicks her pictures and begins tapping his way through them.

There’s one from Myrcella’s birthday, all blonde curls and smiles.

Then they—Cersei and her three children—are at the beach.  She’s reading to Tommen.  Joffrey is lying on the sand, sleeping behind sunglasses, and Myrcella is sticking her tongue out at whoever took the picture.  (Taena Merryweather whoever the fuck that is.)

Then there’s a picture of her and father at some fundraiser or another, where she’s dressed in a stunning golden dress.

Then there’s a picture she scanned of her and Robert’s wedding.  Her hair is too big and too ‘80s, and Robert is clearly drunk with his arm around her.  She looks overjoyed. 

He looks at that one bemusedly for a moment, wondering what prompted her to upload it.  Then he notices the date—the tenth anniversary of Robert’s death.  She must have been feeling nostalgic.  He clicks on.

There’s another scanned picture, of the two of them when they were seven.  They are with their mother in Santa Monica and they are all three of them laughing their heads off.

He closes his computer.

Tyrion rereads the obituaries on his computer screen.  Words like remarkable contribution to the field and generous spirit and survived by a sister (Genna), a brother (Kevan), two sons (Jaime, Tyrion) and three grandchildren (Joffrey, 17, Myrcella, 15, Tommen, 12) pop out at him.

He wishes desperately he could have written shitty father or biggest asshole in Hollywood, but he doesn’t think the L.A. Times would run it.

That’s when Tyrion realizes he is drunk.

Jaime doesn’t smile when he sees his brother.  He thinks that he’s forgotten how to smile.  Pakistan does that to people.

Tyrion doesn’t smile either, so he figures it’s ok.

“Nice car,” he says at last, climbing into Tyrion’s convertible.

“Thanks.”

“Did you steal it, or do you just make a fuck-ton of money?”

“Well, we both know dad didn’t buy it for me.”

Jaime barks a laugh.

The second day that his brother, his niece, and his nephews have taken up residence in his house, Tyrion comes home to find that Joffrey has dyed his hair black. 

It is not a good dye-job, Tyrion thinks, and living in L.A. he knows a good dye-job when he sees one.  He looks rather like some poor, underfed, junkie rocker who thought he was going to be edgy by dying his hair inky black.

Tyrion supposes he did so out of rebellion or something idiotic like that, but it might also be some desire to emulate his father.  Indeed, the black hair does bring out his bone structure, heightening his similarity to Robert.

“I do admire it.  We had a little too much blonde in this house,” he says benignly. 

Joffrey glares at him and says nothing. 

Tommen, who has spent the past few days looking as though he would never be happy again, chances a smile.

Jaime gets a phone call from Brienne a few days after he’s arrived at Tyrion’s house.

He doesn’t ask how she got his phone number.  She’s just like that.

“I’m sorry about your sister and your father,” she says.

“I’m sorry too.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Can you make Cersei come back from the dead?”

“I wish I could.”

He sighs into the phone.

She’s playing the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata when he gets home.  Her eyes are closed, and he wonders how many times she’s played it in her life.

He likes that someone’s playing the piano.  He had gotten it years ago, mostly because Cersei had said drunkenly when he had moved into this place that a house isn’t a house without a piano.  He doesn’t know how to play the thing, and had never thought to take lessons.  He doubts that most pieces were composed for dwarf fingers, and his feet don’t reach the pedals.

But Myrcella looks like a painting against the setting sun through the window, the golden light from the sky making a halo around her golden curls.  Her face is dark in comparison, though serene.

When she finishes the movement, she does not continue.  “I thought you gave up piano,” he asks at last.

She doesn’t move.  “I did,” is the soft reply, “but Mom loved that piece.”

And then she’s crying quietly and before Tyrion can go over to try to give her a hug, she has gotten to her feet, pushing the piano bench roughly away, and is already hurrying down the hallway to her room.

Jaime has trouble sleeping.

He thinks it’s because Tyrion’s mattresses are fucking soft.

Or maybe because when he closes his eyes, he sees Cersei.

Tyrion can’t help but feel affronted.  Jaime had been out of the country for most of the kids’ lives, has a dangerous job, and doesn’t even fucking know them.  He also doesn’t have any money in the bank—something that their father had raged about constantly.

And he, Tyrion, doesn’t even get joint custody?

Cersei would. 

He glances at Jaime when Pycelle reads out that bit of Cersei Lannister’s Last Will and Testament. 

Jaime’s eyes were bulging and he looks franticly at Tyrion. 

“Yes,” says Tyrion, before Jaime has even figured out how to frame the question.  “There’s enough room in my house for all five of us.”

Jaime looks relieved.

Jaime is in deep shit for leaving Karachi, but again he doesn’t care. 

His CO has threatened him with a court-martialing or some shit like that.  He is certainly going to be behind a desk for the rest of his career, unless something drastic happens. 

But that was probably for the better.

Three kids to take care of—fuck.

He was only beginning to wrap his head around that one.

Joffrey quits the soccer team, even though he’s the captain.  Tyrion gets an angry call from the coach about it, but he knows it’s no use trying to talk to Joff about it.

Jaime dreams that his father won an Oscar and melted it down to make a crown.

He doesn’t know what that shit means, but it doesn’t surprise him.

After reading the consolation emails from all of his father’s colleagues, from Cersei’s friends, Tyrion decides that it would probably be in extremely poor taste to be drunk at the wake the next day.

There isn’t so much as a word from Tysha.

He decides that it won’t be in poor taste to be hung-over at the wake.

She looks just like he remembered, only younger, and more at peace, and more beautiful than a fairytale.

There’s a knot in Jaime’s throat and he turns away and walks down the aisle of the funeral home

Tyrion thinks bemusedly that father smells a little funny.  They say it’s because a piece of glass sheared him right through the bowels and there was some putrefaction before they could cut it out.  They try to hide the smell with some of his father’s cologne.

Jaime doesn’t recognize any of the people at the funeral.  They are all affiliates of his father, or companions of his sister.  He doesn’t particularly feel like talking to any of them.

He sits with Myrcella and Tommen and folds his program into a lion the way he learned to when he was stationed in Japan.  He gives it to Myrcella when he’s done, and he starts on making a dragon for Tommen.

She doesn’t smile, but she holds it carefully between thin fingers.

“The children?” asks Ned Stark.

He really is a surly bastard.  Tyrion still wonders how on earth he got so well with Robert Baratheon.  They are as different as was possible. 

Cersei had never liked him, but she had been grateful that he looked in on her and the children in the months following Robert’s death.  She hadn’t ever said it explicitly, but Tyrion knew she was glad that Joff’s godfather was as good a man as her late husband had claimed.

She hadn’t wanted Robert to die, even if their marriage was on the verge of going to shit.  And she certainly hadn’t been ready to be a single parent, no matter how much money her father funneled into the kids.

“Jaime and I are sharing custody,” Tyrion explains, taking a sip of wine.

Ned nods. 

“I can’t imagine this will be the case, but if you need anything, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

“I will do just that.”

He can’t help but be touched.

Later, when Tyrion is squarely drunk, he watches Joffrey shaking hands with Ned.  Ned says something and Joffrey shrugs and walks away.

He notices it when Joffrey steps away from his mother’s casket.

Joffrey’s tall.  As tall as he is.  Jaime wonders if he’s done growing, or if he will grow to be as tall as Robert had been.

Joff’s eyes are a light blue, and they look confused and angry when they meet his own.

Jaime meets his gaze evenly.  He’s confused and angry himself, and he supposes that he’d be more confused and angry if he’d learned he was going to be in the custody of two uncles he did not know.

Well…one uncle.  He knows Tyrion, Jaime supposed.

Jaime was glad of that when Joffrey’s jaw jutted out angrily.  It was Cersei’s jut, the jut that meant there would be hell to pay very soon.

Tommen’s crying.  Tyrion can hear it from under his door.

He pauses, then pokes his head inside.

His nephew is twelve years old, and he is growing.  Tyrion imagines he’ll be as tall as Joffrey in a few months.

Tyrion sits on the bed and places his hand gently on Tommen’s shoulder.  He thinks of Tysha.  He’s thought about her a lot in the past few days.  He wonders where she is.

He sits with Tommen until he’s asleep. 

She places the origami lion on her dresser, between a photograph of her mother and father holding her, and a necklace that had once belonged to her grandmother.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t know how he managed it, but Arthur Dayne gets him a desk-job a forty minute commute from Tyrion’s house.

“Thanks,” he says gruffly into the phone.

“Don’t fuck it up, Lannister,” barks Dayne.

He feels like a little boy again.

Tyrion leaves the office every day at precisely five PM.  On Wednesdays he drives to the high school and picks up Myrcella from choir rehearsal, and on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays he goes to Tommen’s middle school and gets him from soccer.

He never picks up Joffrey.  Joffrey doesn’t want to be picked up.  Joffrey has his own car, a big black thing that Tywin had bought him for his sixteenth birthday.

Joffrey also doesn’t do anything after school.  Well, maybe he does because he was never home when Tyrion got there, but what he gets up to, Tyrion is not sure.

Jaime asks him once and the withering glare he receives gives Tyrion and Jaime something to laugh over for hours.

Jaime has to sign a note from Tommen’s school to confirm that his nephew needs extended time on tests.

He’s surprised and asks, “What for?”

“Huh?” asks Tommen, his green eyes wide.

“What do you need extended time for?”

Tommen shuffles his feet a little bit, and Joffrey rolls his eyes.  “He’s dyslexic.  Takes him hours to read a page.”

Tommen blushes bright red, and scowls at Joff.  “It does not!”

“Does too.  It took him forever to finish Harry Potter, and that’s not even hard.”

“Be nice, Joffrey,” commands Jaime.  He tries to access his I’m-A-Navy-SEAL-Heed-My-Demands voice, but it’s a little rusty, and Joffrey turns back to his playstation, with a mumbled “whatever.”

Jaime signs the form and hands it back to Tommen.  “I’m dyslexic too,” he whispers so that Joffrey can’t hear it.  “I didn’t get extended time when I was in school.  My grades were shit so it was the military for me.”

Tommen’s eyes are wide.  “I didn’t know that.”

“That’s because it never matters when you aren’t in school.  You’ll get through it.”

Tyrion calls his therapist for the first time in months.

“Thought I’d never hear from you again,” Bronn says over the phone.

“My dad and sister died and I am now raising my niece and nephews with my brother.”

“Well, shit.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“Over the phone it is.  I’m free Wednesday at two.”

“Gold-digging bastard.”

“You called me, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah…”

She’s sitting on a bench reading Crime and Punishment when the ball goes sailing past her head.

She doesn’t bat an eyelash.  She’s used to that.  Joff used to play a game when they were growing up—how close could he send the ball at her before she would scream.

She stopped screaming when she was ten, just to piss him off.

“Sorry about that.  Got the wrong angle on it.”  His voice is very deep.  She looks up but can’t quite bring herself to look into those big blue eyes.  He’s standing here, holding the ball he must have just kicked at her.

She’s seen him before, of course.  He does Model UN with her, and he’s been on the soccer team as long as Joff—or rather, longer, ever since Joff quit.

“Not a problem,” she shrugs and goes back to reading.

She watches him running back down the hill, pleased with the view of his soccer-toned ass.

Jaime gets lunch with Uncle Kevan on a Friday when he’s bored out of his mind.

