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janiedean · 5 years

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Jaime: The Hermit, J/B: The Star

aaand here you go!

hermit: loneliness, withdrawal, thoughtfulness, lantern

[post-jaime’s last AFFC chapter, sorry the jb sneaked in at the end xD]

It takes burning the letter to realize it fully.

The moment he says it, put it in the fire, and Peck does, he watches Cersei’s words turn to ash in between the flames and it hits him so fast and hard that for a moment he feels like flinching - he doesn’t need her anymore.

He kind of had known since he left.

But that burning need for her touch that had kept him alive in Riverrun’s dungeons and that he thought drove him to come back to King’s Landing, except it really, really didn’t, is gone. If he thinks about her, his stomach doesn’t clench, his heart doesn’t speed up, his bile doesn’t feel like coming up in his throat the way it has for the previous weeks, when he spewed it at Ser Ilyn, not that he could tell anyone. It’s as if he burned it along with that parchment, and why wouldn’t he have?

She only sent it when she needed him to risk his life for her, and suddenly he can see the pattern, so clear - did she ever find him or want him when she didn’t need something that he could give her, and was she ever the same to him when he needed her?

The answer is no - when he needed her, the answer wasn’t automatically a yes if she thought it would be too dangerous, but if she needed him he would have just dropped everything and risk his neck because he couldn’t even think about it clearly, and now his stomach clenches. He feels half-sick, but he can’t exactly tell his damn squire, and so he goes back to the balcony, breathes in the cold winter hair as snow falls over the ground.

It’s - better. He feels like a part of him has been torn away, but it’s still better.

Except that she’s not here, Tyrion’s not here and good thing that except that he doesn’t want to know what would happen if they met again - he hopes Tyrion has it in himself to forgive him, he always was kinder than he let anyone else know, but given what it was about, he wouldn’t begrudge Tyrion if he didn’t -, and the ghost of his right hand aches, and he thinks of how his squire and Pia seem to sound happy as they share his bed night after night because he keeps on giving it to them, and for the first time in his life he also realizes how miserably lonely he feels -

But hadn’t he felt the same when it was just him guarding Aerys, or waiting for Cersei all the time, or -

Shit. Shit, he did.

Great, he thinks. Look at me, nearing five and thirty, and realizing that I’ve spent most of my life being more alone than I ever thought I was and that I threw most of it away.

And yet -

And yet he could try to do better now, couldn’t he? He’ll go back to King’s Landing, he supposes, and he’ll see to do right by his king - his son, whatever he will be to him, even if he’s not so sure he should ever know the truth, and maybe now that he knows he won’t do the same mistakes again, and if one day he hears of Sansa Stark being back in Winterfell he’ll feel like he has done something right with that sword.

For now, he just watches the snow fall. It’s a very pretty sight. And it’s better than thinking about all of that all over again.

(If a part of him wonders if he would feel less alone now had he gone with Brienne like he knows now he might have wanted to, he tries not to listen to it too much.)

star: puddle, reflection, hope, serenity, lack of faith

[post-book canon wishful fluff]

“You know,” he says, barely audible, “I used to think she was my reflection.”

Brienne, who had been on the brink of falling asleep, opens her eyes as she feels Jaime turning in her arms, his back not pressing against her chest anymore as he moves so that they’re face to face again.

Sometimes he does wake her up in the night saying things that might sound random, but - in the light of day, they’re usually not nonsensical at all. She knows it’s because he usually falls asleep after her and he thinks a lot in that span of time, but the fact that he usually dumps those feelings on her when she’s barely even awake means it takes her a while to catch up with him.

“Wait,” she says, “you mean -”

“I mean my sister,” he says, moving closer, his left hand grasping at her waist, “but I mean, it’s not - I realized she wasn’t a long time ago.”

“All right,” Brienne yawns, trying to get back to a more awake state so she can see where he’s going without Jaime worrying she’s not taking the discussion seriously, “so why did you have to wake me up if it’s nothing new?”

He half-smiles, green eyes glinting in the moonlight -

“Because I realizes that I do have one. But it never was her, it’s you.”

At that, Brienne thinks she wakes up for good. “What - Jaime, it’s the middle of the night and I think you need to sleep -”

“Oh, absolutely not. I mean, I don’t know how I didn’t get it until now, but -”

“Jaime, I hardly doubt we look alike, for -”

He grins, stopping her mid-sentence. “You’re being too superficial, wench. Too bad because you usually aren’t, but come on. First of all, you’re only slightly taller than me while I was plenty taller than her.”

