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Jaime Lannister swirled the umber liquid in his glass, took a sip and let it linger in his mouth until the burn became uncomfortable. He swallowed it with a grunt. His thumb hovered over the call button on his phone.
With a sigh, he placed it face down and took another sip. He ran his hands through his too-long hair. Cersei had pestered him to get a haircut before the service, and he’d ignored her out of spite.
Little victories.
Drinking wasn’t his habit, and he wondered why he’d searched out the bottle in the first place. There was no sorrow to drown, only a need to do something with his restless hands.
He flipped the phone back over, closed his eyes and pressed call.
“Hello.” Her low, full voice held a hint of confusion. It was almost eleven at night.
“I know it’s late…” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t overcome with emotion, just the opposite. A void lived where Jaime’s grief should be and he was reluctant to reveal it, even to Brienne.
“It’s fine. I wasn’t asleep.” There was the clink of dishes on her end. Jaime imagined her collecting the last teacup of the day and putting it in the sink. When he didn’t say anything she stilled, then asked, “What’s going on, Jaime?”
He held his head in his hand, measured his breathing. “Tywin’s dead.”
Jaime hadn’t called Tywin father in years. In his estimation, it was a title he didn’t deserve.
Usually he avoided mentioning Tywin at all, even to his siblings. But one rainy day last spring, in a cafe within walking distance of the public school in King’s Landing where they both taught, he’d quietly told Brienne of his father’s failing mind, of how he was drifting away in agonizing increments. Guiltily he’d whispered that he didn’t miss him. He’d expected judgment. Instead, she had given him silence, heavy with the weight of her wide hand covering his.
“I’m sorry.” The sadness in her voice brought him back to the present. He appreciated her sympathy much more than he needed it. “Was it quick?” Brienne would cut to the meat of it. Her aversion to mollycoddling had been one of the first things he’d liked about her.
“It was. He quit talking, then eating. It was like he just…forgot how. Gods, when I say it out loud, it sounds cruel. Maybe we should have done more…”
“No. It’s nature’s way.” Her voice hummed, offering comfort buoyed by belief. “It was kind to let him go.”
Maybe that was why he was drinking after all: a nagging notion that Tywin had been let off too easily. Seven knew the bastard had tortured enough people in his lifetime, it only seemed right that he’d get a bit back in the end. But his slide into dementia had been quick; he’d only been truly debilitated for a couple of months.
To wish it had been slower was a step too far into cruelty. Thinking it made Jaime uncomfortable in his own head. The whiskey dulled it enough to make him feel less rotten.
“I was hoping you’d…” He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. It had been selfish to call her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have–”
“Don’t wimp out on me now, Lannister.”
“Gonna tell me to man up, coach?” He chuckled despite his maudlin mood.
“Put a foot up your pampered arse…whatever it takes. I’ll hug you after.” And that was Brienne in a nutshell: expect results but reward a good effort, never too hard or too soft. It was there in her wit and in her spirit and her body, a juxtaposition that fascinated him. “Do you want company at the service?”
“No, that’s–” He pictured Brienne sitting on a pew between him and Cersei and winced. He’d wager on Brienne in a fist-fight; but his sister had a blade for a tongue and relished using it. “It’ll be small. Just family.”
“I’m not afraid of her roar, Jaime.” Brienne’s voice was reassuring, steady. He’d joked once that she could read him with a look, but even that was apparently unnecessary.
“I know. And I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine…really.” He was quiet and so was she: waiting him out, letting him work through his hesitation. After a minute he asked, “Will you go home with me to settle the estate? I know it’s a lot to ask. There’s a ton of stuff that my mother stashed away before she died, and the gardens are a disaster. We’ll both miss a couple of weeks of work…and the teachers’ lounge gossip will be damn near intolerable–”
Her bark of laughter startled him. “You? With me? Oh gods, they wouldn’t…I’m not…” She trailed off with a soft, huffing noise. It made his chest feel tight.
“Not what?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” The bloody silence settled again. He was about to tell her to forget it, when she interrupted his backpedaling by saying, “Of course I’ll go, don’t be daft. When do you need me?”
“I have cleaners scheduled once a week, a lawn management service as well. Tywin was only in extra-care housing for a few months before…well…” He flashed back to the day they’d moved him from his home. Jaime could still hear the desperate venom Tywin had spit in his direction. “A few weeks’ delay won’t matter. It will give the administration time to arrange coverage for our classes and your team can finish the season.”
“I hope you’re counting on us making the playoffs?”
He grinned. “It would be a fool’s bet otherwise.” Brienne was a first-rate Biology teacher and an equally excellent football coach. Her teams were a perennial favorite to win the division.
