Characters: Jaime Lannister / Brienne of Tarth, Selwyn Tarth
Summary: Civil War au where Brienne is there when Jaime kills Aerys - it's a whole thing that literally no one asked for. Very tame in terms of content.
Notes: Yes, Jaime is short for Jameson. That is what I call him when I'm disappointed in him, or worried about him, or concerned that he's been a blundering idiot about something. Oh, Jameson.
Read on AO3
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Jaime was sure he was dying. He hadn’t planned on it when he’d decided to take down the General, but he supposed it was what he deserved for having fought on the wrong side of the war.
Fighting to “preserve their way of living” was what his father and sister expected of him, even if he’d long ago rejected it for himself. But removing to the city from the plantation was hardly an improvement. If he’d gone north like his brother, perhaps his sister’s claws could have been yanked out. If he’d gone north, perhaps he’d have been on the right side when war came. Instead he’d let his sister walk him down to the enlistment office.
He thought of her when he fought. He couldn’t kill enough make penance for her contrite brand of maliciousness, but maybe if he came out of this alive he could live to see her children, if she ever had any, grow up to be better than their elders. The thought kept him moving, gave him hope. He wanted to live.
But then he was commanded to stand by while General Aerys burned escaped slaves who’d been found trying to cross the border, and he couldn’t proffer up a single valid excuse to himself.
Aerys had claimed to have spotted a Union spy in the woods and he wanted first crack at him. Jaime had followed at a comfortable distance, knowing that this could be his one chance to stop the madness Aerys was often seeing phantoms in the woods, and Jaime knew that this time was no different. As the woods grew denser, Jaime got closer, less comfortable. Close enough to thrust his sword through Aery’s back, but not quite close enough to have spotted the flesh and blood Union soldier that Aerys has been tailing. This time it hadn’t been a hallucination. This soldier had lifted his rifle to his shoulder just as Jaime had dealt the killing blow. As a result, the shot meant for Aerys shattered Jaime’s forearm.
He cried out and tried to regain his sword with his left hand, but he fumbled it and it landed on the ground as Jaime pressed his spine against the nearest tree, in agony. The soldier stepped in front of him and kicked the blade away with his heel, and then peered down at him - his glance heated and clear and blue.
“I saw what you did,” she said - she! Jaime was sure he was dying. “He was tracking me and I finally had a clear shot to defend myself but you killed him, why?”
“You’re a woman? Of course this is how I die.”
“You’re not going to die, it’s just your arm.”
“Says the lunatic who shot me.”
“Why did you do it,” she demanded more urgently.
“He was an evil man.”
“You saved my life.”
“I thought you were a figment of his imagination,” Jaime would have shrugged but for the excruciating pain. He slid to the ground, propped up by the tree. “I’m dying.”
“You’re not. You can make it back to your troops. Find yourself a surgeon.”
He caught her eye - that astonishing blue gaze. “Can you stay? Stay with a dying man. It’s said that drowning makes for a peaceful death.”
“You’re wounded, not drowning.”
“Let me drown in your eyes.”
“You’re delirious. You must be losing a lot of blood.”
She removed his coat and he gritted his teeth, breathing through the pain as best he could. After examining the wound, she removed her own coat and fashioned a sling. He groaned seeing her form through her crisp uniform shirt, the slight narrowing of her waist... he felt himself harden absurdly at the thought of what lay beneath. It had just been too long since he’d beheld a woman that his body must be confused, he thought, even if she did have astonishing eyes.
She worked diligently. “There. Go back to your camp like this. They’ll think you were in a shootout with Union forces and took a coat from the dead for your arm.”
“I’d be labeled a hero. But I’m not. I killed my commander.”
“You had your reasons I think, Captain...?”
“Jameson.”
“You saved my life whatever your intentions were, Captain Jameson.”
He chuckled, “Not - it’s Jaime. Jameson Lannister. Just call me Jaime.”
“Lannister... are you...?”
“If you’re asking after the impish southern abolitionist, that would be my brother, Tyrion. The two of us share a belief system, a moral code, but only one of us was brave enough to act on it before this mess began.”