He never realized just how much desk jobs suck, and he tells Uncle Kevan so.

“I imagine they’re a little more boring than what you used to do,” teases his uncle.

Jaime rolls his eyes.

When at last Uncle Kevan says what he wanted to say when inviting Jaime to lunch, Jaime’s eyes widen in shock.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“But why?”

“As far as I can tell, he didn’t update his will again after the relationship ended.  And he was still mad at Tyrion.”

“And this is why it’s taken you so long to get in touch about it.”

Kevan sighed.  “Yes.  I’ve been going over it with just about every estate lawyer I can find.  He didn’t leave Tyrion anything.”

Jaime sits there, stunned.

“He left stuff for Cersei, yeah?”

Kevan shifted uncomfortably.  “He set up trusts for each of the three kids, which they get control over when they turn twenty-five.”  Jaime chooses to keep his approval of this wisdom quiet, thinking of how quickly Joffrey would probably waste it if he got it sooner.  “And in the event that either you or Cersei predeceased him, what you would inherit would be split four ways between your sibling and the kids’ trusts.”

“So there’s no wiggle room for Tyrion.”

Kevan shakes his head, grimacing.

“You know the worst part of all this?  Tyrion didn’t care that he got cut out of the will.  But he still didn’t get to keep the girl.”

His father’s will surprises him even less than Cersei’s.

Tyrion doesn’t know what hurts more, Joffrey’s sneer, Myrcella’s pity, Tommen’s shock, or the memory of storming out of his father’s office to find Tysha.

In an effort to make Tyrion feel less bitter about everything, Jaime offers to take care of going through their father’s things on his own.

Tywin Lannister, it seems, liked to buy everything in the world, probably because it made him feel more powerful, or maybe less lonely.  Jaime isn’t sure which, and he doesn’t care.  He is sitting in his father’s study, taking note of every little thing so that he can send out a list to the remains of his family to see if any of them would want it.

There’s a photograph of his mother on the desk.  She’s got flowers in her hair and looks far too much like a hippie to have ever been interested in Tywin Lannister.

He stares at the picture for a long time before taking it and placing it in the tote bag of things he’s collecting for Tommen, Myrcella, and Joffrey.

“You look nice,” Tyrion calls as Jaime heads out the door.

Jaime shrugs.  “Meeting a colleague.”

“A woman colleague?”

“Yes.”

“Go get ‘er champ.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Sure.”

“She doesn’t want me.  I’m too much of a bad-boy for her.”  There’s a strange lightness to his voice that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“She’s an idiot then.”

Jaime pauses before closing the door behind him, then pokes his head back in.

“Are you parenting me?”

“No?”

“You are!”

“I don’t think so.”

“Stop it!”

“I wasn’t!”  But Jaime’s gone.

Jaime meets Brienne at her hotel.  He fucks her against a window, wishing that she wasn’t taller than he is so that he could lift her off the ground properly while he drills into her. 

But that’s always been the problem.  She’s taller than he is, and he’s too crude for her.

But they fuck well, and at this point, he wants something without a commitment.

He’s got enough commitment in his life at the moment.

Tyrion feels weird drinking on weeknights when there are three children in his house.

He doesn’t like it.

It doesn’t stop him.

But he doesn’t like it.

Jaime goes to Tommen’s soccer match with Myrcella on Saturday morning.

Tommen’s not the fastest on the team, and spends most of the game on the sideline, but he runs hard when the coach puts him on the field.  Myrcella cheers until her voice is hoarse when Tommen almost scores.  (Well, almost is a strong word.  It’s not even close, really.)

“You’ll get it next time,” said Jaime when Tommen comes over after the match.

Tommen shrugs, “I guess.”

“You will,” exclaims Myrcella, throwing her arms around him.

Tommen doesn’t say anything.

When they are stuck in traffic, Myrcella asks him why he never got married.

Tyrion’s so shocked by the question that he can’t even think of a lie and begins to tell her about Tysha.

He is aware enough to stop before it turns ugly.  He’s used to that lie so much that it comes out more easily than the truth at this point—“we just weren’t right for each other.”

Myrcella reaches out and places her hand on his atop the gearshift. 

He decides then that he’s going to make sure no man ever does to her whatever happened to Tysha.

Joffrey comes home with a bruise on his left eye one day.

Jaime doesn’t say anything about it.

Tyrion comes home Thursday with Tommen in tow to find a car in his driveway. 

It’s a nice car.  He’s immediately concerned.

Myrcella is sitting in the living room with a huge poster board.  A boy with russet curls is sitting opposite her, slathering rubber cement on the back of a photograph.

“Hello,” he calls to her.

Both look up.  Green eyes, and blue.

“Hello Uncle Tyrion.”

“What have you got there?”

“Project on Mozambique for Model UN.  Robb’s helping me finish.”

Robb nods and smiles at him.

Tyrion glances between him and Myrcella and nods.  Tommen goes over and looks at the map that Myrcella is color-coding.

Jaime’s not entirely sure how it starts, but before he knows what’s happening Myrcella and Joffrey are screaming at each other.

Joffrey is calling her a word that makes Tommen gasp and Myrcella recoils and hisses “that’s better than whatever the fuck you are.”

“That’s the best you can come up with?” sneers Joffrey.

Jaime grabs Myrcella’s hand before she slaps him.

“Joffrey, to your room.  Myrcella go take a walk and calm down.” 

“I don’t have to do what you tell me to.”

“Oh?”

He’s pleased that Joffrey quakes under his glare. 

He leaves and Myrcella huffily makes for the door, grabbing a fleece on her way out.

And he’s left alone at dinner with a frightened looking Tommen, wondering where the hell Tyrion is.

“Uncle Renly!” Tommen pelts himself at his other uncle and hugs him as tightly as he can.

“Hey kid!” grins Renly, ruffling Tommen’s hair.

Myrcella bounces over and presses a kiss to his cheek.

“You never do that when I come home,” comments Jaime.

“You’re not special,” calls Tommen.

“You should have stayed in Pakistan.  It definitely gave you a mysterious quality,” teases Myrcella.  “If it’s any consolation, you’re still more exciting than Tyrion.”

“Thank you, Myrcella,” Tyrion intones over his cup of coffee.

“Where are we going today?” asked Tommen, excitement dripping from every syllable.

“I was thinking the beach.”

“Excellent!”

“Loras might come too, if that doesn’t bother you.”

“Only if we can make him sing songs from Mike the Gladiator.”

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted,” said Renly dryly.  “Go get your stuff.”  And Myrcella and Tommen scampered off.

“Have them back by six.  We have tickets to see the new Bond movie,” ordered Tyrion.

“I hear it’s terrible.  They should have listened to me and hired Edmure Tully.  He oozes sex appeal much more than Quentyn Martell.  Ahh well,” sighed Renly.

“I’ll let you know how it goes.  I’m more concerned about the gadgets, myself.”

“Understandable.”  Renly checks his phone and begins typing away.  When Myrcella and Tommen are back, he glances around the room.  “No Joff?”

“He’s out,” says Myrcella.

“His loss.  Let’s go.”  And they are gone.

“How come he gets to be the cool uncle and I don’t?” whines Jaime.

“You gave up a life of shooting people in the name of America for a boring desk job, and he hobnobs with celebrities.  Why do you think?”

Renly and Tommen are swimming.

“Tommen’s going to be taller than him soon,” comments Loras.

He’s wearing gold tinted sunglasses and his brown curls are flying in the breeze.

“Uncle Renly is short, Loras.”

“I know,” sighs Loras.  “His brothers are so tall.  How come he can’t be?”

“Genetics, man.”

“Genetics,” agrees Loras.

She’s flicking through a Cosmo, raising her eyebrows in a depressed resignation when they repeat the same idiotic sex tips.

She’s never had sex and she knows they are idiotic.

“Guys don’t like it when you use teeth giving blow jobs, right?”

Loras shudders.

“That’s what I thought.  Why do they keep saying that they do?”

“Because they’re idiots.”

“Yep.”

“Why are you looking into blowjob techniques?” he asks after a moment.

“No reason.”

On Sunday morning, Jaime decides he’s going to do a thousand push-ups in the back yard. 

It is a bad idea.  He hasn’t done that in a while. 

But around four fifty, Tommen shows up, and he can’t give up at five hundred the way he planned.

At six twenty nine, Joffrey appears, staring at him.

His arms feel like jello when he’s done, but Tommen looks impressed and Joffrey isn’t combative, so he supposes that it’s worth it.

Tyrion’s not entirely sure what to do when Myrcella asks if she can spend the night at Sansa Stark’s house. 

He supposes that’s something that girls do.  They’ll probably spend the night braiding each other’s hair and giggling about boys, won’t they?

That’s what the movies would have him believe.

He agrees and she gives him a soft smile.

She looks like Cersei.

He gets a phone call one day from Joff’s guidance counselor.

“Joffrey’s been missing a lot of class lately.”

“He’s taken his mother’s death very hard,” Tyrion replies curtly.

The counselor sounds uncomfortable.  “We are worried that if it persists he will have to repeat his senior year.”

“I’ll have a word with him tonight.”  He’s already dreading it.

“Thank you.”

“Please let me know if the problem persists.”

“Of course, Mr. Lannister.”

They’re sitting outside some strange salad shop that Myrcella had picked when Jaime sees her.

Then, he’s convinced it can’t be her.

When he first saw her all those years ago, she had been beach blonde and very skinny.  But this woman has brown hair and a more rounded figure.  She’s toting a camera bag, and is talking on a cell phone.

She freezes and stares at him, and he knows that it’s her, because only the real Tysha would stare at him like that.

She keeps talking on the phone, her eyes locked onto his, her face completely unreadable. 

“Who is that?” asks Myrcella.  He looks at his niece.  Her eyebrow is arched the way that Cersei’s used to.

“An ex of Tyrion’s,” he mumbles gruffly, and takes a sip of his diet coke, wishing that it were stronger.

“Tysha?”

“How do you know that?”

“He mentioned her once.”

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

The email unnerves him.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

I met your niece yesterday.  She’s a lovely girl. 

I’m sorry about your father and sister.

-T

What the hell is he supposed to make of that?

He calls Bronn and sets up an appointment on Wednesday.

It’s a phone call that wakes her.

“Hello?” she asks blearily.

“Myrcella?”  It’s Robb.

“Yes.”

“Were you sleeping?  I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s fine.  What’s up?”  She glances over at the clock on her bedside table and sees that it’s after two in the morning.

“I—it’s Bran.  He was hit by a car tonight.  He’s in the hospital.”  He is his forcing his voice to stay calm.  But she can hear a quivering at the edges.

“Oh my god.  Is he ok?”

“His legs are broken.  But he’s going to be fine, I think.”

“Do you need anything?” she asks after a pause.

“Can you just stay on the phone with me for a bit?  I…”  He doesn’t finish the sentence though.

“Of course.”

He knows something is wrong when Joffrey is quiet at dinner that night.

Tyrion notices him texting under the table, looking very surly.  Well, at least more surly than usual.

Myrcella is ranting about a physics problem on her homework, and Joffrey isn’t even rolling his eyes and calling her a know-it-all, a nerd, a freak.

“I want to quit soccer,” squeaks Tommen.

Tyrion glances at him.  “It’s the middle of the season,” he says calmly.  “Can you wait until next year?  It might be hard for your team.”