She was quiet again. When she spoke, she sounded careful. “Are you planning to sell it?”
The question had been haunting him. Casterly Rock had been in his family for centuries. To sell it seemed almost criminal. But maintaining the ancient estate was a huge expense, and it was too big for one man to live in. When Jaime added in the fact that his job was a continent away, it left him unsure of how to proceed.
“I don’t know. Tyrion has washed his hands of it, and Cersei is unreliable. She won’t give it the attention it needs.” Much like her children, Jaime thought but didn’t say. Apparently, outside of his head, there were limits to his brutal honesty. “Either way it needs a good clearing out and updating. Tywin didn’t believe in modernization.”
“So I’m the brute force…”
“And the brains.” Jaime insisted. “I’ve been in your house. You have very nice taste in decorating and your garden is breathtaking.”
His first year on staff, Brienne had hosted an end-of-the-year faculty party. Jaime had stepped outside to escape the stifling air of too many people. He remembered acutely the astonishment he’d felt walking into her meticulously-groomed garden. The moon was full, and there had been an otherworldly beauty to the grey-washed leaves. Lanterns filled with fairy lights were hung from low branches, bobbing on the breeze like bubbles on a slate sea. It was a landscape of contrasts: color and dark, whimsy and order.
“Uh-huh…” Brienne waited for the tease.
“And I imagine you can lift boxes like a beast.”
“There it is.” Her loud laugh thundered across the distance. Jaime joined in immediately. Without thinking he carried his glass to the sink and poured out the last few swallows. The line went quiet, and she sighed and asked, “You okay?”
“I am. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll work out the details later, okay?”
“That’s fine.” She paused, added, “I’ve got you, you know?”
“I do.” For the first time since he’d received the message that Tywin had died, Jaime didn’t feel the expanding emptiness. “See you in the morning.”
“Goodnight, Jaime.”
“‘Night.”
***
“That’s yours.” Brienne’s voice was breathy with astonishment.
“One-third mine. Technically. But since I’m the only one who wants to take responsibility for it, well…here we are.” He parked the rental in a gravel lot to the right of the steps leading down from the expansive portico.
Brienne got out of the car and gazed up at the columned facade. The sun was just beginning to dip below the roofline. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, a smile pulling at her lips. “The stone picks up the light…all the oranges and yellows.”
Jaime stilled, trying to see his home through her eyes. He’d always thought of it as cold and unapproachable, but in this golden hour it seemed to glow.
“It’s constructed from red sandstone, the same as the cliffs. Lannisport stone has a very high concentration of iron oxide.” He recited the words his father had told guests a hundred times, always sounding to Jaime like a travel brochure. But now they resonated in a way they never had. In the slow-crawling shadows of sunset, Casterly Rock seemed to erupt from the ground: a natural extension of the bronzed earth, reaching toward the sky and sprawling toward the sea.
“Someone put a lot of thought into making it fit the landscape.” Brienne lifted her holdall and headed toward the door. “I can’t wait to see the gardens.” She hustled up the steps in front of him.
Jaime stood by the car, watching her go. There must have been a time, back when he was little, when coming home had felt good. But he honestly couldn’t remember it.
For the first time in memory he was excited to walk through the front door. He hurried to let Brienne in.
***
He woke to the smell of bacon, pulled on clothes and meandered toward the kitchen. The day before had been long and trying in the way that all travel days were. He and Brienne had shared a quick dinner of pre-made sandwiches, and then gone their separate ways early in the evening.
She was facing the stove and didn’t hear him enter. It allowed him a moment to stare. In their years of acquaintance, he’d seen Brienne in what he jokingly called her teaching uniform (tailored trousers, buttoned-down shirt), and he’d seen her sweat-soaked and grass-streaked, chasing a ball and grinning around a whistle. But never relaxed and rumpled, wearing flannel shorts rolled at the waist and a too-big tee that gaped at the collar, flipping bacon and humming to herself.
It was a side of her he’d never imagined, and he didn’t understand why not. Brienne was large and strong and self-disciplined, but she was also gentle. It was there in her interactions with her students, and in the late-night conversations with Jaime after his father’s death. This scene shouldn’t trigger an epiphany.
“Morning.” She turned with a smile, apparently sensing his presence. “Your housekeeper is tip-top. They’ve stocked the fridge with enough food for a small army. And, well, bacon is my weakness.”
“How can I help?” Jaime walked to the fridge and looked inside. It really was a masterpiece of clingfilm-wrapped organization.
“Hand me the eggs and milk. And you can start cutting up fruit.”
