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“Hey guys. I’m home…”
Flicking on the light, chaos is the only word that can be used to describe what Brienne sees before her. Pillows are strewn across every service, blankets hanging haphazardly. Pod and Myrcella sit around the table, Tommen standing on the sheets of paper they are working on. Her daughters are on the floor, Joanna tugging on the cushion where poor Ser Pounce is being strangled by Abbianne, his eyes broadcasting a call for help.
Her presence is noticed with an avalanche of welcomes.
“Brienne!”
“Mummy!”
“Hi Bri!”
“Hello, mom!”
“Hi!!”
She grips the bridge of her nose. “All right, kids. What’s going on?”
“Ma, it’s a slumber party,” replies Pod excitedly.
“Join us, Bri!” grinned Tommen. “It’s fun!”
Tugging her headphones out and depositing them into her pocket, she swings Abby up into her arms in a practiced motion. Ser Pounce now safely in Jo’s arms, she takes a look around. “Okay, but where is Jaime?”
“Here he is,” chirps Myrcella pointing to the couch.
“Daddy fell asleep,” explains Jo as she leans against her.
Abby then very helpfully shouts out in her loudest voice. “DADDY!!”
There’s movement as her husband cracks one eye open and then the other. “Honey!” he cries as he lifts his head. “You’re back already?!”
“Yes. Just in time to save our kitchen from a pillow fight,” she mutters.
Jaime isn’t a single bit regretful as he rolls off and stretches his arms out. “Ahh! I want a pillow fight!”
She is not impressed when he presses a kiss to her cheek. “Being married to you is like having one more kid. A naughty one.”
“Missed you,” he replies as the kids giggle.
He pulls back and surveys the kitchen. “Alrighty troops,” he orders slapping his hands together. “Pillows into the loungeroom pronto and let’s get this show on the road.”
“Jaime?”
“You don’t need to worry about anything,” he says as Abby slips down her body and heads for the biggest pillow possible, disappearing from sight. “Just go and get your pyjamas on and we’ll sort out everything here.”
“Not reassuring at all Lannister,” she calls over her shoulder as he pushes her from the room.
“Just get on with it Tarth,” he sings back as he swats her on the ass.
Getting changed and slipping on her wedding ring, she notices the absence of their duvet with a sigh. Returning to the lounge room, she’s impressed by the nest – for want of a better word – they have created: pillows piled high, their duvet on the floor, blankets draped to create the impression of a tent. Fairy lights have been strung up and it does look like quite a magical slumber party.
The paper stuck to the side of the couch declares BaraLannisTarth Cinema Open, the DVD paused on the screen just waiting for a press play.
Crawling in, she finds her family already cuddled up together, a sliver of space available in the middle that has obviously been left for her. Gingerly avoiding various hands and limbs she clambers over to lay down beside Jaime. Pod instantly curls up into her side as Abby crawls over her father and burrows into the non-existent gap between them.
She takes a moment to revel in the heart-filling feeling of family. Jaime seems to be doing the same. “Tom, Pod, Myrc, Jo, Abs, wife,” he lists. “Yup I got everyone. Gather in folks.”
She looks over as he brings forth the camera they’d brought for Myrcella on her last name day. It’s got the look of an old fashioned Polaroid but with all the mod cons and prints out pictures instantly.
It’s hard enough getting one good photo with one person involved, let alone when there’s seven. They take pictures until the film runs out, nearly all of them having someone laughing, blinking, pulling a face, or out of shot, a random limb in frame the only indication they were there.
Some hours later, long after the credits have rolled and their children have fallen asleep, Brienne rests against the giant bear on the stovetop and takes a moment to look at her favourite picture.
You can see Jaime’s extended arm holding the camera at the edge of the shot, Tommen’s cross eyed face peaking out from under it. Jo is on her knees, one arm braced on her father’s shoulder, the other already gleefully reaching out for the picture that she knows will be shooting out of the camera soon. Jaime is grinning and she’s smiling, Abby smooshed between them happily holding on to her toes. Pod is also grinning cuddled into her side whilst Myrcella (long an expert at perfecting a picture perfect smile) leans into shot above her baby cousin.
She runs her fingers around the edge. If you had told her ten years ago that she would be married with five kids she would have laughed right in your face.
Pod came into her life first.
“Brienne?”
“Yes ma’am?”
“Could I have a moment of your time?”
“Of course ma’am.”
Sat opposite Catelyn Stark, she waited for the composed woman to speak. “I need to ask you a favour.”
She waited for her orders.
“I need you to become a mother.”
Blink.
“I’m sorry what?”
“A foster mother,” Catelyn clarified. “You protected my daughters when they need it, and now I need you to protect another.”
Brienne reached out of the file on autopilot. It opened on a little boy with a shy smile: Podrick Payne. “But he is not even two namedays, who could he possibly threaten?”
“When has age ever stopped anyone?” Catelyn sighed as she gripped the bridge of her nose. “Until this Joffrey Baratheon debacle is resolved, I would feel better knowing exactly where everyone is.”
A favour it may have been posed as, but there was only ever one answer allowed.