Before Tommen can answer, Joffrey interjects, “It won’t matter to his team.  They never play him anyway because he’s bad.”

Tommen’s eyes drop to his plate.

“How would you know?  You’ve never been to one of his games.  Tommen’s great!” snaps Myrcella.

“Oh please.  Why else would he want to quit?  He wants to quit because he doesn’t like it.  Why wouldn’t he like it?  Because he’s bad.”

“Is that why you quit then?  Because you’re bad at soccer?”

Joffrey glares at her murderously.

“That’s enough.”  Tyrion realizes he’s probably a little too late, but he figures it’s better late than never.  “Tommen, we’ll talk about it again at the end of the season.  Joffrey, as one who quit his captaincy of the soccer team for no apparent reason, you have relinquished your right to criticize your brother.  Myrcella…” He scrambles, “Don’t make things worse.”

She raises an eyebrow.  Joffrey mutters something under his breath and goes back to texting.

Tommen brings his plate to the sink, only half eaten, and then goes to his bedroom.

He mostly misses Cersei when he’s driving. 

She hated the way he drove.  “You’re never safe enough.”  “Slow down!” “Jaime, please watch what you’re doing!”

He had laughed at every one of her warnings and she had smacked him upside the head.

He had taught her how to drive.  He’d learned from Dad two years before he was even allowed a permit, but Dad had never let Cersei behind the wheel of his car.  He’d snuck her out at night and showed her.  It had been their secret.

Every day, when he drives to and from work, he’s alone in the car.  He listens to the radio—to bad rock music (when did it get so bad?  It was not this bad when he was younger), or the news (no, that’s not what Islamic doctrine teaches, you moron), or the odd baseball game. 

And whenever the speedometer is ten miles above the speed limit, he doesn’t hear Cersei.

Renly Baratheon has them over for dinner.

He and Loras are making some kind of fusion vegetarian bullshit that Tyrion can tell Jaime and Joffrey both can’t stand. 

Myrcella loves it though, and Tommen is polite about it.

Tyrion is distracted the entire night, keeping his eye on his blackberry, wondering if she will reply.

He only notices that Joffrey had slipped out when he slips back in.

“Were we this disgusting when we were growing up?  Tell me we weren’t this disgusting growing up.”  Jaime is chucking laundry into the machine, looking more and more revolted as he goes through Tommen’s and Joffrey’s laundry.

“I can’t speak with authority on you.  But I’m sure I wasn’t.”

Jaime snorts derisively.

When mid-term reports arrive, Myrcella is upset that she’s not getting an A in her advanced calculus class.  As if she shouldn’t be pleased that she’s in a senior math class, and getting a B+.

Some kids are just overachievers, Tyrion supposes.  When he mentions this to Jaime, Jaime raises his eyebrows and recalls a time when Tyrion nearly cried because he got an A- in Biology.

Tyrion resolves to make him handle the next time Joffrey causes trouble.

Joffrey refuses to come to Tommen’s soccer match, no matter how much Myrcella wheedles and Tyrion guilt trips.

Tommen sits there pretending not to care, but Jaime notices the quiver in his lower lip.

As agreed, he meets Tysha in a coffee shop downtown near his office, and his breath catches.

“You look successful in that suit.”  She smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“It’s good to see you.  How have you been?”

She shrugs.  “Can’t complain.  Freelance photography.  Never a dull moment.”

He nods.  They each order their drinks and sit away from the window, in a corner where Tyrion sincerely hopes they won’t be disturbed.

“I like your hair brown,” he blurts out.  She arches an eyebrow and he blushes, remembering teasing her about how the hair on her head didn’t match the rest.

“Sure is easier when I don’t have to keep bleaching it.  Healthier.  Cheaper too.”

He wishes he knew what to say, wishes that he didn’t feel like an ignorant and inexperienced boy all over again.

He drinks his coffee and tries to think of things that make him feel mature and successful.

They all seem to slip away.

Tysha’s always been able to do that to him.

He calls Brienne when he’s stuck in traffic.  He doesn’t know why.

He saw her just over a month ago—that ought to be enough to last him until Christmas.  But he wants to hear her voice.

She doesn’t pick up the phone though, and he doesn’t leave voicemails.

For a moment, he wishes he could call Cersei.  Then he pushes the thought away.

Joffrey refuses to take the SATs again, even though his scores are much below his intelligence levels.

“They’re idiotic anyway,” he snaps at Tyrion.  “They have no bearing on how smart I am.”

“I know that.”  Tyrion imagines himself the paragon of patience.  “But that doesn’t mean they won’t help you get into college.  You want to go to college, don’t you?”

“Whatever.  It’s not like Grandad couldn’t buy me in.”

“He could have.  But I won’t.”

Joffrey glares at him.  “Oh?”

“No.”

“And what happens,” there’s an ugly twist to his mouth, “when I don’t get in anywhere and you’re stuck with me?”

“You will find a job doing one thing or another, and then you will find your own apartment and move out.”

“You’re supposed to be my guardian.”

He doesn’t realize his lawyer voice is on until he starts speaking.  “That ends when you’re eighteen, as I’m sure you’re aware.  I will happily support you beyond when you reach majority, but you need to prove to me that you’re a worthy investment of my time, energy, and money.”

Someone calls Joffrey and he grabs his book-bag and leaves without another word.

Catelyn Stark calls Monday to invite them over to Thanksgiving. 

Jaime accepts instantly.  He’s pretty damn sure that none of them know how to cook a turkey, and as far as he can tell, Myrcella gets on pretty well with the Stark kids.  And he thinks that Tommen’s in the same class as the one whose legs were broken.  He’s not sure though.  Maybe it’s the other one?  There are so many—he gets them confused.

He wonders how anyone can survive five children.  He can barely survive three.

As if reading his mind, Tommen bursts into the living room angrily and begins going through his backpack.

“Joffrey! Where is it?”

He hears Joffrey laughing.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about Tom.”

“Give it back!” and Tommen is sprinting back down the hallway.

He hears a thump, he hears Myrcella snapping at them to “stop it!” and he gets out of the chair and makes his way slowly down the hallway.

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

Her voice makes his heart race.  Still.

She’s standing behind him in line at the coffee house where they had met the first time.

“Hello,” is all he can manage.

“Never took you for one with a specific coffee place.”

“It’s near the office.”

“I see.”

“What are you doing here?  I mean…”

She laughs.

“I’m in the neighborhood shooting someone’s baby photos.  The kid’s a brat.  This is the second time we’re trying.”

“I imagine baby photos are hard.”

“The worst part are the parents.  Without fail.  Every time.”

“Adults suck.”  He wonders if she will remember.

She does, and laughs.

“I’ll walk you back to your office.  I’ve always wanted to see where you’d end up,” she says when they’re holding their coffee.

“It’s not that exciting.”

“I bet it’s shmancy.”

“It’s not.”

She rolls her eyes.  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

They walk in silence for a moment, and, before he can stop himself, he asks her.

“Can we get dinner?”

He can’t bring himself to look at her, he doesn’t want to see rejection there, and he knows it’s coming.

Knows that she’ll probably say “I’ve told you before, it’s not going to happen, Tyrion,” or “After what your father did to me?  Fat chance, asshole,” or even, “I’m engaged.  She’s a lovely woman.  And it’s legal here now.  Finally.  What, you thought I loved you?  I didn’t know what I was doing.  But I’ll happily talk tits with you sometime.”

“Sure.  I’m free Wednesday night.”  When he looks up to her, she’s walking away, with the same fuck-all stride she had ten years ago.

He guesses that Myrcella will find a way home on her own from Choir next week.

Tommen almost scores again during his soccer match.  This time, it bounces off the goal post.

Joffrey rolls his eyes, and complains about Tommen’s timing, but Jaime can’t hear him over Myrcella’s chants of “Tommen!  Tommen!  Tommen!”

Tommen looks dejected, and when the coach calls a time out, he’s benched.

Jaime has half a mind to go over and give the coach a piece of his mind, that you can’t expect the boy to improve if you never play him. 

Chapter Text

“You have a date?” demanded Jaime in shock.

“You heard me.”

“With who?” asks Joffrey, disgust clear on his face.

“Be nice,” snaps Jaime.  Then, he looks sheepish, “with whom?”

“To be fair, I don’t know if it’s a date.  I asked her to dinner though and she accepted.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“An old friend.”

He can see in Jaime’s eyes that he knows exactly who he’s talking about.

“I’ll get a ride from a friend.  It’ll be fine.  Enjoy your date,” smiles Myrcella. 

Tyrion nods to her, and can’t help but notice Cersei’s “I’m being secretive” expression.

It unnerves him.

She’s watching the clock more than Mr. Marillion through all of rehearsal, and is out the door as quickly as possible when he calls it to a close.

Robb’s leaning against his car.  He’s a little bit sweaty from soccer practice, but his blue eyes are alight with energy.

“Hi,” she says a little lamely when she approaches.  “Thanks for the ride.”

“No problem.  It’s on my way home anyway,” he shrugs.

They get in the car and she notices that he’s watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“Singing anything interesting?” he asks.

“We’re doing this Vivaldi thing.”

“Which one?”

“Who cares?  They all sound the same.”

He laughs, and her heart flutters for a second.

“Practice good?” she asks. 

“Yeah.  We’re playing Harvard-Westlake on Saturday.  You should come.”

“What time?”

“Ten.”

She grimaces.  She knows he can see.  “That’s when Tommen’s match is.  I couldn’t miss it.”

He shrugs.  “That’s fine.  They’ll probably cream us.  It’s been a rough year without Joffrey.”

“Was he that crucial?”

“He was our fastest forward.  Could get around anyone.  We’ve got a sophomore there now.  I don’t know if you know him—Trystane Martell—and he’s fine, but he’s nervous a lot.”

“Trys is in my English class.”

“Cool.  He’s a nice kid.”

“Yeah.”

And before she knows where the time went, they’re at a stoplight three blocks from her house.

He turns and looks at her for a moment, his eyes flicking between hers, and she can’t remember what he just said because she’s leaned forward and she’s kissing him for the first time.

He growls into her mouth ever so slightly and one of his hands leaves the steering wheel and is in her hair, and she’s doing her best to keep her stomach away from the gearshift.

They stop when the car behind them honks, and Robb whips his attention back to the road.

His lips are slightly swollen, and there’s a definite upward curve to his mouth.

“That was dangerous,” he says at last.

“Well, you weren’t doing anything.”

“I was waiting until we were in your driveway, when the car was parked and I might not accidentally hit the gas pedal and drive us into oncoming traffic.”

“Well, my uncle’s a former Navy SEAL.  Pretty sure you kissing me in the driveway was just as dangerous.”

If Tyrion is early to dinner, then Tysha is earlier.  She’s sitting at the table in a blue dress, looking through her camera.  He gulps at the sight of her.

She’s put on weight since they were last…is together the right word?  They aren’t together now.  Her stomach is no longer flat, and her breasts are heavier on her chest, and the dress she chose has a wide skirt, which he presumes hides thicker flesh around her hips.

He doesn’t mind though.  He thinks, actually, it makes her more beautiful.  She doesn’t look like a starving artist, a girl who forays into the illegal to pay her way through a cinematography degree. 

She looks like a woman.  And it floors him.

“Hello.”  He sits down opposite her and she glances up at him and smiles.

“This is a nice place.  You’ve come up in the world.”

“You like mentioning that.”