“Does fruit cancel out the calories?”
“Of course.” She grinned at the pan, the expression partially hidden behind blonde curls that fell forward and brushed her jaw. “Don’t you dare spoil this for me, Jaime Lannister. I haven’t cooked a proper breakfast in months. I plan on enjoying every greasy bite.”
He laughed and she kept frying. Brienne was easy company. When they were both too full and he’d dried the last plate, she asked, “Where do we start?”
Jaime didn’t have a plan. He had a vague idea of what needed to be done, and he’d been self-aware enough to realize that he wanted Brienne’s company doing it. But the nuts and bolts of it evaded him. “I don’t…” He shook his head.
Brienne covered his hand where it was fisted on the counter. “Point me to a room.”
“Tywin’s study.” It would be filled with sad secrets, a hoard of his father’s making.
“Alright.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “I’ll get the boxes.”
***
“These have to go.” Brienne shoved an ottoman under a window and stood on it, working at the curtain fastenings. “Gods, they’re ugly.”
Jaime huffed in agreement. His father had installed them after his mother’s death, insisting on the thick, dark brocade and the blackout lining. Brienne unhooked one loop at a time. A snowstorm of dust floated in the morning light that shone through the equally dirty windows.
Inside Jaime a wall was falling, more bricks dislodged with each tug of Brienne’s strong hands. He flattened his palm on Tywin’s wide, oak desk, steadying himself. Jaime wasn’t sure if his father had been trying to seal himself in with his grief or block out the world. Either way, his children had been trapped with him in the shadows.
“See? It’s already better.” Brienne threw the first panel to the floor. It landed with a whump and a puff of dust that flew out of it with the force of an exorcism. She moved to the other end of the ottoman and continued working. “Why in the world would you cover this view?” She rubbed her hand on the dirty glass, clearing a spot. “It’s amazing.”
He couldn’t explain how his mother’s death had been the final catalyst tossed into an already volatile mix: amplifying his father’s rigidity and choleric temperament, fueling his disdain of everything he deemed inadequate. Jaime wasn’t the son he’d wanted. His mother had buffered him from Tywin’s disappointment. There had been no room for sunlight in a world without her.
“It’s pretty spectacular,” he admitted, inhaling deeply. He pointed to the far end of the sloping lawn. “There’s a path just there, through the shrubs. It leads to a small, flat area about a third of the way down the cliff face. Cersei and I would sneak out after dinner and watch the sunset.”
“Sounds completely safe.” Brienne rolled her eyes and pushed the ottoman to the next window. She stood on it and started freeing the curtain panel from the rod. “I’m sure your dad would have been thrilled to know that his children were risking plummeting to their death on a lark.”
“I’m not sure he would have cared.” Jame busied himself by emptying the drawers of the massive desk, throwing old tax records and appointment calendars in a box labeled ‘shred’. “The optics of it would have been shit…so maybe for that reason.” He shrugged, still looking down. “Mum would have cared.”
The room went stagnant. Jaime missed the rustle of fabric and the clack of curtain rings. He looked up to find Brienne staring at him. Her brows were tight and her hand was fisted in a curtain.
“Do you mean that?” She sounded appalled. “That he wouldn’t have missed you.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” He threw more papers in the growing pile. Shrugged again. He’d shrugged more in the last few hours than he had in the previous year. It seemed a perfect summation of his feelings on his father’s death. “He’d have hated losing an asset. And a son, up to snuff or not, was an asset in his eyes. But missing us…that’s a harder question.”
“Seven save us.” She turned back to the curtains, her hands attacking the fabric with quick tugs. “It’s good he’s dead. Otherwise, he and I would have strong words.”
Jaime couldn’t help it, he laughed. The idea of Brienne towering over his father, alight with righteous fire in defense of his little-boy self, was too funny to contemplate silently. “I’d pay a red priestess to resurrect him just for the joy of witnessing it…as long as we got to put him back in the ground after.”
“Bloody morbid,” she grumbled, then stepped down and pushed the ottoman to the next set of windows.
There was a peculiar calm that bloomed in Jaime’s gut while watching her–the methodical way she approached her task, the efficiency of her movements–as though he’d osmosed her quiet competence.
“Yeah, well. That’s Lannister humor for you.”
“Shitty coping method, if you ask me.”
“That too.” He opened another drawer, started leafing through papers. “What’s your father like?”
“Tall, quiet, loving.” She said it so off-handedly. “He worries about me.”
“His baby, all alone in the big city.”
“Something like that.” She smiled at him over her shoulder. “He knows I can take care of myself. I think he’s more worried that I’ll end up with five cats and a knitting problem.”
