Chapter Text
Jaime and Brienne painfully survived a public dinner with her father and others in Evenfall Hall, but they really just wanted to be alone together. Years of separation had its toll, and they did not want to be apart.
In fact, they had not stopped holding hands since their greeting when he disembarked from his ship. After dinner, they rushed from the hall. Jaime stopped her in the hallway for a kiss. He could scarce believe Brienne was letting him near her, let alone kissing her after all this time. After everything he did.
“Jaime,” she whispered against his neck, and he thought he would die from the joy of hearing his name from her lips again.
“Brienne,” he said, his voice gruff from holding back tears. She closed her eyes, as if hearing that did the same thing to her.
“Come with me,” she said, pulling her behind him with their joined hands. He had thought (or hoped) that she was pulling him in the direction of one of their bedrooms, but was sorely disappointed when she turned instead and pulled him out of the keep.
“Where are we going?”
She smiled. “You’ll see.”
She finally stopped outside the armory. “You hurt me, Jaime.”
He hung his head. “I know. I’m so sorry, Brienne. More than I could ever say. I can go, if you want me too…” Jaime started to pull away from her, but she squeezed their hands together tighter.
“Absolutely not, ser. Now that I have you here, I’m not letting you out of my sight for a very long time,” she said in her commanding voice.
He grinned. “That is going to be very awkward when I need to relieve myself. Of course, that’s something you’ve watched before…”
Brienne rolled her eyes. Gods, he had missed annoying her. “Not by my choice.”
He shrugged. “You could have looked away. You chose not to. No judgment here.”
She scowled at him, and he burst into laughter. “I love you so much wench. I’ve missed this.” Her angry expression turned soft.
“I’ve missed you too, Jaime.”
He looked around him again. “So, if you aren’t sending me away, what are we doing here?”
She pulled him into the armory. “You broke my heart. You made me think you were dead. You lied to me and said you were someone else.”
Jaime glanced nervously at all the swords. “So instead of sending me away, you’re going to run me through?”
She laughed. “Can’t say I didn’t consider it, but no. We are going to spar – as my dear friend Willem told me he had become quite skilled with his left hand.”
Jaime laughed. “How long are you going to refer to us as separate people?”
She shrugged. “Until I’m over it.”
“And how long will that be,” he asked nervously.
Brienne finally let go of his hand and grabbed a practice sword. She handed it to him and picked up another for herself. “Oh, I imagine it will take a couple of hours.”
“Only hours?”
She nodded. “We are going to go out to that training yard and I’m going to try to beat you into the dust while I work out my feelings.”
Jaime grinned at that. “And what if I’m proficient enough to stop this beating into the dust?”
Brienne shrugged. “The better the fight, the better for getting out my anger and aggression. And besides, I’ve fought you before. We will be here a while.”
Jaime’s competitive spirit leaped into awareness at that. “We’ll see about that, wench.”
She grinned as she walked into the training yard and motioned for him to join her. “We’ll see about that, Jaime. Or Willem. Or whatever I’m supposed to call you.”
“How about husband?” He asked.
“What?” She almost dropped her sword in shock.
“You are the most honorable woman I know, so if you say that you will be over everything after we fight, I believe you. Which means we have to think about what comes after. For me, that means marriage.”
Brienne blinked at him. “Do you think we’re ready for that already?”
He grinned. “Wench, I was ready for that in Winterfell, until I made idiotic decisions. I want to marry you. I have to marry you. Tonight.”
“Tonight?” She squawked at him. If anything, he was throwing her off before their fight.
“Yes, we have some other sparring to do to make up for our years apart, and it takes place in a bed rather than a training yard. I’m sure your father will be less angry if we do that as man and wife,” he said with a grin. Perhaps this was a foolish line of conversation, for now he was getting distracted from the fight ahead.
“Jaime,” she scolded, blushing his favorite shade of red.
“How about this, wench. We fight. If I win, we wed tonight. If you win, we wed on a date and time of your choosing.”
Brienne gave him a challenging look. “And if I choose never?”
He grinned, not discouraged by the bravado she put up. “Then I will challenge you every day until I win.”
Brienne nodded. “Very well, let’s fight.”
They were both right – Brienne did get a lot of her anger out during their sparring, but Jaime was right in that he could offer her a greater challenge than expected.
Brienne and Jaime were wed that evening. She won the fight, but decided she didn’t want to wait either.
**
Two months later, Tyrion Lannister arrived from King’s Landing. Everyone was surprised when they received the missive that Brienne had wed her pen pal from Pentos.
“You could have at least invited me to the wedding, Brienne. I thought we were friends,” he wrote her. Tyrion knew that it would be awkward to see Brienne with someone other than his brother, but he truly wanted her to be happy.
“Come to our celebration dinner, then, to meet my husband. You will like him, I promise. Bring Podrick as well,” she wrote back.
Tyrion’s first instinct was to decline, but King Bran himself had insisted that Tyrion needed to go meet Brienne’s husband. “You will understand when you get there.”
He understood completely when he disembarked and saw Jaime Lannister standing there with a grin on his face.
Tyrion sank to his knees in shock. “Jaime…your alive…how? I saw your body in the rubble.”
Jaime approached him and helped him stand again. “Next time you encounter someone you think is dead, check for a heartbeat.”
Tyrion just stared at him with wide eyes. “All these years, though. Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because he’s an idiot,” Brienne said as she approached.
Jaime smiled lovingly at her. “What my wife said.”
Tyrion turned his attention to the newest Lannister. “And you…a simple letter to explain everything would have been nice.”
She shrugged. “Jaime wanted to surprise you.”
He rolled his eyes. “You could have at least held off on the wedding until I arrived. This is much worse than missing your wedding to a stranger. I missed you marrying my brother!”
Jaime reached out and threaded his fingers through Brienne’s. “As if I would wait that long after all these years.”
Tyrion’s heart was full. Not only was his friend Brienne now his goodsister, but his brother was alive and happy. He turned to share a smile with Podrick, who surely would be just as happy.
And he saw the lad nowhere.
“Podrick?”
Brienne gasped and rushed toward the gangplank. The poor lad had sat down in shock at the sight of Jaime, and remained immobile.
“Well if the sight of the family being back together is too much for him – what’s he going to do when we tell him there’s going to be a baby?”
And Tyrion suddenly felt a little dizzy himself.