“I know.  I’m happy for you.  I always knew you’d do well.”

“Thank you.”

She sighs and puts her camera back in its case. 

She talks to him a bit about a Japanese movie she helped do publicity stills for, she talks about some of the fashion spreads she’s been hired for, she talks about the new camera that she bought the week before last and which is giving her trouble.

He listens, and watches her hands (they make the same gestures as they used to) and her lips (which have more lines around them than before, but are just as full).  Her eyes are the same deep chocolate (but they are darker now, sadder).

Sometime over the main course, he lets slip what he’s been scared of letting slip the whole evening.  “I’ve missed you.”

She closes her eyes and he can’t tell if the expression on her face is impatient or pained.  He used to be able to tell.  But he can’t now, not without her eyes.

When she opens them at last, she says “Me too.”

He reaches out to touch her hand, but she pulls away.

He feels his face flinching. 

She looks sad again.

“I…I—things are different now, Tyrion.  I don’t…”

“It’s fine,” he says.  He reaches for his wineglass and takes a heavy sip.

They’re silent, and he wonders if he just killed the dinner, if he just ruined everything forever without realizing that he would.

Then she takes a deep breath and begins to speak.

Jaime hears the car pull up, but no one gets out.  He glances out the window once and sees Robb Stark’s car, but he sees no sign of Myrcella, or indeed, Robb Stark.

He sends her a text message, but doesn’t expect an answer.

Why did she have to be a teenager?  Couldn’t she be…you know…older?  Or younger?  Or something?

He sits down at the dinner table next to Tommen, who is struggling through his social studies homework.

“You’re confusing Bangladesh and Nepal,” he says glancing at the map.

Tommen blushes, and corrects the error.

They’re against the side of the house, Robb’s hands are running up and down her face and his tongue is probing hers.

He’s taller than her, and if her back were not pressed against the house, she’d have lost her balance, standing on the tips of her toes the way that she is.

She loves the way his mouth tastes, the way his sweat smells, the way his hair feels underneath her fingers.  She even loves the roughness of the stubble on his chin against her face.

Her heart is beating faster than it ever has before.

“I don’t know what to say, Tyrion.  Things ended shittily, and I don’t know if we can move past them.  If I can move past them.  I wish I could.  I wish more that it hadn’t happened at all.  Not that we had ever happened at all,” she amends quickly.  “I loved us.  I miss us.  I just…”

And he feels like she’s breaking up with him all over again.

He cried the last time that happened, but he’s not crying now.

“What do you want?” he asks quietly.

When they had been dating the first time, she had been obsessed with the way that cinematographers could capture hesitation in someone’s eyes, just by placing a light somewhere perfect. 

The candlelight from the table captured her hesitation perfectly.

“Have you been there?”

“Nepal?”

“Bangladesh.”

“No.  I was in Pakistan.  Bangladesh and Pakistan used to be the same country, but that ended pretty badly.  I’ve been to India once.  When I was your age, maybe, with dad and your mom.  But I’ve never been to Bangladesh.”

“Mr. Luwin says that it’s dangerous there.”

Jaime shrugs. 

“Could be.  I don’t know.”

Tommen looks at him, and his eyes are big and bright green and Cersei.

“But you know everything.”

“What the fuck is going on?” 

And Robb has broken away from her and she’s staring confusedly at her brother’s angry face.

She adjusts her sweater as Joffrey approaches, his hands in fists and he’s glaring like she’s never seen him glare before.

“Joff—” she begins, but he’s shoving Robb away from her.  “Joff!  Stop it!”

Robb has grabbed Joffrey’s arms and has planted himself firmly in the ground.

“Stay away from my sister,” growls Joffrey, pulling away.  He rounds on Myrcella.  “You.  In the house.  Now.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

The look he gives her terrifies her.  He is dark with rage and she’s reminded suddenly of her father.

Most of her memories of Robert Baratheon are happy ones.  Ones where she would show him her dolls, or he would chase her around their living room.  There was even one where he read to her from Angelina Ballerina before she went to sleep.

But the worst memory is Robert crossing the dining room in pure fury, his face a livid mask as he shouted at her mother. 

Myrcella had run from that face when she was four, but she didn’t run from it now.  Instead, she takes Robb’s hand and pulls him back towards the driveway.

“I don’t know you anymore, Tyrion.  And you don’t know me.”

“I can think of a perfect remedy.  Let’s date.”

And she laughs, and it’s beautiful. 

“I wish it were that easy.”

“Isn’t it?  Do you have a secret husband I should be worried about?”

“No…it’s just…”  She takes a sip of wine, then a deep breath.  “All right.”

And he’s flying.

Jaime hears the car pulling out of the driveway, and a moment later, Myrcella is running into the house.

She slams the front door behind her and is running down the hallway to her room.

“Myrcella?” he calls after her, but she doesn’t reply.  Joffrey comes through the front door, looking completely furious.  “What’s happening?” he asks Joffrey as Joffrey makes down the hallway as well.

Joffrey turns slowly.

“Myrcella’s a vile little slut, that’s what.” 

“Hey!” snaps Tommen.  But Joffrey’s gone.

Jaime sighs, pats Tommen on the head, and goes to Myrcella’s room.  He knocks quietly, then pushes open the door.

Myrcella is curled on the bed.

“You ok?” he asks her tentatively.

“Yes.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“I’m ordering Thai food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll get you some curry.  It’ll be in the fridge.” 

Chapter Text

At first he thinks it was all in his dreams.  It couldn’t be real.  She couldn’t be really back, could she?

Then she sends him an email whose only text is this made me think of you.  Not sure why, containing a link to a youtube video of a man dressed as Gandalf riding a unicycle and playing the theme from The Lord of the Rings on a set of bagpipes.

He laughs ridiculously hard and sends it on to Jaime.

Sometimes, Jaime wishes for rainy days.

He thinks that they’re character building.

He’s not entirely sure why.

But he thinks that Joffrey needs character building.

When he mentions this to Tyrion, his brother just snorts and says, “well…yeah.”

When Tyrion picks up Myrcella from choir practice, he determinedly ignores the scarf, and the way she is shifting her hair so he can’t notice the poorly hidden hicky.

His phone call with Brienne is a short one.

“I’m going to be in LA on Wednesday night.  Want to get drinks?”

“Yes.”

She laughs into the phone.  “Always so eager, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know of a good place to get a pumpkin pie?  I told the people who are hosting us for Thanksgiving that I’d bring a pie.”

“Why don’t you just make one?”

“The last time I baked anything, I was dating you, and it was pot brownies.”

She laughs.  “I forgot about that.  I don’t think I’ve ever been that high.”

“I seem to recall you thinking you were a dragon.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Tyrion decides not to bring up that that was some of the best sex they’d had.  He and Tysha are moving almost excruciatingly slowly.

“Why don’t I come over and help you bake one?  I promise not to use pot butter.”

He takes a deep breath.  Then responds honestly.  “Only if I can get Joffrey out of the house.”

“Which one is Joffrey again?”

“The older boy.”

“Yeah.  That seems like a good idea.”

“Do you ever wonder what this would be like if we were in the same place?”

He doesn’t know why he says it, and a moment later he wants to smack his head against something very hard.

The whole reason this worked was because they were never in the same place.  Theirs was a relationship of hotels in Tokyo, deserted parking lots, empty apartments.

Brienne shifts slightly next to him.

“It would depend, I suppose.”

She doesn’t elaborate though, and he has to ask, “On what?”

“On you, I think.”

“What does that mean?” He’s more indignant than curious now.  He almost doesn’t want to know.

She looks at him, her eyes a lighter blue than any he’s seen before.  “I presume you’re asking because you’re wistful, right?  Because you want something more than just the odd one-night stand every couple of months.  It would depend on whether or not you could be in a relationship.”

The word relationship makes his brain tingle.  He shifts slightly, staring at the ceiling, and tries to clear his brain out.

It doesn’t work because a moment later, her lips are on his chest and his cock is stirring again.

Tyrion can’t think of anything in recent memory that makes him as happy as watching Tysha and Myrcella and Tommen baking a pumpkin pie in his kitchen.

A phone call wakes Jaime from his sleep.  It’s a number he doesn’t recognize, and he has half a mind to chuck it across the room and bury his head once again against Brienne’s breasts.

But he picks up.

“Hello,” he mumbles, climbing naked from the bed and stumbling towards the bathroom, hoping that Brienne wouldn’t be awakened.

“Uncle Jaime?”

“Yes?”

“I need you to come pick me up.”

“Where are you?”

Joffrey takes a deep breath.

“I’m at the police department.”

They are watching Ghostbusters, and Tysha is making snarky comments about how Cersei wasn’t parenting properly when she neglected to make her children watch it.

Tyrion’s blackberry buzzes, and he reads the text from Jaime without thinking.

Jaime Lannister: Joffrey was arrested for dealing marijuana.  Am picking him up.  We’re going to have to have a conversation.

Tyrions eyebrows shoot up, and he extracts himself from the couch to go to his bedroom.  He calls Jaime.

“I’m driving.”

“Don’t you have an ear thing?”

“I’ll call you back when I can find it at a red light.”

Jaime hangs up.  Tyrion waits.

A moment later, his phone is buzzing again.

“Is he there with you?”

“No, I’m on my way.”

Tyrion exhales slowly.  “Fuck.”

“Pretty much.”

“He called you?”

“Yeah.  He doesn’t like you.  Probably figured I’d be calmer about it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  It’s kind of surprising, because I’m angry enough to kick the shit out of him.”

“Yeah.  He really should have called me.  I’m not the one with a drug vendetta.”

Jaime laughs bitterly. 

“How stupid can he get?”

“Well, we didn’t notice it.”

That gives both of them pause.

“Can we ground him?  He has a car.  How does grounding even work?” asks Jaime at last.

“I really have no idea.  Can we remove the spark plug from the car?”

“I guess?  That wouldn’t stop him from taking buses or something though.”

“Mmm.”

“I’m pulling in.  Listen.  We shouldn’t tell Myrcella and Tommen, yeah?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Ok.  Good.  I’ll see you soon.”

“Let me know if there’s a problem.”

When Jaime has hung up, Tyrion stands very still for a moment.

“Fuck.”

Brienne Tarth: Happy Thanksgiving.  Hope your nephew isn’t in too much trouble.  Call if you want to talk.  Will be driving all day.

Jaime wants to call her.  But he doesn’t.

Joffrey at least has the good sense to act subdued when they arrive at the Starks’ house.  He’s positively polite to Ned Stark, which Tyrion takes as a good sign.

They have taken away his phone, his car keys, and his bank card.  They don’t know if there’s anything else they can do.

Jaime’s mood is as black as Tyrion has ever seen it, and he spends his time with Tommen and the one in the wheelchair talking about baseball.  Every now and then, Joffrey casts his eyes over in Jaime’s direction, and Tyrion perceives a flicker of nervousness.

He takes a deep sip of wine and talks with Catelyn Stark about violations of Habeas Corpus and some of his Pro Bono work.

“Do you think you’ll be back playing again next year?” asks Tommen.

“Maybe.  It depends on the physical therapy.  My doctor says I should be out of the wheelchair soon, if my legs heal on schedule.”

Bran is a sweet boy, Jaime decides.  He’s shorter than Tommen, even though he’s a year older.  Jaime supposes that’s Robert Baratheon’s blood.