He snorted and opened another drawer. “Do you knit?”
“No.”
“Have a cat?”
“No.” Brienne laughed. Her hands were stretched over her head, and the sound resonated in her long chest. “I could get one.”
“Cats are nice. A little aloof, but…” He stopped talking, frowning at the framed photo he’d uncovered in the bottom desk drawer.
He didn’t realize that Brienne had climbed down from her perch until she spoke from right behind him. “What is it?”
“Long Night photo from when I was, ah…six. Must have been. Mum’s pregnant with Tyrion.” Every year his father had made a production of buying Cersei and him matching formal outfits: his a suit, hers a floor-length dress.
“Wow. You really were identical.” Brienne touched the glass with a finger. “Nice bow tie.”
Jaime could let it go. Throw the photo in the trash pile and never say another word. “Cersei said it was too tight. She tugged at it all night.”
He let the punch land and waited for Brienne’s reaction. Her brows pulled tight, and her lips parted. She glanced at him and back at the photo. “No…really? That’s you in the dress?”
“Yes.” He gripped the frame with whitening knuckles. “We traded and didn’t tell anyone.”
“Why?” The word held only curiosity.
“Cersei hated those bloody dresses, said they made her feel like a doll on display. Her mind was made up that she wasn’t going to wear it, and mum was already worn out by the pregnancy. I was just a kid, so I’m not sure that I understood everything that was going on…but I felt it, you know? How tired she was.” Brienne nodded, keeping her neutral silence. “I knew Tywin would be irate, and I would have done anything to save mum a row.”
“So you wore it.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t difficult.” He shrugged. Gods, it was already a habit. “We were the same height…both flat chested. My voice hadn’t changed. Tywin had this big, boring party for his executive staff and business partners. He paraded us around and no one suspected a bloody thing. By the end of the night, Cersei was pissing herself laughing.”
“He never found out?”
“Oh…yes. Cersei told him after everyone left. Tywin raged at us for hours then packed up our presents and sent them to a homeless shelter.” Jaime remembered the embarrassment of tripping over the long skirt in his haste to escape his father’s anger. He’d spent the next few days hiding from Tywin’s cold disapproval.
Brienne gripped the frame. Jaime hadn’t noticed the tremble in his arm until she stilled it. “He was a fucking arsehole.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what I see?” Jaime shook his head, unable to use his voice. Brienne inhaled deeply through her nose, and continued. “I see two beautiful kids and a positively glowing wife on a night that should have been fun. It was a harmless prank–”
“He called us perverse. Said we disrespected him–”
“He was wrong. Your father was cruel and bigoted and he didn’t deserve your respect, then or now.”
Jaime looked at the photo, then tossed it into the box marked ‘trash’.
“You could keep it.” Brienne didn’t reach for the frame. She didn’t raise her voice. “Give it a different meaning.”
Jaime shook his head. “I can’t.”
Brienne squeezed his shoulder. She climbed back onto the ottoman. “Look at how much light these windows let in.”
Jaime went back to the desk and opened another drawer.
***
Jaime hadn’t missed her on the first two days. They began each morning together, but he’d been too submerged in his parents’ belongings and the memories they’d dredged up to notice her slip away in the early afternoon and return a few hours later.
When they’d first arrived, he’d settled in his childhood bedroom and had shown Brienne to the master suite. Jamie imagined her stretched across his parents’ king-sized bed. It was comforting.
After lunch on the third day, he looked for her and found the bedroom empty. She wasn’t in the house, or in the garden. He walked to the edge of the cliff.
Brienne was picking her way down the stony slope toward the beach, dressed in a white swimsuit and shorts. Sandals on her feet.
He watched her like a specimen in the zoo. She was different from everyone. Her height alone guaranteed that.
But she carried herself differently as well. Confident in her stride, in the placement of her feet, familiar with this unfamiliar path. Brienne grew up on an island. She’d told him about it over too-short lunch breaks. But he hadn’t connected it to his own home, and how similar their childhoods might have been. It was some ingrained narcissism: to give importance to his own memories, and not tether them to those of another.
Jaime wondered if the waters of her childhood were as murky with guilt and shame as his were.
She paused to take off her shorts and sandals, to put down her towel. Then she strode directly into the surf. The sea was rough, breaking close, white-water slapping at her thighs. Brienne pushed through until she cleared the break-line and started swimming parallel to the shore.
Jaime watched her long, smooth strokes, the constant foam of her kick. It was beautiful in its symmetry. She made order of the chaos of the waves.