“That’s not -”

“Also, she was a lot more slim than I was, while fine, your shoulders are larger, but still, way closer to mine than hers.”

“Jaime -”

“There’s also,” he says, his hand moving down and palming her stomach, where his fingers run over her muscles, “the part where we are both knights, which meant you have the exact same training as I did,” he goes on, entirely too excited for what this conversation warrants if you ask her, but then he grabs her hand so she can feel his stomach and fine, he might have a point because they both have muscles borne out swordfighting, but that doesn’t mean -

“Never mind that our hands feel exactly the same or that we have swords that once were the same one, never mind that we actually did both want to be at least decent knights, were misjudged for killing or not killing a king, had to take out a person we swore ourselves to after they went mad, and oh, wait, we could also mention that we have not so matching battle scars and my sister never had any of those, but all in all, I think that I’m not making a bad point here, do I?”

Fine. He doesn’t, and she has to admit it, and he looks very, very smug at it, but -

“It’s not that it’s untrue,” she sighs, “but you do know we still don’t look alike?”

“I don’t know,” he muses, “I’d like to remind you that people didn’t think me very beautiful outside my looks for most of my life. And never mind how you look to others, I have never known someone as beautiful as you. I should say where it matters, but I think you quite know I would look at you for the rest of my life without it being a hardship at any point?”

She has to laugh a bit at that, shaking her head and moving closer. “So what,” she says, “now my face is a reflection of your soul and yours is a reflection of mine?”

“See, you’re getting the point.”

“Hm,” she doesn’t disagree, “that sounds sensed, but -” her voice lowers, moving closer to him as she drags the covers upwards. It’s winter and it’s cold, after all. “But, if my looks aren’t so hideous to you… well. You do know that your soul wouldn’t be so hideous to me, either? And not to many others, now that you stopped pretending you don’t care.”

At that, the smirk suddenly falls from his face, and he gives her a look, the kind he gives her all the time when she tells him something he hadn’t expected which most of the time coincidentally is related to how he’s far from the worst person she knows, all the contrary, and sometimes it makes her almost look away because it’s too intense and she doesn’t know what to make of it, but this time it feels like she has to hold his stare or she won’t make her point, and she thinks she wants to. She’s thought that for years by now, and if he doesn’t still grasp it, well, she should tell him.

“Shit,” he says, “you mean that.”

“Sure I mean it. I don’t almost let myself get hanged for people who don’t deserve it,” she says, that kind of humor still not sounding quite right when it always does when coming from him, but she’s seeing the merits of trying to laugh about - about that because somehow it makes it feel less horrific than it actually was, and then he’s half-laughing and shaking his head, a few stray tears falling from his eyes, but he wipes them off before she can do it and then moves his arm around her waist again -

“One tries to tell you something nice and you have to go and steal his thunder, don’t you,” he says, but he doesn’t sound too angry about it.

“You were the one who woke me up in the middle of the night to inform me of that.” She rolls her eyes even if he can’t see her.

“Fair, wench, fair. But anyway, I still was right. You are my reflection, at the end of it.”

“I could think of worst,” she agrees, her hand going to his hair as he goes still against her, and maybe he’ll go back to sleep now -

“Wench, you do know that if we agree on what you said, you just called yourself beautiful?”

That - that is actually true, and oh, she hadn’t even thought of the implications, but she can feel him smirking against her shoulder, of course he is -

“You’re impossible,” she sighs, “go back to sleep and save your pearls of wisdom for tomorrow, won’t you?”

“But you know I’m right,” he says before closing his eyes, and -

Fine. Maybe he is.

Maybe he is.

She’s not going to give him the satisfaction of agreeing at once, though, so she says nothing and thinks of how good it feels to share a bed with him all over again, how he’s warm and soft against her, his heart beating right next to her skin, and she knows she wouldn’t trade his night time epiphanies for anything else.