“How did you break your legs, Bran?” he asks.

“I got hit by a car a month ago.  Don’t know who it was.  He didn’t stop or anything.”

Jaime hisses.

Bran flushes.  “It…I hit my head.  I don’t remember much.  Just that it was a black car.”

Jaime doesn’t know what to say, so he takes a sip of his coke.

“Anything I can help with?” Tyrion asks Catelyn when she emerges once again from the kitchen.

“I don’t think so.  We should be ready pretty soon.”

“Thank you so much for having us.  I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

She smiles and makes clucking noises along the lines of “don’t be silly”.

Joffrey sits as far away from him as it is possible to get when they move to the Starks’ enormous dining room table.  He’s seated between the two girls, the redheaded one and the dark haired one that looks like Robert’s first girlfriend.

Every now and then, Jaime’s eyes flick over to his nephew.  He notices that Joffrey’s blond hair is starting to come in at the roots to a rather ridiculous effect.  He’s sitting serenely, his eyes focused on the older of the two girls, and every now and then, his eyes move towards Myrcella, who is chatting animatedly with Robb and his youngest brother.

Once, he and Jaime lock eyes.  Joffrey flushes and turns towards the smaller of the two Stark girls and says something quickly.  She rolls her eyes and grimaces.

Jaime almost laughs.

She finds it unbelievably hard to sit next to him and pretend that she hadn’t had her hands down his pants yesterday.

But whenever she thinks that, she flushes, and has to take a sip of water to make her lips stop throbbing at the memory of his kisses.

And then, there are the times when his hands slip to her thigh under the table, fingers circling ever so lightly, higher and higher…

“Joffrey was arrested last night.”

Ned Stark turns to him very quickly.

They are standing in his study.  Ned had made noises about wanting to show him some old photographs of Cersei and the kids.  But Tyrion didn’t care.

“What for?” he asks quietly.

“Something he won’t do again if he knows what’s good for him.”

Ned’s appraises him steadily.  He wonders why he doesn’t want to tell Ned.  Then Ned nods slowly.

It’s strange driving home after the dinner.  Everyone is so quiet.

Tyrion is drunk, and sending text messages, Jaime assumes to Tysha.

Myrcella is staring out the window, looking happily lost in thought, her hand resting on a necklace he was pretty sure she hadn’t been wearing earlier.  Tommen’s asleep.  And Joffrey is watching, fidgeting with his sports coat.

He looks surprisingly small in the rearview mirror, and Jaime wonders what happened to the little boy who had sprinted down the garden path to him at the age of five, excitedly shouting “Uncle Jaime!  Uncle Jaime!”

Chapter Text

Uncle Renly and Loras take her and Tommen Christmas shopping. 

They get ice cream and wandered through the mall.  Tommen tells Renly about how he had started during his last soccer match, and Loras makes them all laugh with stories of his former child-star friends.  Once or twice, someone glances at him, especially when he mentions someone from his days on Mike the Gladiator too loudly. 

The only flaw with the plan is that none of them really knew what to get Tyrion, Jaime, or Joff. 

“Something bookish for Tyrion then?” asks Renly, gesturing towards a Barnes and Noble, but upon entering the store, none of them have any idea what subject might interest Tyrion.

They wander up and down the aisles, stopping in the history section, stopping at the new releases section, perusing through the tables of “Classics for Christmas.”  But inspiration does not strike.

“Uncle Renly?” Myrcella asks when she runs into him in the dvd section.

“Find anything?”

“No, I have a question though.”

“Shoot.”

She pauses.  Then, “What should I get my boyfriend?”

Renly’s mouth opens slightly in shock.  A moment later, he’s closed it, and is doing his best to look nonchalant.

“What sorts of things is he interested in?”

“Soccer, human rights, dogs.”

“Hmmm…a challenge.”

“Yeah…”

He claps her on the shoulder.  “We’ll think of something.”  She nods.  He’s watching her out of the corner of his eye.  “What’s he like?”

“He’s perfect.”

And a grin spreads across Renly’s face.

He takes Tysha to see the first Hobbit movie.  She spends most of it complaining about how much CGI they used, and how the dwarfs look too “human” to be proper Middle Earth dwarfs.

“Are you trying to say that you feel like a bad person for punishing him?  Because that’s kind of what it sounds like.”

“No,” Jaime tells her instantly.  He throws himself onto the couch in the living room and switches the phone to his other ear.  “I definitely don’t feel like a bad person.  I feel like a bad parent though.  I mean, he should never have gotten that out of control, should he?”

Brienne exhales slowly.  “It’s not like parenting is easy, Jaime.  Did you give your dad shit?  I know I still give my dad shit.  He wants grandchildren and I keep on switching locations and not settling down.”

“That’s different though.  You’re just letting him down.  He didn’t do a bad job on you.  I think I’m doing a bad job on Joffrey.”

“And the other two?”

Jaime considers. 

“Exactly,” said Brienne.  “You’ve done this for years, Lannister—trying to convince everyone that you’re shit when really you’re not.  I don’t really understand it, but I thought I’d let you know that it’s bullshit.”

“That’s really not true.  You just like to see the good in people.”

“Do I?”  Her comment is a challenge, and Jaime realizes suddenly that he actually has no idea.  He says nothing.

At last, Brienne says, “You aren’t a bad person, and you aren’t a bad parent.  Sounds like Joffrey was broken when you got him.  It’s not your fault if you can’t fix him.”

After he hangs up, he sees Joffrey in the backyard. 

They haven’t really let Joffrey out of the house much since his arrest, and even Jaime has to admit that he’s been on good behavior.

Joffrey is kicking a soccer ball into the upper right-hand corner of the soccer net that they set up for Tommen.

It’s incredible to watch his form, his precision, the power behind the kicks.

Jaime has never seen Joffrey kick a soccer ball before.

They’d been dating for over a month and hadn’t kissed yet.

Tyrion tries hard not to think about it.

But it is hard when they are getting lunch together and she is laughing, or when she is taking a photograph of a flower in a park, or really whenever he sees her.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” she asks.  They are sitting on her deck, and she’s smoking a fake cigarette—the kind that lets you inhale nicotine, but not ash, tar, and tobacco.  (She’s trying to quit.)

“Because I want to kiss you,” he replies calmly. 

Tysha arches an eyebrow.  “Then why don’t you?”

He shrugs, not entirely sure.

“You were better at the romantic one-liners when you were younger,” she comments dryly.

“True.  Admittedly I’m a bit out of practice.”

She watches him for a moment, then takes a drag on the fake cigarette.

“When did you start smoking?” he asks suddenly.

“After you.”

Tyrion is always remarkably happy when he comes back from spending time with Tysha.  That’s how Jaime knows where he’s been.

His little brother has a spring in his step, a song in his heart, and all other sorts of ridiculous romantic clichés.

Tyrion has always been remarkably sentimental.

Jaime hopes it works out.  It might just make him feel less guilty.

Tommen waved goodbye to his teammates after practice.

They all walked in the opposite direction, and not one of them waved back. 

Tommen pretended not to look crushed as he followed Tyrion back to the car.

Myrcella has started wearing her hair down, and it makes her look more like Cersei than ever—blonde curls that fall past her shoulder and bounce when she walks.

Jaime misses the ponytails.

It’s without thinking about it that he kisses her, dropping her off at an engagement before heading back to work after lunch.  She’s looking at him and saying something about how she hopes that they fixed the lighting in the house after last time and he just leans over and does it.

Apart from the slight tinge of nicotine, it’s like coming home.

She runs her tongue over his lips when he can bring himself to pull away, and she’s got an adorable smile crossing her face. 

“Took you fucking long enough,” she teases.

He would kiss her again, but she’s out of the car and waving to him before turning and striding into the building.

It’s only when he is on the road again that he realizes how hard his heart is beating.

“Uncle Stannis is coming to town for Christmas,” Myrcella says when he gets in from work.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.  Uncle Renly called to say.  He wants to take us all out to dinner on Christmas Eve.”

“He—Renly or He—Stannis?”

Myrcella snorts.  “Renly.  Stannis isn’t one for spending money.”

The last time that Jaime had seen Stannis Baratheon had been at Robert’s and Cersei’s wedding.  Stannis had spent most of the evening completely detached from the events, looking on sternly as his elder brother got increasingly drunk.

“I presume you said yes?”

“I told Uncle Renly that I’d talk to you and Uncle Tyrion.”

“I suppose there’s no way out of it, is there?”

“Probably not.  It will be fun, though.  For me at least.  I haven’t seen Shireen in ages.”

“Shireen?”

“Stannis’ daughter.”

Jaime found that jarring.  Even boring Stannis Baratheon had a child.  And a wife, he presumed.  He couldn’t imagine Stannis having a child outside of marriage.

“Well, I guess that’s the plan, then.”

Myrcella nods and returns to her calculus homework.

Robb gets into Harvard Early Decision.  Myrcella smiles into the phone so that he can’t hear the horror in her heart.  The panic that he’ll go away and find some brilliant Harvard Girl and forget all about his high-schooler-girlfriend.

He’s too excited, too pleased with himself, to notice.

Tommen spends the first couple of days of break alone in his room.  Tyrion pokes his head into make sure he’s ok, and finds him playing Civilization IV on his computer. 

“Don’t you want to get out of the house?  See friends?” he asks pointedly on the third day.

“No,” says Tommen dully.

Tyrion shakes his head as he closes the door, once again confused by adolescence.

Addam Marbrand takes Jaime out for drinks, deciding it’s about time he had a woman.

There are women at the bar—that’s true.  Pretty ones, as well.  But he’s never particularly liked brown haired girls, and most of the blondes are dyed. 

He gets as drunk as he can manage, and tries not to wonder where Brienne is.

“You’re inviting me over for Christmas Dinner?” Tysha’s eyebrows are as raised as he’s ever seen them.

“Only if you want to,” he shrugs.

“With your snooty brother-in-law from Boston?”

“If you don’t want to. That’s fine.”

“Who else is going to be there?”

“Jaime, the kids, Renly Baratheon, Stannis’ brother, and Loras Tyrell, Renly’s—”

“Loras is going to be there?”

“You know Loras?”

“Yeah!  He was in my class at art school.  Haven’t seen him in ages.  What is he doing these days?”

“Modeling, I think?  Living off child-star money?”

“I suppose I could go.  If I have someone to talk to.”

“I don’t qualify?”

She rolled her eyes.  “You know what I mean.”

He grins and kisses her again.

He likes kissing her.  He likes that she smiles every time he pulls away.

Joffrey comes home from school early every day.  He calls Jaime from the house phone when he arrives to prove it, and then sets about his homework.

Jaime wonders if this is enough.  He hates that he has to wonder.

It’s Robb who gets Tommen out of his room.

“Want to kick a ball?” he pokes his head around the bedroom door.

“Sure.”  Tommen pauses his game and puts on his sneakers, and they are outside before Myrcella has a moment to realize it.

Robb and Tommen pass the ball back and forth up and down the yard, and after a while Robb stands in the goal for Tommen.  He corrects Tommen’s form at one point, and his kicks become drastically more precise.

Tommen is laughing and grinning and joking and happy and Myrcella tries to forget that Robb will be gone so soon, that he will be so far away.

She doesn’t know when Joffrey comes out.  He’s standing quietly behind her, watching his brother and Robb play together.  He does not say a word and Myrcella only notices that he’s there when she pulls out her phone to shoot a text to Mrs. Hayford about babysitting that night.