This was what he needed: a force to cut through the chaos, a steady line on a moving surface. And he knew that she couldn’t give him that, that Brienne’s only promise was her support. Asking for more was too much.
He turned back to the house and left her with the waves.
***
“Okay…wow.” Brienne stared at the sprawling garden. A wide veranda ran the length of the sea-facing side of the mansion. From its elevation, there was a clear view into the winding, grass-overrun walkways. Brienne had seen parts of the garden already, of course. Most mornings they'd met for breakfast on a patio just outside of the kitchen entrance. But this view offered a sense of scope that wasn’t appreciable when you were in the thick of it. “That’s a lot of garden.”
Jaime and Brienne had been working a week, and had successfully decluttered most of the rooms. The kitchen and pantry were left to tackle. But they’d filled three dumpsters with trash and two storage units with donations; every load they carried out was weight off of Jaime’s shoulders. Cleaners were coming in a couple of days to polish the straightened rooms to a shine.
“I’m not expecting the two of us to make order out of that mess.” There were parts of the garden so dense with foliage that it would take a team of workers and heavy equipment to tame it.
“I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.” Brienne frowned, sounding put-out. Her stubbornness wasn’t a surprise, but the depth of it was almost comical.
“Like I don’t know that. You’ve inhaled enough dust in the last week that they could clone a Lannister or two from the lining of your lungs.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Aren’t you a biology teacher?”
“That makes it worse. I’m imagining sloughted off flakes of your brother stuck in my cilia.”
Jaime grinned. “Tyrion has been accused, often rightly so, of a plethora of foul things in his lifetime. But getting his bits stuck in someone’s cilia might be a new low.”
“Oh, gods.” She rubbed her eyes and laughed. The sound of it was as bright as the morning. “Where do we even start?”
Jaime knew every path in that garden. He ran them in his sleep, his memories as unruly and overgrown as the shrubs and perennials that had been left to run wild. He followed them now, winding toward the center of the garden where a giant Weirwood stood like the minotaur in a labyrinth.
He took a deep breath. The green smell was heavy in his chest. “I’m going to tell the landscaping company to cut down the tree.”
“You’re what?” Her frown was instant. “Don’t be daft.”
“I’m not. It’s blocking the view of the water–”
“Sod the water.” Brienne looked gobsmacked. “Whoever buys this place can haul their privileged arse around it and stare at the sea to their heart’s content. Based on its trunk, that Weirwood is at least five-hundred years old.” She was pointing now, her lather building.
Jaime tried to recall which dead Lannister had planted it. “Probably older.”
“You are not having it cut down. I’ll report you.”
“To who?” he huffed, turning to face her. He’d mostly been taking the piss when he’d mentioned the tree, but now he wanted to see what she’d do.
Brienne was bright pink in the face. The color spread like wine in water until it stained her shoulders and her chest. “Th-the bloody tree police!” He started laughing and she crowded into his space, foaming with righteousness. “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Lannister. I will find them and make you sorry.”
“The tree police?” He arched his brows.
“Yes.” She crossed her arms. “It’s sinful to even consider chopping it down.” Jaime couldn’t hold a straight face any longer. He bent double and laughed until his middle ached. “What? Are you putting me on? Bloody hell.” She punched his shoulder. He gripped it and laughed harder. “Knob.”
“I’m sorry.” He wheezed. Jaime wasn’t sorry. An irate Brienne was a sight to behold. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Her lips twitched with irritation. “I’m an easy target.”
“It’s not like that.” He looked up at her from where he was still bent over, amused tears clinging to his lashes. “You’re so fucking passionate. It’s beautiful.”
“I’m ridiculous.” Her eyes didn’t meet his.
“You’re not.” He reached out and caught her fingers, squeezing. “You’re not.”
Brienne was larger-than-life. Jaime was a tall man, and she bested him by a couple of inches. Big in every respect, she rose to every challenge both at work and in her personal life. Jaime had never considered whether or not she was comfortable in her enormity. But right now, with her arms tight around her middle and her avoiding eyes, Brienne broadcasted insecurity.
He’d been so focused on besting his own ghosts that he’d ignored the possibility that she might have ghosts of her own.
“Come here.” He tugged her toward him and placed his arms around her shoulders. Brienne stood stiff, and they didn’t slot together naturally. Jaime held on until they both relaxed. He tentatively placed his head on her shoulder and she lightly gripped his waist. “I couldn’t do this without you. You’re amazing. I’m the prick who makes everything into a joke.”
“It’s your way of processing. I get it.”
“That doesn’t make it okay for me to tease you and make you uncomfortable.”