“Is that what you did today? Act on your beliefs?”
“Is there honor in stabbing a man in the back?”
“There is if the man is wicked.”
“My father would disagree.”
“Go back to your men. Tell them - tell them that you and your commander were set upon.”
“It’s my weapon. They’ll know. They won’t ask why, they’ll just string me up.”
She huffed and seemed to deliberate something rapidly in her mind until finally she put out her left hand. “Let me help you up.”
“I told you, I’m dying.”
“You’re not. You’re going to live. You saved my life and now I want to repay the debt. My camp is... not far. I’ll bring you there.”
“A prisoner? I’m sure one such as you would enjoy seeing me in irons, no thank you.”
“No, not a prisoner. I swear it. My father is the commander of the brigade. I shouldn’t have even been out here. I shouldn’t have strayed. But I had smelled your campfires and I thought if I could just get close enough maybe I could better our chances. Then I saw General Aerys and I knew it was my opportunity to upset the balance. My father will be furious when he finds I’ve gone and yes, bringing back a prisoner might assuage that, but I don’t mind his anger. I will bear it. And when I tell him that you saved my life I swear he will protect you.”
“Why are you on the front at all? What sort of father lets his daughter get so close to danger?”
“What sort of father lets any of his children do so? We’re at war, Captain Lannister. And the more people - men and women - who contribute, the quicker it can be over. Now come, before someone comes after you.”
He took her hand and let her drag him deeper into the forest until they came upon a clearing that opened up directly into General Selwyn Tarth’s camp. When he saw him, Jaime nearly ducked and ran off, but his captor held him firm.
“General.”
“Daughter.”
“I was in the woods, I thought—“
“You didn’t think at all. You might have been killed. And now you come back with a rebel who should be in irons?”
“General, this man saved my life. If not for him, I would have been killed.”
“You were foolish, Brienne.”
Her name was Brienne.
“I know it was foolish to go off, I know that. But General Aerys is dead and I am not, all thanks to Captain Lannister. I have promised him safe passage. He saved my life, we owe him that.”
Selwyn peered at him with eyes like his daughters, but dulled with age and perhaps the sight of too many deaths. “You killed Aerys, boy?”
Jaime looked at the taller man as straight on as he could, his arm throbbing. “I did. I would do it again. He was mad.”
Selwyn suddenly let out a hearty laugh, completely inappropriate for the situation. “That he was, boy.” He studied Jaime, and seemed to notice his makeshift sling for the first time.
“Brienne, fetch a surgeon for the captain.”
“I don’t want to lose my arm.”
“They’ll do what they can. Brienne, go, he’ll be in my tent. And after you’ve done, rouse up some more of your clothes for the boy, let’s make him fit in as best we can.”
The surgeon gave Jaime a choice - keep the arm and be in pain the rest of his life, not to mention risk infection, or lose the arm at the elbow and begin healing properly. He was gripping Brienne’s hand with his left when he let them take the other.
After the next skirmish, Selwyn sent his daughter away, and Jaime with her. He believed that the next battle would be severe and he didn’t wish to risk her. And though he had one arm, Jaime would at least lend her some additional protection. This time it was Jaime dragging her away.
They went first to the field hospital to have his arm checked for infection, and from thence they rode the train north to Boston, or in an approximation of “northbound.” Wartime meant the trains were irregular, and the journey indirect and long.
By the time they arrived at Tyion’s door, the war was nearly over. News from the front was that Selwyn had been right. And that battle had been his last. By that time, Jaime and Brienne had slept curled up on each other’s shoulder for almost three weeks, the only comfort on the long road. Tyrion offered them each a guest room in his home but he suspected correctly that one would have sufficed. They didn’t deny themselves for long. And they married days after their arrival.
Months later they finally got word of his family through his father’s sister - the house and farmlands had been destroyed and his father and sister were presumed dead. Jaime offered his aunt a home in the north but she declined, preferring to stay in the south and help her son’s family navigate this new life and build a new home.
Jaime never returned to the south. He was already home.