#jaime x brienne #jaime lannister #brienne of tarth #braime #my fic #arcana prompts fic #otp: i dreamed of you #dragonsthough101 #ask post #aaaand here you go!#more after I do my nano word count :)#only slightly less toxic than chernobyl's ruins #anti-cersei lannister #anti-cersei #anti-lannincest #anti-jaime x cersei

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janiedean · 6 years

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Hi! I came across your blog reading some metas about Jaime and Brienne and I really like the way you write and explain things!! I totally agree with you regarding what you say about JB relationship but I asked myself, as a women first of all, how can you manage a relationship with a men like Jaime? How can you handle the fact that he had 3 kids from his own sister? How could Brienne in a possible future?! XD I'd love to hear your opinion, as well as other's if someone wants to follow the topic!

hi! :D

okay so, I replied to someone who asked how brienne might have felt about the whole incest thing/if she knew here, tldr the answer was that she’s known about it since she met him and since she was going to die for him at the end of affc when stoneheart told her to either kill him or get hanged I’m pretty sure it’s not a thing that changes her opinion of jaime at the point where we are in the series, which is a thing, but in order:

how can you manage a relationship with guy like jaime: well, fact is, I think you’re pinpointing the wrong issue, because the issue seems to be that he had three kids from his sister. but, facts are the following.

a) brienne’s known that since they met because he admitted to pushing bran out of the window when he caught him and cersei to cat when she got him drunk in affc and brienne was present, and at that point she certainly didn’t like him. also, he admitted it to her more than once already, in the harrenhaal bathhouse too, so I mean, she must have taken that into account and she still spends affc obviously being so in love with him it’s not even funny and she still was gonna get hanged for him at the end so I’m pretty sure that in the case they got romantic that wouldn’t be the main issue;

b) ‘he has three kids with his sister’ is actually not the crux of it or at least not entirely, because first of all it’s two and not three rn ;), and he actually has no emotional bonding with neither of them because cersei shot down any chance he might have had to. and like, they’ll most likely be all dead before the books are over (I AM DEVASTATED OVER IT MYRCELLA AND TOMMEN DESERVE BETTER) or at most myrcella has a shot at living but if she does she’s most likely gonna stay in dorne so I mean, even if that was the point, she doesn’t actually have to raise them and he doesn’t come with three children he had from cersei, what he comes with is more, trauma related to the fact that he had three children in the context of a relationship that was manipulative at best and abusive at worst (and the two things don’t cancel each other out actually) which he was not allowed to be close to, which as much as people like to handwave... some men actually do suffer for not being able to father their children and it’s obvious he hates it, but he distanced himself emotionally from all of that mess on purpose and if you look how it goes when he tries to be decent to tommen in affc... haha. like, the fact that cersei is his sister just makes it more fucked up but if they weren’t related and it was just someone who had three children with another woman, the problem still would have been that not being able to father them fucked him up further, not that he had them in the first place;

c) also, as stated brienne admittedly right now can’t care less about either thing also because she’s not working on the premise that she has a chance in hell with him anyway, so if she found out she did, I doubt she’d care about that specifically because she’s fallen for him as things are regardless of the incest or the children or him pushing bran out of the window and so on, so the point isn’t whether she can handle the fact that he had three kids from his sister - she can, and other factors trumped that;

so, back to your first question, ‘how can she manage a relationship with a man like him’ isn’t actually how can she manage a rship with a guy who had three children with his sister, because as stated she judged him for it in the beginning and now doesn’t anymore. but the question is rather, will she manage a romantic relationship with a guy who comes from 20+ years of being traumatized all over the place in a bunch of different ways, because we have a) tywin’s abusive parenting [which counts for jaime too, the post I linked gives a thorough rundown] which has also possibly fucked up the only healthy relationship he had with a sibling [tyrion], b) the fact that being in a rship with cersei since he can remember/the fact that she fucked up his sense of identity or at least tried to has given him a skewed view of a lot of things and a fairly unhealthy sex life up until he was in his thirties, c) untreated ptsd thanks to aerys which again is bad enough that he’s been dissociating at will since he was like fifteen and he’s been ignoring up to now, d) the aforementioned trauma related to not being able to raise his own kids, e) hasn’t had any experience whatsoever in like, courting someone or being with people who aren’t related to him in a somewhat healthy way significatively. now obviously if they both live and hook up the books are never going to go over that because I doubt grrm would have time for that and it’s not what the story is about but in an hypothetical future, those would all be issues because as much as jaime is managing all of that shit remarkably well (well enough that 80% of this fandom sleeps on it and thinks he has no issues whatsoever) the moment he has to stop and make a life with someone that shit’s gonna catch up to him;

at which it looks dire, except that on the upside we have the following things to take into account:

a) as stated, jaime’s managed up until now more or less and honestly someone who managed to, like, develop his own personality while growing up with cersei telling him they were the same person and not realizing he was doing it (whenever he says ‘if I was a woman I’d be cersei’ I laugh because jaime NO you’re completely opposite people and he doesn’t even realize it at that point) is made of really strong stuff so he’s most likely gonna get over it/function/get over it enough to get a new start given that he has decent support as well;

b) if you don’t count the above (which admittedly weights a lot, but is not all there is to his personality), jaime’s actually what I’d call a damn good prospect, especially for brienne, because 1) he doesn’t give a fuck about what other people think in general, 2) he doesn’t give a fuck about looks, 3) he respects people for who they are/their skills, 4) has actually one of the straightest moral compasses around when he’s not trying to be his sister or doing things he regrets doing while he’s doing them (spoiler: YES WE KNOW THE THINGS I LOVE, HE SAID WITH LOATHING, the first genius that brings that up has discovered hot water and we know, let’s move on), 5) actually thinks with his own head or he wouldn’t have gotten that distraught over the shit aerys did, 6) not counting cersei and his father and people he’s related to, he’s a pretty damn good judge of character, 7) specifically related to brienne, wants the same things she wants and like, he almost died to save her life/sent her on the knightly quest with the magic amazing valyrian steel sword so... to her, he’s the guy who for once didn’t let her be her own knight in shining armor and actually risked his life for her and saw that she was serious/took her seriously/respects her for what she is and validated her in her life choices, which is about everything she wanted in a man before. never mind that she also obviously likes him aesthetically (half a corpse and half a god, amrite?) and as far as he’s concerned as stated he doesn’t give a fuck for looks and he hasn’t stopped thinking about her astonishing pretty amazing beautiful eyes since his first asos chapter SO;

c) also, it’s one of jaime’s main tropes/things that he has going on with himself but tldr this guy thrives on doing things for love of whichever person - whether bad or good - and like... obv. they’re a courtly trope deconstruction and so on, but the thing is that if this idiot loves you or is in love with you, he’ll go to any length for you, which is not a necessarily good thing (because with cersei or his father and so on it didn’t help him see the situation clearly, but with tyrion well HEY at least they had a healthy rship until tywin used it to fuck tyrion up.....) and it’s not fair if the other person uses it to their advantage *cough* cersei *cough* and also he admittedly doesn’t have the easiest personality to deal with...

d) ... except that brienne’s already handled him/his shining personality well enough since they met and they’re actually complementary in that sense because where he behaves like the singer in an 80s hair metal power ballad and would basically do anything for required affections and would go overboard for it as long as the other person cares about him (which is why cersei cheating on him was that devastating, and finding out she cares more about herself than anyone else was), she has a self-esteem in that sense that’s at about anctartica-level temperatures and she thinks no one can ever see her as a viable match/a potential partner never mind a romantic partner (in affc she never considers that he might want her back) because she’s internalized all her life that she’s not desirable and what she has to offer is not what men would want, but on the other side (even if the show likes to forget it a lot of time) she’s still an extremely patient and kind person who doesn’t like bullshit but has a lot of time for people she cares about and who likes to remind people about doing the honorable/right thing all the time and couldn’t take advantage of anyone if she tried, which makes them absolutely good matches for each other because she likes him for who he is and not for what she thinks he should be or because she thinks he’s like her or because he’s an extension of her/her just male *cough* and she can handle whatever he throws at her (she’s done that already), and at the same time she’d get a guy who respects her for who she is and wouldn’t want her to change for appearances. on the other side, he’d get to be with someone who cares for him, not for what he represents, who has the exact right type of personality to handle his shit, who’d get most of it (because 1) they’re both knights/want the same things in the chivalry sense, 2) if as I think she’s gonna kill stoneheart for him she’ll have her own aerys experience same as he had, 3) the both of them doing that job means they would relate on that), with whom he wouldn’t have to hide his affections/their relationship and who definitely wouldn’t forbid him to father his own damned kids should they have them;

e) ah, and they’re also sexually compatible af and you’re not taking that hc away from me. ;)

so, tldr: she could because she loves him and she does it enough that if she can die for him I think everything else can be worked on, and they’re perfectly good matches for each other which means they’d have a fairly good chance of outlasting the difficulties that would most likely arise the moment they settle down and proceed make out for the next five years, thanks for coming to my ted talk ;)

#jaime x brienne #jaime lannister #brienne of tarth #i'm tagging this idc #janie writes meta #abuse mention #ptsd mention #incest cw #Anonymous #ask post

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