She started to pull away. “I’m not–”
“You are.” He squeezed her shoulders, pulled her against his chest. “...and that’s okay. It’s okay to have soft spots Brienne. We all do.”
Her hands tightened in his shirt. “When you’re as big as I am, people expect you to be unflappable. Softness is a luxury reserved for smaller people.”
“You can be soft.” He slid a hand into her hair. Brienne leaned against him, letting him support some of her weight. There was no space between them, and gods it felt good. Jaime wanted to hold her for hours. “You can be soft with me, Brienne.”
She held on quietly for a minute, then whispered, “If this is another fucking joke, I will kill you and bury you in that garden.”
Jaime started laughing. He didn’t let go.
***
He watched her from a window as she walked the path toward the beach. Spying on her wasn’t the right thing to do, but Jaime had long ago admitted to himself that he was far from righteous, especially where his heart was concerned.
She had a bright red beach towel over her arm–some hideous thing given to his parents as a gift and tucked away in the back of a closet until now.
When she’d been gone long enough to have reached the water, he followed after, scrabbling down to the overlook that he and Cersei had claimed as their own.
Brienne was stretched out on the towel, a long line of pale skin interrupted by a small, two-piece suit in a dark color…blue or black, he couldn't tell from this distance. She was so fair, the light bent around her like a mirage.
He watched for far too long…as she swam that same straight line parallel to the beach, and as she strode to shore, shaking her hair and wringing out the water. He watched as she re-took her position on the towel.
Jaime returned to the house, scolding himself all the way.
***
“Who’s ‘C’?” Brienne was up to her waist in overgrown boxwood, staring at the Weirwood trunk. They’d spent the morning tagging shrubs and perennials that they wanted to keep. Everything else would be removed by the landscaping crew. “‘J + C’.” She ran her finger over the carving. “Must have been a very special lady to inspire you to deface a national treasure.”
Two days had passed, and she wasn’t finished harassing him over the tree incident.
Jaime squatted by the hydrangea he’d decided to save. He could lie: name a Carolyn or Celine or Cathy.
“Cersei.” He called out, then stood. “The ‘C’ is for Cersei.”
“Oh…well.” She peered at him from around the trunk. “Kid stuff.”
“We were fifteen when I carved it.” He stood and walked toward her, watching his shoes scuff the gravel. “Not exactly kids.”
“No.” She met him on the grass-infested walkway. He didn’t meet her eyes. “Is this one of those things you’d like to talk about, or would you rather I forget I saw it? Because I can.”
He smiled and glanced up. Brienne meant it. She would let it go if he asked her to.
“My sister was my first kiss…and my second, my third…” He bit his lip, considered his words. “She was my first, ah…second base. I think. If I’m remembering my bases–”
“Boobs.”
“Yep.” He flushed, kicked the ground. “That’s the one.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Jaime closed his eyes and listened to the distant whoosh-crash of the waves hitting the shore. If he concentrated, he imagined the sizzle of sand-smoothed stones and bits of shell as they followed the water back to the sea.
“Didn’t know you were a boob man.” Jaime opened his eyes. Brienne was grinning.
“You must think I’m so fucked up.” He ran a hand over his face, his fingers paused on his lips.
“No. Your childhood was fucked up. There’s a difference.” She walked to a mold-stained bench and sat. He followed her. “Your mum died, and your dad was an arsehole. Tyrion was too young to be a friend to you. You and your sister were isolated and grieving. It probably felt like the two of you against the world. Throw in hormones…” She waved her long fingers in a swirling motion. “Things happen.”
“Gods, I wish I could forgive myself that easily.” He put his elbows on his knees and held his head. “I’ve spent half of my life thinking something was wrong with me.”
“Cersei was safe when nothing else was.” She put a hand on his thigh. It was heavy and warm. “Come on, now. You’ve taken the same education classes that I have, you understand adolescent psychology. Belonging is important. Safety is important. It’s easy to get the signals crossed at that age.”
“It was more than that. We were…” He struggled to find the right word. “...obsessed. She was my world.”
“You love with everything you have.” She squeezed his leg, bent forward until she could see his face where it was pointed toward the ground. “That’s why you’re hurting so much now…even if you don’t know it.”
Jaime rocked back and forth. His cheeks felt wet. “Shit.”
Brienne took his hand, intertwining their fingers. “Yeah.” She rocked with him, put her head on his shoulder. “Yeah.”
***
Jaime was quiet for the rest of the day. He thought of her hand in his, of her head on his shoulder. He should have turned, brushed his lips against her temple. He should have said ‘thank you’.