“This is the paperwork to set you up in the system. All I need is your signature and it will be done.”
“For how long ma’am?”
“For however long the trial takes.”
It took over two years, a drawn out horror of a mess. But one thing had stuck with her – the day she picked up little Pod. Jon Snow was in from the field and he grabbed her arm before she reached the lifts.
“I know that you are only taking him into care under orders to protect him, but he needs a mother.”
“But I am not his mother,” she protested. She didn’t know the first thing about it, her own mother dying when she was young.
Jon winced as he looked at the sleeping boy in her arms. “But he doesn’t need to feel like that.” His eyes held hers. “Please try.”
And so she had.
She can’t say she always succeeded, but when the trial was finally over she put in the application for adoption. And when Pod, newly four namedays, looked up with his wide eyes and asked if he could call her Mom now, she had nodded with tears in her eyes.
He had smiled the widest smile she had ever seen from him.
Myrcella, Tommen, Jaime – and Ser Pounce to round out the package – had come next.
She knew who Jaime Lannister was – had even met him a few times at the office when his brother Tyrion was under investigation. He was – to put it politely – an asshole. Her first proper interaction with him he had asked if she was a man, called her “wench”, requested she fetch him a coffee and then not even bothered with a thank you when she’d just barely restrained herself from not pouring it into his lap.
She saw him briefly at the trial and saw his name in the papers on occasion. It was hard to avoid Lannisters, especially when a certain Cersei Lannister rather spectacularly checks herself into a mental institution as a way to get around jailtime.
The next time she saw him was actually when she arrived for the first day at Pod’s new school. Crouched down beside her son – the official term still new – reassuring him that yes he was going to have fun and make friends, she heard the voices of other parents around her.
“I swear it’s the best part of the day.”
“Hello eye candy.”
“I hear he’s still single?”
“And looking after his niece and nephew.”
“Such a good man.”
“Wench!”
Oh hell no.
She’s blushing furiously as she slowly stands up to find Jaime Freaking Lannister standing before her, a toddler in his arms and a young girl at his side, a far too charming grin on his face.
There was no escaping him after that. Ignoring him actually seems to make him more determined. Strong armed into being the parent room rep by a deceptively sweet-looking Miss Margaery Tyrell, she’s joined by Jaime as the rep for Myrcella’s room. He automatically claims her as his partner for any task and she found herself unable to avoid getting to know him better. She discovered that he was only an asshole about half of the time, when he wasn’t being an overgrown man child that was. The kids got along well, and he somehow surprisingly also became a support as they both navigated the choppy waters of parenthood.
Though he didn’t actually make a move until a new parent arrived in the large form of Tormund Giantsbane and he asked her out.
“She’s not available.”
“I’m not?”
“You’re going out with me.”
“I am?”
“Yes, you are.”
She grinned at the memory. To this date he feels intimidated by the Northerner, even with Tormund happily engaged himself now.
Joanna had been planned… somewhat.
“Let’s make a baby,” had been the whisper one night as they made love some months after they got married.
It hadn’t seemed like such a stupid idea in the light of day, and so they’d decided yeah why not, let’s give this baby making a try. The look of awe on Jaime’s face when his daughter was placed in his arms had been worth every minute of pain that was a 26+ hour labour.
In those first few weeks, she would sometimes wake up in the night to discover Jaime absent from their bed. 99% of the time when she went looking for him, she'd find him with their daughter.
“Hey sweetheart.”
That had been the first time. Her heart had clenched at the tenderness in his tone as he scooped Jo up to his chest, holding her tiny form against his heart. He rocked in place and tears filled his eyes as he pressed a soft kiss to her head.
His eyes meet hers and all she can see is love radiating from them.
Abbianne had not been planned… somewhat.
They’d agreed they might try for another baby at some point in the future depending on how they got on with this one. But Jo wasn’t even one nameday yet before they were seated together on the cold bathroom tiles, eyes on the plastic white stick, waiting for the minutes to pass.
“Well,” she’d said. “This is unexpected.”
But just like the chaos that is their life, house bursting at the seams, rolling with it is what they did and Abby arrived screaming into the world after a quickfire labour they’d barely made it to the hospital in time for.
And Jaime had bawled his eyes out just as loudly when his littlest girl extended chubby little arms and babbled Dada for the first time.
Warm arms encircle her waist, a kiss to her collarbone drawing her from her thoughts. “Everything okay?”
“Mmm,” Brienne replies, throwing her arms around her husband’s neck and leaning in for a kiss of her own. “Girls in bed okay?”
“Yup, all out like a light.” Jaime tilts his head as he catches her eye and holds her gaze. “You okay?”
The photo is still in her hand and she brings it around so they can both see it. “That’s our family Jaime.”
He hums as he tugs her closer. “Yes it is.”
They stand there wrapped in each other’s embrace, content in the comfortable silence, before Brienne pulls back. “Right, time to get this all tidied up.”
“Bags not it on clean up duty,” says Jaime as he jumps back.
Brienne just levels him with a look.
He heaves a dramatic sigh.
“The things I do for this family.”