She smiles smally at Joffrey.  He glances at her, stoney-faced.

Robb’s cheering and Tommen is calling “Did you see?  Myrcella did you see?”

She hadn’t.  But she claps and grins as widely as she can.

“I was wondering if I have your permission to go out on a date on Friday night.”

Tyrion raises his eyebrows.  Joffrey has cut off most of his hair, when—he wasn’t sure.  Blond fuzz is growing lightly out of his head, and, apart from the insolence in his voice, there isn’t anything Tyrion can fault him for.

“With whom?” Tyrion asks calmly.

“A girl from school.”

“Does she have a name?”

Joffrey doesn’t answer.

Tyrion sighs.  “No.”

Joffrey turns on his heel and leaves.

“Will you be home for Christmas?” he asks, hoping the answer is no.

“Yep.  Who wouldn’t want to be in Wisconsin this time of year?”

“You have to be kidding.”

“I should be back in California by New Years.  I might be able to make it to LA, if you make it worth my while.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

Brienne chuckles.

“What are you doing up?”  Tyrion asks his brother.  “It’s three in the morning.”

“Can’t sleep,” shrugs Jaime.

“Tell me about it,” grumbles Tyrion.

Jaime chuckles.  “You never sleep though.  That’s just how you roll.”

“I used to sleep.  You know, before Law School.”

“Why do lawyers never sleep?”

“They beat it into us.”

“And then pay you a fat lot of money,” sighs Jaime.

“Yep.”

“What are you working on?”  Jaime moves to the counter and stares at Tyrion’s computer screen.  It looks like he’s trying to deduce something in Japanese and had forgotten all the Kanji he had once known.

“Immigration bullshit,” says Tyrion, leaning a little on his stool so that Jaime can get a closer look.

“Sounds delightful.”  Tyrion heard the subtext: ‘sounds fucking boring.’

“Oh, it is.”

Joffrey looks remarkably like Stannis, thinks Jaime.  Both have the Baratheon cheekbones and very closely cropped hair. 

Uncle and nephew are standing next to each other, deep in conversation.  Joffrey has decided he will be charming today, and he looks genuinely interested in what Stannis is saying to him.  His blue eyes are even bright.

Jaime decides that Joffrey won’t cause any trouble if he rides with Stannis in the rental car with Myrcella.

Tysha meets them at the restaurant, dressed in a yellow dress that makes her look positively golden, makes her hair look more like a dark honey and less like a plain brown.

She makes sure to sit next to Loras, and before long, the two of them are laughing away about Art School antics, and Renly is glancing down the table, looking as though he would much prefer to be seated with them instead of his bored-looking sister-in-law.

Tyrion loves watching her laugh.  He loves that there are the beginnings of crows feet around her eyes and lines at her mouth.  They are the marks of happiness, more than age, and he has always wanted her to be happy.

Sometimes, he joins in their conversation, but mostly he just sits and watches her.

Jaime has to sit next to Selyse.  He’s not pleased with this.

She feels a little bad abandoning Tommen to Uncle Jaime and Aunt Selyse, but there’s no way she can’t tell Shireen about Robb.

They have never known each other very well.  When they were younger, when her father was still alive, she saw Shireen every year during Uncle Stannis’ spring breaks when he would take his family to Los Angeles for some sun and relaxation.  She remembered her mother complaining about how boring Aunt Selyse was, and how tasteless her clothes were. 

After her father died, she saw Shireen even less and at times wondered if she would ever speak to her cousin again.  That was, of course, until she got to High School and got a Facebook account.  One of the first friend requests she sent was to Shireen Baratheon (or Shir B, rather), who told her that on no accounts was she to let Uncle Stannis know that his daughter had a Facebook account.

She almost hadn’t recognized Shireen in the profile picture.  The left side of her face had been disfigured by some deep pockmarks, and, had it not been for the eyes, Myrcella wouldn’t have recognized her at all

They had sent messages back and forth for the past year and a half, and for the first time since it had all begun, Myrcella could tell someone everything.

“How did you and Tyrion meet?” asks Loras at last.  “I didn’t know you knew each other until he said you were coming along.”

Tyrion has wondered when that question would be asked.  Though, to be fair, he had imagined that Selyse would have asked it.

Tysha glances at Tyrion and raises an eyebrow.  Without breaking eye contact (or lowering the eyebrow), she says, with precise calm, “I met him in my Call Girl days.”

Loras’ eyebrows shoot up, and Tyrion is suddenly very glad that Joffrey and Stannis are so deep in conversation and hadn’t heard the response.

“I went with some guy—I can’t even remember his name at this point—”

“Jon.  Jon Connington,” supplies Tyrion.

“Ahh right.  Well, I went with this guy to a function at Tyrion’s law firm.  And he was being a complete dick to me, and basically Tyrion was my knight in shining armor and defended me.  Eventually Connington left me alone and Tyrion took me home.”

“Oh ho?” Loras’ attention turns to Tyrion.  He looks as though he can’t decide whether to be impressed or appalled.

“It wasn’t like that.  I invited him up, and he didn’t come up.”  Tyrion is suddenly aware of every shrimp he had eaten so far that evening.  “He asked me if I was asking him to thank him, or if I was asking him because I liked him.”

“And?” prompts Loras.

“I said I didn’t know, and he gives me his number and says, ‘call me when you know’ with a cheeky little grin on his face.” 

“Well played, Lannister,” Loras grins at him.

Tyrion takes a sip of wine.

“And do you have anyone in your life, these days, Jaime?” asks Selyse.  Her cheeks are very flushed and it is her fifth glass of wine.

Jaime thinks of Brienne, somewhere in Wisconsin with her father, freezing her tail off, and wonders what Selyse would say if he said he had a long-standing and casual affair with a fellow officer.

But Tommen is sitting next to him, thoroughly cut out of Myrcella’s and Shireen’s giggling conversation, so he can’t bring himself to.

“But you haven’t been seeing each other this whole time.  I would have known about it.”

“No.  We met up again a month or two ago, and decided to give it a whirl.”

“Why didn’t it work out the first time?”

Tysha shrugs, and Tyrion takes another sip of wine.

Tyrion is far too drunk to drive, so Jaime gets behind the wheel of Tyrion’s car and adjusts the seat to accommodate his much longer legs.

Tommen is sleepy (though he won’t admit it) and Myrcella is texting someone (Robb, probably).  Joffrey is staring out of the window, watching the lights of Los Angeles at night.

She calls Robb when everyone’s asleep, and tells him to meet her halfway between their houses.

Chapter Text

They give Joff back his phone after New Years.  Tyrion isn’t entirely sure that they should, but Jaime thinks that Joff has learned his lesson. 

He does not get his car keys though.

“Do you ever wish you had a boyfriend?”

Brienne snorts. 

“What?” he asks.

“You make it sound like I’ve never had a boyfriend.  I have, you know.”

“When?”

“When you were in Pakistan I dated an idiot for a few months.  In college, I dated a grad student.  Boyfriends aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

“Oh?”  He’d never heard that before.  Indeed, from the way that Cersei had moaned about it all throughout their adolescence, he had always imagined boyfriends to be rather important.

Brienne laughs.  “Boyfriends are only worth it if they really get you.  None of my boyfriends have.  So why should I care?”  She shrugs.  “Honestly, sometimes boyfriends are idiots.  You have to spell everything out for them all the time, and who wants to make that kind of an effort?”

When she thinks he’s asleep, he thinks he hears her say something under her breath, but he can’t quite make it out. 

He can’t fall asleep after that.

Tyrion’s working all day Saturday and he wants to hit his head against his desk for at least half of it.

Jaime’s still with Brienne, so Robb and Myrcella took Tommen to his game.

He gets a text from Myrcella saying that Tommen got to start the second half and he wishes he were there.

Jaime gets home at the same time as Joffrey.  Joffrey waves goodbye to the redheaded girl he was walking with and holds open the front gate for Jaime.

He had forgotten that his and Myrcella’s birthdays are two days apart until Jaime reminds him that they should probably do something to celebrate.

He’s never really liked his birthday—he imagines because only Jaime ever made it worth celebrating, and Jaime spent half of Tyrion’s life in other countries doing secret military things.

“Tysha’s offered to get some home catering.  She knows someone from a food shoot she did last year,” shrugs Jaime.  “I was thinking that Myrcella can invite some friends and you can invite some coworkers or something.”  He shrugs.

Tyrion nods, but doesn’t tell him he doesn’t feel like inviting anyone.

Myrcella only wants Robb and his sister to come over for her birthday.

“None of your classmates?”

She shakes her head.

“What about your chorus friends?  Your model UN friends?” he asks.

“They don’t know about me and Robb.”

Jaime almost laughs.  How could anyone not know about her and Robb.

“Why not?” he asks.

She shrugs. “It’s just not something we’ve told them.” 

Jaime doesn’t press it.

When he tries to convince Tysha not to get him anything for his birthday, she laughs at him and tells him to go mind his own business.

The dinner is nice.  It’s smaller than he had anticipated, which he likes.  Tommen watches the sushi chefs dice various kinds of fish with an artful dexterity, his eyes as wide as dinner plates.

Joffrey spends most of the evening chatting with Robb’s sister, with whom he seems to share a history class.  Robb periodically glances over at them, his face unreadable.

Tyrion and Tysha are laughing happily and talking and Jaime loves watching them together.  Tyrion looks years younger when he’s with her.

Jaime drinks some seltzer and looks at Myrcella.  She’s wearing one of Cersei’s old red cardigans today, and Jaime misses his sister more than he has in months.

He helps Robb and Joffrey set up the television and the kids settle down to watch Myrcella’s favorite movie—Die Hard, for some unfathomable reason.  Jaime’s disappeared when he gets back to the living room, and he doesn’t know where Tysha has gone.  He pokes his head into his office, then into Jaime’s room.

“Have you seen Tysha?” he asks.  Jaime’s on his laptop, clicking through old photos of Cersei.

Jaime shakes his head without looking at Tyrion. 

Tyrion sighs and closes the door.  Only then does he notice the light coming from under his own door.

He pushes it open and sees Tysha sitting naked on his bed.

“You said not to get you anything for your birthday.  So I didn’t,” she shrugs.

He’s speechless and somewhere behind him he hears the bedroom door click shut, but he’s already buried between her breasts.

Jaime hears them from across the hall.

It almost makes him smile.

He wakes up before she does the next morning.  He likes the sight of her sprawled across his bed, a sheet only half covering her.

She’s always been beautiful, but he thinks that in this moment she’s positively pristine.

When Jaime asks, Tommen decides to continue soccer.

“They’ll probably put you on a different team,” Jaime says.

Tommen shrugs.  “I don’t like coach Blount anyway.”

Later that afternoon, he sees Tommen go out to the backyard and do toetouches for longer than Jaime would have thought possible.

It’s like the floodgates had opened.  Tyrion can’t stop thinking about her, about them, about what they were, what they are, and what they would be. 

He sees her everywhere, in the brightly colored sundresses, in the dark ponytails, in the swaying hips of women that he passes on the street.

He calls Bronn to tell him he won’t be coming in that week.

“It’s your life,” says Bronn.  If it is possible, he hears Bronn shrug over the phone.

Jaime doesn’t comment on it when Brienne calls him for the second time in a month.  “Next Tuesday?” she asks.