They went to the library after dinner. Jaime sipped whiskey, Brienne hot tea. She curled up on his father’s sofa with a book. He sprawled on the floor, playing solitaire with a pack of cards he’d found in a desk drawer.
The room was the same if a little less cluttered–no more dusty books about business on the shelves, less paper in the drawers. But there was the same antique rug on the floor, a complicated pattern in reds and blues. The sofa was leather, the woodwork ornate and dark. It was dated and stiff. Jaime hadn’t fathomed that it could feel cozy.
“I had plastic surgery,” Brienne said, apropos of nothing. He looked up, blinking. “On my jaw and my nose.”
“Not your chest?” he asked, a twist of a smile on his lips.
Brienne looked down at her small breasts, then back at him. “No.”
“Okay.” He moved to sitting cross-legged. She slid from the sofa to the floor and sat beside him.
“I looked like this.” She handed him her phone.
There was a picture of a much younger Brienne on the screen, maybe eighteen or nineteen. She had an uncompromisingly prominent jaw with an underbite. Her teeth were crooked, as was her nose. Blonde hair hung in strings to her shoulders.
Jaime looked at Brienne, then at the photo. “Teeth too?”
“Surgery and braces.”
“The hair?”
“Perm, color and a good stylist.”
The girl in the picture wasn’t smiling. “Are you happier now?”
“Yes. Much.” She reached across his thigh and opened a different photo. In profile her jaw was thick, masculine. “I quit smiling at eight. I started again after the surgeries.” Brienne took the phone back and closed it. “It’s hard being this tall and a woman. I walk into a room and have everyone’s attention, whether I want it or not. I wasn’t strong enough to keep my face as it was…the teasing was…” She shook her head. “There was no need.”
He turned toward her, cupped her jaw in his hand. There was still a tiny gap between her front teeth. Jaime wondered if she’d asked to keep it, a little imperfection to remind her of who she’d been. He was inordinately pleased that it was there. Brienne sat perfectly still, letting him tilt her face from side to side, letting him look.
She had small freckles on the bridge of her nose. Her eyelids were almost translucent. Blue veins ran beneath the surface.
“Did it leave scars?”
“Yes.” She pointed to an area under her jaw. “Here.” Again at a place where her jaw met her hairline. “And here.” He traced the faint white lines with a fingertip.
Jaime dropped his hand but held her eyes. “Why did you show me?”
“This week…you’ve been so honest, and I thought…” She blew out a breath, ran a finger down the bridge of her nose. “Neither of us are who we were, and that’s okay, it’s good. Wanting to become someone else isn’t a bad thing, but neither is remembering who you were.”
He thought of the boy who’d loved Cersei, almost to the point of destruction. He was a part of Jaime, still scared and still messed up. He took Brienne’s hand. “Thank you.”
“For what?” She looked at him from beneath pale lashes. Her eyes were shockingly blue. Silvery lines radiated from the pupils like spokes on a wheel, or a starburst. Jaime had noticed them before, but hadn’t appreciated them enough.
“This week…today, tonight. For trusting me with this.” He nodded toward the phone.
“Of course.” Brienne shrugged. It was catching. She fiddled with the weave of the rug. “I do have one more question.”
“Ask anything.” He never wanted to stop answering her questions.
“Are you really a boob man?”
He erupted in shocked laughter. “Oh, Brienne Tarth.” He stretched out with a grin, crossed his legs and put his arms under his head. The ceiling was stained. They’d have to paint it. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
She poked him in the stomach and laughed, laid down on the rug beside him. “No. You should probably keep some secrets.”
He wasn’t convinced of that. Not at all.
***
They worked side by side the next day: finishing the tagging in the garden and cleaning out the pantry. The more time that Jaime spent in the house, the less he wanted to sell it. Early in the process he’d thought what they were doing was an exorcism. Now it felt like therapy.
As had become her habit, Brienne disappeared after lunch. They’d worked hard, and it was late afternoon before they took a break. The sun had dropped toward the horizon, and the sea was golden and calm.
Jaime was done lurking. He put on his swimsuit and grabbed a towel, intending to join her in the waves. He reached the bottom of the cliff as Brienne was finishing her long lap, up and back, following the shoreline. She stood just as he walked onto the beach. It took her a moment to register him there and another to duck, hiding between the swells.
Jaime frowned. He looked at Brienne’s towel and saw the dark blue top of a swimsuit, its strings in a tangle.
Brienne bobbed in the surf, submerged to her neck.
“Do you want…?” He held up the swimsuit top. “I can bring it out to you.”
“No. That’s not…” Brienne shook her head. “I can fetch it.” With a hand over each breast, she rose to her full height and started walking through the breakers.