“Yes.”

Tysha comes round for dinner, and helps Tommen with a science project.

She sings with Myrcella while they cook their chicken, Myrcella’s voice high and pure and chorus trained, while Tysha sounds like a blue’s singer who has smoked too much.  But somehow they sound good.

He thinks the evening is going well when Joffrey comes into the house.

“Where were you?” Tyrion asks Joffrey slowly.

“I was at the Starks.  You can call Ned and ask.  I was doing homework with Sansa.”

“You should let me know when you are going to be out.  Remember?”

“I forgot.  I texted Uncle Jaime though.”

Tyrion sighs and decides that he’s going to believe him.

Well, believe him enough to email Ned and verify his story anyway.

When Joff has gone down the hallway towards his bedroom, Myrcella asks, “Why have you been so strict to Joff lately?  Is it because he didn’t get into college early?”

Tyrion shakes his head and says, “Unless it happens again, I think it’s best that you don’t know.”

Myrcella looks at him with even green eyes.

Those are his father’s eyes.

Myrcella goes to Robb’s basketball game after school on Friday.  She doesn’t really know very much about basketball—just that what she had learned in gym class.

Robb plays roughly, aggressively, but there is a grace to his jumps, to the way he holds his arms up when he follows through on a shot.

They win by a ridiculously high margin (or so it seems to Myrcella) and she waits for him by his car.

He’s the last one out of the locker room and they make out against the car for another half an hour.  Only when her phone buzzes with a where are you against her hip do they break apart and she wishes for just once, her Uncle Tyrion was as negligent a parent as her mother had been.

She feels guilty thinking that, and is quiet all the way home, though Robb does try to draw her into conversation a few times.

Tyrion opens the door to Myrcella’s room to ask her and Robb if they would like pizza for dinner.

He closes it again quietly.

Robb’s head had been between Myrcella’s legs and there was only one thing it could have been doing there.

Tyrion pulls out his phone and sends Jaime a text message saying that they are going to have to put the fear of God in the Stark boy, and soon.

He knows Jaime won’t respond.  He’s with Brienne tonight.

Was there something in the air that made everyone want to have sex tonight?  What was so special about tonight?

He suddenly wonders what Tysha is doing.

He’s lying with his head on her stomach, staring up at the ceiling.

“What are you thinking?” she asks.

He hadn’t realized that she was awake.  “About you,” he says.

He hears the quick exhale of amusement.

“There’s not much to think about there.”

“Oh?”

“I’m very simple.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.  Don’t you see it?”

“No.”

One of her hands weaves its way through his hair.  It’s surprisingly gentle.  Usually, when her hands are going through his hair they are tugging, fisting, holding.  But her touch is feather-light and it sends shivers over his skin.

“Are you even aware of how sweet you are?”

“I’m not sweet.”

She laughs.  He wonders why.

It’s after Robb goes to a meet-up of early admits that Myrcella decides that she will go to Harvard.

She can’t bear the thought of him going and she hates that she can’t tell him.

Sometimes, he looks a little sad—when he thinks about how they won’t be five blocks away from each other, or when he remembers that it will be another two years before she’s at college—but most of the time he gets uncontainably excited when he thinks about going to college.

She understands why, of course.  He’s the oldest of five.  Of course he wants to get away from that.

She wants to get away too.  So she decides that she will go to Harvard.

Robb’s waiting for Myrcella to get out of the bathroom and Tyrion leaps into action.

“I want you to know that if you do anything to hurt her, I will be on you for statutory rape before you even know what has happened to you.”

Robb blanches.  Tyrion holds in a smile.

He had never realized it would be quite this fun.  He’ll have to let Jaime know.  They had taken bets on how Robb would react.

“With all due respect—” begins Robb.  Then he stops.

“Yes?”

“With all due respect, Mr. Lannister, but that’s not quite what the laws of California state.  She’s within two years of my age, so…”  He squares his shoulders.  “So there’s no case there.  But that’s irrelevant because I would never hurt her."

Tyrion raises his eyebrows.

“Did you look that up?” he asks calmly.

Robb nods, still pale.

Tyrion can respect that.

Jaime takes a deep breath before he sends the email.

He almost doesn’t click send.

But then he does.

Then there’s nothing left but to wait.

Sometimes, Tyrion sees a flicker of sadness in Tysha’s eyes.

She does her best to hide them from him, but he knows that they are there.  He’s scared to ask why.

Chapter Text

You’re a great fool, sometimes, you know that?

She couldn’t have been more cryptic if she tried.

Stupid wench.

Jaime sighs, his fingers floating over the keyboard, trying to figure out how was best to reply.

But before he begins typing, another email appears.

That means yes, by the way.

And he smiles.

He’s still inside her when the question slips out and he regrets it immediately.

“Why?”

“Why what?” she asks, running her fingers through his hair.  It’s getting long.  He really should cut it.

He really shouldn’t answer.  He should make something up.  “Why are you so beautiful?” would probably be an appropriate deflection, or perhaps “Why can’t the Giants win one goddamn game?” would probably work.  Or maybe even “why aren’t you interested in threesomes?  You’ve got to be curious about what some of your hot friends are like.”

He should do anything. 

But he can’t.

“Why did you leave me the first time?”

He feels her tense underneath him.  He feels her heartbeat increase from it’s languid-post sex thump-thump.  He feels sadness in her voice.  But her fingers keep tracing their way over his scalp, if a little less assuredly than before.

“Why do you think?”

He can’t look at her.

“I thought…I don’t really know.  I never really knew.  I always supposed—my dad, or something.”

Tysha sighs.

“Your dad, and something.”

And he doesn’t want to know more.  Not yet.  But he knows she’s going to tell him.

Myrcella gets a B- on her physics test and freaks out.

She doesn’t get Bs, much less a B-.

She pulls out her notebook and begins looking at every thing she’s ever written down about physics, wondering what had happened and feeling like a failure.

Robb calls her, but she doesn’t pick up.

Excellent.

It’s the only thing he can think to write.

He can almost—no, not almost.  He can—hear the laughter in her response.

I repeat, you’re a great big golden-headed fool.  I’ll see you Sunday.

She takes a deep breath, and begins.

“I got a phone call.  And it was your dad.  I don’t know how he knew how to find me.  I didn’t even realize he knew we were dating.  You told me you hadn’t told him.  I always supposed it was Jaime, and that’s why he looks like a tired puppy every time he sees me.”

Tyrion bites his tongue.  Jaime wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t have done that.

Would he?

“He wanted to meet me.  And I went in and saw him.  And he told me that I was to stop seeing you, that he knew that I was a call girl, that he’d have me taken in for solicitation, et cetera, et cetera, and I just kind of sat there numbly, not knowing what to say.”

That did sound like his father.

“I don’t honestly think I said anything to him.  I think I just got up and left.  Well, I know I got up and left at some point, I just don’t think I told him—”

She cuts herself off and he hears ragged breathing.  He still doesn’t look at her.

After a moment, she continues.

“I didn’t stop seeing you, though.  I wouldn’t.  And then there were men at my apartment.  I didn’t have to ask who had sent them.”

Her fingers tighten in his hair and he hears her voice growing thick.

Robb calls her again.

She doesn’t pick up.  She sends him a text though.  Must study.  Talk later?

His response is instantaneous.  Talk now.

She doesn’t call him though.

Jaime hears the pounding on the door and glances at the clock.

He checks out the window first—he’s not stupid—then opens the door.

Robb is angrier than he’d ever seen him.

“Where the fuck is he?” growls Robb.

And for the first time since he was in Pakistan, Jaime is scared.

It’s only then that Tyrion looks up.

He looks at her big brown eyes and sees fear for the first time. 

“What happened, Tysha?” his voice is colder than he had intended.  She flinches.

“I—they beat me a bit.”

“A bit?  Define a bit?”

“I went to the ER.  That’s where I called you from.  The hospital.  I—”  There are tears in her eyes.

“What did they do to you?”

He knew his father’s men.  He knew what his father would tell them to do…and what his father wouldn’t tell them to do.

She closes her eyes and doesn’t respond.

“I was pregnant,” she sighed at last.

Tyrion feels his eyes widening.  The rest of him is numb.

“I was about two months pregnant.  I wasn’t sure what to do.  I hadn’t told you.  And I don’t know how he knew, but your father said he’d pay me to leave you and never tell you and never let it near you.  After I broke up with you, I got a check from him for a ridiculous amount of money.”

Tyrion closes his eyes.  His heart is racing.  He has never felt this angry at his father.  Never.

He can’t bring himself to look at her, can’t bring himself to ask the obvious question.

“I tore up the check and got an abortion.”

He nods, eyes still closed.

If he opens his eyes now, he can’t guarantee that he won’t cry until there’s nothing left in him.

She hears Robb’s voice and the door to the room next to hers being thrown open.

“BACK YOUR SHIT UP.  NOW.”

Jaime hasn’t barked like that in ages.  Not since Japan at the latest, and maybe not even since Hawaii.  He’s surprised he still has it in him, to be honest.

He is not surprised that it breaks Robb and Joffrey apart.  They practically leap to opposite ends of the room.

“Someone explain to me what’s going on.  I don’t give a fuck who.”

Joffrey’s rubbing his jaw, the first bit of him to be hit by the oncoming Stark boy.  His lips are contorted in a scowl.

“Joffrey attacked my sister and ran over my brother last fall.”

Jaime’s eyes are on Robb as fast as he could move them, and he hears Myrcella gasp behind him.

He hadn’t heard her come in.

“I wanted so much to tell you,” her voice is sounding desperate.  Tyrion’s face is lost between her breasts again, and he’s trying as hard as he can to stop shaking—whether from rage, from fear, from shame, from sadness he’s still not sure.

“I almost called you every day for a year.  I did.  But I was scared.  I was scared he’d find out.  I was scared he’d do something—to you, to me, to my mom.  And that’s not a good reason, it isn’t.  But I—”

And she’s crying.  He can feel her shaking too, and that, more than anything, calms him.

“You did the right thing,” he says to her breasts.  “My father was a powerful man who didn’t like it when things didn’t go his way.”

He almost believes it.

She’s crying harder, practically blubbering.  But he can’t comfort her—not now.  Not when he’s reeling the way he is.

“He took her out walking, and they ended up under the bridge down the road.  She was terrified, and when she wanted to go back, he hit her.  He knocked her down on the ground, and she broke her ankle in the fall.  When she wouldn’t get up, he kicked her and left her there, alone.  Under the bridge.  At night.  She had to drag herself to a phone booth because her phone broke in the fall.”

She’s staring at Robb, she’s waiting for Joffrey to call him a liar, waiting for Uncle Jaime to do something.

He doesn’t move though.  He asks.

“And Bran?”

“When he was kicking her, he said something about how maybe she’d end up a fucking cripple like my brother.  At least he’d done a good job on that one.”

“Joff?”  Myrcella has tears in her eyes.  Her brother is staring at her with more hatred than she could even imagine.  “Why?”

“Shouldn’t have let him up your cunt.”

Myrcella can’t breathe.

Robb’s fist connects with Joffrey’s skull again before Jaime barks, “DID I SAY YOU COULD MOVE?”

Robb rounds on him, unbridled anger in his long, thin face.  He’s glaring, and his blue eyes looked like Robert’s the day that Cersei had accused him of still loving Lyanna Stark, but he stills.