He should look away. Seven help him, he should.
Water dripped from the ends of Brienne’s hair. It trailed between her fingers and ran down her forearms, falling from her elbows like rain. Ripples reflected patterns onto her thighs.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” Jaime turned his head. He had followed her, intruded on her time. His respect for boundaries was damn near nonexistent, always had been. Brienne had given him so much of herself already, he was a glutton to ask for more.
Brienne stopped walking in knee-high water. She swayed as the sand shifted beneath her feet. Near-perfect teeth pressed into her lip, making a straight, pale dent. Silently, she read him…always more astutely than he read himself, always with more kindness.
“Are you going to wimp out on me now?” Her sure voice carried over the water, pulling his eyes back to her hands.
“I’m considering it.” He looked at the swimsuit top balled in his fist. The ties fluttered in the breeze. “It might save you from heartache.”
“Do you think I’d trust my heart to just anyone?” Brienne tilted her head. Her smile was gentle. “You’re a good man…a kind man. So much kinder than you should be after what you’ve been through. You’re loyal and funny and charming and…I’m half-naked here, tossing compliments at you.” She exhaled in a sigh. “Just ask, Jaime.”
“Please.”
Her smile brightened. One hand fell to her side, then the other. Her small breasts reflected the oranging sunlight, making her look like she’d been forged out of bronze.
“Say something.” Her low voice rumbled, a counterpart to the waves. “Tell me they’re a disappointment–”
“No.” He splashed forward, stopping a foot in front of her. Her thigh was muscled, the product of years of running around a pitch. Jaime curled his hand around it. It was cool from the water, but warmed beneath his palm. He slid his hand over the rise of her hipbone, across the little blue string that held her bottoms in place, stopping at her waist. “They’re perfect.”
He stepped forward, leaving just a trickle of water between them. He slid his hands up her wide ribcage, cupped her breasts in his palms, thumbed at her tight nipples.
“Jaime.” She sighed, pressing into his hands.
He kissed her in the sunlight, with the water in her lashes sparkling like glitter, and her freckles tasting of salt. Her lips were rough and her teeth were sharp and he slid his tongue into the warmth of her mouth, hungry for the taste of her, swallowing her half-formed sounds of surprise and pleasure before they could be lost in the roar of the waves.
She put her arms around his neck, pressed a knee between his legs. Her tongue was as bold as his, her hands found every inch of his back, his arse, his thighs. Anyplace she could reach.
When they both were shivering from too long in the water, he tied her suit in place. He took her hand and they climbed the cliff. They walked together through the garden, kissing under the branches of the silently-judging Weirwood. Jaime led her his childhood room.
The windows were bare, no curtains to hold out the sunlight. They tumbled into his bed, both of them long and wide and thrumming with life. He kissed the sea from her skin, licked it from her nipples. She wrapped her thighs around his waist, her heels slid behind his knees as he moved inside her.
They filled the room with noise.
***
Jaime woke to the sound of birds. Brienne had opened a window while he slept, and the breeze ruffled the sheet.
He stared at the yellowed ceiling. They all needed painting, all these once-stuffy rooms. Brienne would help him choose colors, ones that reminded them of the sand and the waves and the flowers in the garden.
In his heart, he’d known he couldn’t sell Casterly Rock. Jaime didn’t want the guilt of severing that tie. He’d thought he’d clean it out and just…leave it, stagnant. A monument to Lannister excess and decay.
He hadn’t considered that this house could hold joy.
“Hey.” She was sleepy eyed. Her hair was stiff with seawater. “I left your towel on the beach.”
Brienne had curled around him as she slept, a warm leg between his, a hand on his stomach. Jaime pulled her on top of him as she laughed. He nipped his way down her neck to her shoulder. “I guess we’ll take the cost of it out of your salary.”
“Oh, yeah?” She pinched his side, kissed his chin. “In that case, I’m taking tomorrow off.”
“What will you do with all that free time?” Jaime slid a hand around her waist, tangled one in her hair. Her breasts were pressed flat against his chest.
“I think I’ll spend it in bed.” She looked at him. Her freckles stood out like milepoints on the pale map of her skin. “You?”
“That sounds like an excellent plan.”
She kissed him with a laughing mouth, tangling her tongue with his. Jaime surrendered to the warm weight of her.
Maybe later that night he’d sneak out to the garden with a penknife, change that insufferable ‘C’ to a ‘B’. Maybe one day they’d both get a job closer to Lannisport, and fill this house with friends and family. Maybe a Lannister could find unconditional love, and learn to give it.
Maybe he’d end up being the honorable man that Brienne deserved, and that would be his legacy.