Jaime turns his gaze away from Robb.

Joffrey meets his eyes evenly, defiantly.

“Pack your things.”

“What?”

“Pack your things.  I’m driving you to basic in the morning.” Joffrey’s eyes widen.

“You can’t do that.  I don’t consent.”

Jaime wasn’t worried about that. He continued as though he hadn’t heard him.  “I don’t believe in hitting children, and believe me, you don’t want me to hit you.  But I will let whoever the fuck is your CO kick the crap out of you if you don’t learn pretty damn quick how to be a decent human being.  You aren’t getting into college anyway, so it’s not like there’s a loss there.

“You will apologize to your sister.  Write a letter to Sansa Stark begging her forgiveness.  Call Ned and apologize for almost killing his son.  And then, when you’re done with that, you’re going to leave a note for Tommen and lie and tell him that I’ve inspired you with my heroism and you’re going to enlist.

“Do I make myself clear?”

Joffrey doesn’t move.

Jaime hears Robb’s quick, angry breaths, Myrcella’s stunned sobs, his own beating heart.

But he doesn’t hear Joffrey.

“Do I make myself clear?”

“Fuck you.  Fuck you.  Fuck Uncle Tyrion, but mostly fuck you.  I thought that you were supposed to be the good Uncle.  That’s what Mom always said.”

“Do I make myself clear?”

“You’re just like your Uncle Jaime, that’s what she always fucking said.  But I’m not.  You haven’t done anything to protect us, to protect Tom and Myrcella.  That’s why I had to do it.  You’re a fucking shit piece of fuck and I’m nothing like you, and you can’t fucking turn me into you.”

“Do I make myself clear?”

“Stop fucking asking that!”

Jaime says nothing. 

Joffrey’s hands are in fists, his teeth are gritted, his short hair is bristling in a way that would normally have amused Jaime.  His eyes say it all though.

They say what Joffrey can and what Joffrey can’t.  They say the hatred, the disappointment, the anger, the sadness, the aggression, the fear, the cruelty, the brokenness.

He sags, and turns to his desk and begins writing.

“You two.  Out,” he says softly to Robb and Myrcella. 

Chapter Text

“Who is his CO?” asks Brienne.

“Barristan Selmy.  I didn’t even know he was still serving.  Also, he should far outrank that by now.”

Brienne chuckles.

“He’s doing it from retirement, out of the goodness of his old heart.  If anyone will teach him how to be a good man and a good soldier, it’s Selmy.”

“Here’s hoping.”

“You ok?”

Jaime doesn’t know how to answer.

Tyrion can’t sleep.  He hasn’t been able to since Monday night.

He tried to put it on Joffrey’s revelations, but he knows that has nothing at all to do with it.

A kid.  She had been going to have a kid.  His kid.

Every time he thinks of it, he feels like he’s just done a two-hundred foot drop on a roller coaster.

He imagines himself and Tysha, sitting on his bed with a nine-year-old, reading him Harry Potter.  The nine-year-old has Tysha’s eyes and Tyrion’s hair and Jaime’s smile.

He calls Bronn.

“You told dad.  About Tysha.  The first time, didn’t you?”  Jaime looks up at his brother and feels, for the first time since Joffrey had left five days before, as though everything had just gone terribly wrong.  He chews his bagel very, very slowly.

“Jaime?” Tyrion prompts.

“Yes.”  He sees anger in Tyrion’s mismatched eyes and he leaps into speech.  “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to.  He just did his dad-thing where he makes you say things you aren’t intending to say.  I didn’t know what he would do.  I felt terrible.  Still do.”

“Do you have any idea what he put her through?”

Jaime gulps.  He had been at dad’s house when Clegane had come by.  There had been blood on his shirt.  But he was not going to tell Tyrion that.  “A bit.”

Tyrion rolls his eyes.  “A bit.  That’s what she said.  She ended up in the ER.  If Clegane was involved, he could have killed her, Jaime.”

“I know.  Look, I—”  But Jaime has no idea what to say.  He knows that “Sorry I was stupid and almost got your girlfriend—the only woman you’ve ever loved—killed” probably won’t go over too well.  And besides, a simple “sorry” could never capture the way that his stomach twists whenever he thinks of it, the shame that burns in his face at whenever he looks at Tysha, the way that he feels solely responsible for his little brother’s misery.

He squirms a little under Tyrion’s furious glare.

And suddenly, Tyrion feels as though every ounce of rage, every ounce of betrayal is gone.

He sighs.

“You didn’t mean to,” he says glumly.

“Tyrion—”

“No, you’re right.  You didn’t mean to.  No one ever means to.  I’m not worth ‘meaning to’.  Dad didn’t mean to forget to change his will, Tysha didn’t mean to break up with me but was scared not to, you didn’t mean to tell dad, Cersei didn’t mean to be a bitch to me all her life.  That’s just how it goes.  That’s just what happens to me.”

Jaime doesn’t speak for a moment, and Tyrion can hear his own heart thumping in his throat.

Jaime didn’t mean to he tells himself.

“You are worth ‘meaning to.’  Sometimes,” Jaime mumbles at last.

Tyrion laughs.

“Thanks,” he says dryly.

“It’s the single biggest thing I’ve felt ashamed of for the past ten years, and I’ve done a lot to be ashamed of.”

“I suppose that’s something.”

“And I am really glad that you two are back together.  I know I don’t really have that right, but I feel like it’s fixing the shit I did wrong.”

Tyrion looks down at his phone and sees the unread message from yesterday, the one he can’t bring himself to read.

He nods slowly and turns away from Jaime, heading towards his room.

When he’s there he finally opens the message.

Please speak to me.

And he replies.

Myrcella hasn’t been to school in the past three days. 

When he gets home from work, he checks on Tommen who is kicking his soccer-ball into the net.  Jaime had read Joffrey’s note, to make sure it was convincing enough.  Joff had ended it (indeed ironically, he was sure) with a comment about how proud he was of Tommen’s improvement and how he wished he could be at the game on Saturday.  Tommen had been practicing twice as hard after that, and often only came in when it was too dark to see anything.

He goes into Myrcella’s room.  She’s curled up on the bed, her face red and her eyes puffy.

He sits down next to her and rubs her back.

She begins to cry again, but he doesn’t stop.  He lets her let it out.

She stops by his office on Thursday, right as he’s on his way out of the door.

“Hi.”  He hates himself.  She looks scared.

He reaches for her hand, and she takes it, smiling ever-so-slightly.  It doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I’m on my way out.  Walk with me to my car?” he asks.  She nods.

He’s clicking through Cersei’s pictures again—this time only of the ones that have Joff.

He sees Joffrey happy for the first time in months.

Then he sees Joffrey’s angry face when he left him at basic.

He clicks on a picture of Tommen instead.

She calls Robb.

He doesn’t answer.

She hasn’t spoken to him since he had crashed into the house on Friday night.

She starts to cry again and throws her phone across the room.  It hits the photograph of her parents, knocking it over with a clack.

A moment later, it’s buzzing, and she’s leaping out of bed, moving faster than she has in days.

“Hello?”

“Hey, sorry.  I was talking to my dad.  I’ve been meaning to call, but things are hectic.  Are you ok?”

She tries to answer, but only tears come out.

“I’m on my way over.”

“Coffee?”  She hands him the Starbucks container before he’s even fully aware that she’s there.

“What?”

“I brought you coffee.  I figured I could come down, even if you couldn’t come up.”

He stares at her, not sure she’s really there.  Then he smiles and takes the coffee.

“What are you up to today?”

“It’s Tommen’s soccer finals.  We’re all going down to his match.”

“Haven’t seen a good soccer match in ages.”

“They’re twelve.  It won’t be good.”

“Then it will be funny.”

He kisses her.

She smiles into his lips.

“I’m glad to see you too,” she murmurs when they break apart.

“Who’s the blonde?” Tysha hisses in his ear before the match starts.

“Brienne.”

“And who is she?”

“She’s a friend of Jaime’s.  Or a fuck-buddy.  Or a girlfriend?  It’s all been very unclear.”

“Ah.”

“They don’t run very fast, do they?” asks Brienne.

Robb snorts.  “Some of them can.  Tommen’s sprint is pretty mean if he’s motivated enough for it.”

“He looks like you,” Brienne says to Jaime.

“Hmm?”

“Tommen.”

“Oh.  Right.”  Jaime isn’t really listening.  He’s watching his nephew tear up the field.

The match goes into overtime.  Myrcella’s heart is in her throat every time the ball moves away from midfield.

“Come on, Tommen,” she’s muttering under her breath.  “Come on Tommen, come on Tommen, come on TOMMEN!” She shrieks a full half-second before the roar of everyone realizing what’s happened.

Tommen disappears under a pile of teammates.

“To Tommen Baratheon,” Robb raises his coke, “The finest soccer player this side of the Mississippi, if not the Atlantic.”

They’re at a Dairy Queen, reliving the match, and Tommen’s face is positively angelic in his delight.

“That was some pretty nasty footwork,” smiles Brienne.

“Beautiful goal at the end,” grins Tysha.

Tyrion glances at Jaime and sees his own pride reflected in his brother’s eyes.

When Tommen’s asleep and Tyrion and Tysha have retired, Jaime pulls Brienne into his room.  She’s smiling, and he knows he is too.

He likes that he’s going to fuck her in his own room.

“I’ve been scared to ask you what you’re thinking,” says Tysha into the darkness.

He stares at the ceiling.

“I am counting all the ways my father was a complete moron.”

He feels her lips in his hair.

“Not now.  He can’t do anything now.”

He twists his face up so he can kiss her.

“I would have married you, you know.  And not because of the kid.  Though I supposed that would have been the major instigator.  Because I loved you.  Still do.  Never stopped.”

Myrcella always feels weird being in Robb’s room.  Maybe because she’s convinced his mother has eyes and ears everywhere, or because she knows that he shares a wall with Rickon, or that it’s just not as homey as her own room.

But it smells like him, and he’s often more at ease there.

Perhaps because the concept of someone related to him walking in on them stresses him out much less than the concept of one of her two uncles.  Or Tommen.  Or Joffrey.

She’s always careful that the door is locked before they begin anything.  (At least his door does lock.)

His tongue is swirling around her nipple when she feels it for the first time in months.

Peace.

She feels peace.

It’s Brienne’s suggestion.  He knows that because she tells him so.

“It was my idea,” she says, plain as day, over the phone.  “And as such, you can bet your ass that I’m going to be there.”

“Does Tyrion know yet?” he asks at last.

“Nope.  She’s probably telling him now.”

“And why are you telling me?”

“Because I want you to get all your guilt out of your system so you can be properly happy when they tell you.”

“I don’t feel guilty.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tysha and I are driving to Vegas and getting married.  We’d love it if you would come.”

Jaime’s smile is wider than Tyrion has seen it in a long time.

“I’m getting Tommen and Myrcella.”

Jaime breaks all his personal rules and speeds by over 20 miles an hour on I-15.

Tommen’s hand is out the window, feeling the hot air blow between his fingers.  Myrcella is on the phone with Robb in the front seat next to him.  Brienne is waiting for them in Vegas (he has no idea how she is already there). 

And Tyrion is grinning like an idiot, holding Tysha’s hand.  Tysha, who is also grinning like an idiot.

Jaime goes to 30 over.  He’s both surprised and amused that no cops tail him.