#shiny as he used to be because if brienne tells him that he looks ridiculous (fondly) over his new outfit that has way too much ruffles and

[swordmaid]

also (im still thinking abt the post canon jb au from the prev post) I really like the concept of jaime thriving post war. like he’s happier because he’s alive! and brienne is here with him! and brienne (bc I think she likes to watch him) would notice that he laughs and smiles more freely, that there’s no cutting edge to his smiles or japes and he’s generally more relaxed and laid back. brienne also noticing jaime getting more wrinkles around the eyes and mouth bc he’s smiling more, and his hair is starting to gray around the temples but it only makes him more attractive to her For Some Reason. she’s not gonna delve into why she thinks that’s attractive by the by, jaime is generally regarded as ‘Hot’ by the entire realm so she IS allowed to think he’s attractive too. and she is Allowed to like his secret soft smile that he gives her time to time, and the fact that she always feel nervous after but in a good way does not mean anything either. by the way. she’s allowed to think he’s hot too…!

[mattatouile]

I wish you would write a fic where Modern Jaime and Brienne are road-tripping

Killing 2 birds with 1 stone as an anon asked for the Only One Bed trope as well. 

Disclaimer as always: Unbeta’d. Ignore any grammar issues, please. I’m just a hot dummy doing her best.

—–

One of these days, she’s going to stop listening to Jaime. That she has made this vow to herself no fewer than thirty times is beside the point. 

It’s Jaime’s idea that they take a pre-grad school road trip. It’s also his brilliant idea to drive from Riverrun University to Tarth, to drop Brienne at her dad’s for a summer break visit.

Brienne noting that Lannisport is much closer to Riverrun than Tarth, and therefore it makes absolutely no sense for Jaime to drive her to Tarth before going home is met with him grabbing her tightly by the shoulders, an almost manic grin on his face, as he says, “You have no sense of adventure, Brie.”

Brienne’s reminder that Tarth is an island, and therefore, driving to it directly would prove difficult even for the Jaime Lannister fell on deaf ears. 

(There is a ferry from Storm’s End, but she wouldn’t be Brienne and he wouldn’t be Jaime if she didn’t rib him about his handwaving of finer details in his grand schemes.)

In fact, Jaime’s complete inability to focus on the finer details is exactly why Brienne finds herself staring at a single bed in a musty motel room somewhere between Stoney Sept and Tumbleton. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Brienne stares at the bed, covered in a dusty looking coverlet that may have been red at some point in the distant, distant past.

She looks over at Jaime to find him staring at it, a weird look on his face. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“I’ll take the floor,” he says, without even looking at her. 

Oh, for the gods’ sakes.  

“Don’t pull that noble shit,” she grumbles at him. “I’m not getting back in a car with you if you’re coated in fleas, or gods’ know what else is on the floor.” Brienne swallows, looking at the bed that would be a tight squeeze for two average-sized people, much less her and Jaime. “We’ll share.”

His head snaps around, a startled look on his face. “We’ll share?”

Somehow, his reticence just aggravates her further. First, he drags her on a ridiculous road trip when they could both afford the plane tickets. Then, he decides to ‘take the scenic’ route instead of just taking the King’s Road Highway like every reasonable person would. Then, he manages to hit a massive pothole in the road, blow a tire to smithereens and then not have a spare. 

The fact that now he wants to act like a maiden from an old tale, getting verily faint at the idea of sharing a bed with someone of the opposite sex while unwed is infuriating. 

“If the idea is that upsetting to you, we’ll just stick a bag between us,” Brienne snaps at him. “I would hate to offend your virtuous sensibilities.” 

A laugh escapes Jaime like it’s been punched out of him. He shakes his head a bit, as if clearing the cobwebs out. “You hate when I try to sit next to you on the couch, excuse me for thinking you wouldn’t want to share a bed barely big enough for two kids.”

Brienne curses herself for blushing, but she can feel the heat in her cheeks. She doesn’t hate sitting next to Jaime. She hates that he has absolutely no awareness of what it does to her when he smiles at her, and tries to cuddle up to her like he’s a needy puppy. Jaime Lannister. Just. Doesn’t. Get. It. 

He never will. Jaime has never had to pine for anyone in his godsdamned life. He’s beautiful, rich, charming, athletic–he’s everything Brienne is not. Well, except for the athletic part. They’re fairly well matched in that respect, but where his broad shoulders and taut stomach cause a wave of swooning in his wake, Brienne’s same broad shoulders and taut stomach cause only stares or outright derision.

People aren’t soft with Brienne. They don’t treat Brienne like they treat Sansa, or Margaery, or even Daenerys (who may be the scariest human Brienne’s met other than Jaime’s sister). Everyone except for Jaime.

It’s all a game to him, and she knows that. He thinks it’s funny to treat Brienne like she’s as gentle and petite as Elia Martell. He thinks it’s funny to drop a flower on her desk as he takes the seat across from her. He thinks it’s amusing to present her with a perfect, shiny red apple when he sees her in the quad. He thinks it’s hilarious to sling an arm around her and press a kiss to her temple when he plops down next to her at home games for the Riverrun Trouts. 

She knows he thinks it is, because he laughs when he does it, and if he doesn’t laugh, he can’t stop smiling. Because when he does it, one of their other friends rolls their eyes at him and he winks at them. 

The shittiest part, though, is that Brienne soaks it all up like a sponge. She’s a desperate, sad woman who accepts those illusions of romance because Jaime is truly the best friend she’s ever had. He may be a ridiculous flirt and clown, but he’s also kind and helpful and he did break his hand defending her against a group of assholes one time, so, he’s worth it. 

“Brienne?”

She blinks at the sound of his voice, refocusing on the bed and then his face, now lined with worry. 

“I’m taking first shower,” she tells him.  

She leaves him standing there, and barely restrains herself from slamming the bathroom door shut. 

–

Jaime walks out of the bathroom, skin still damp enough that his t-shirt clings to him in spots. 

Brienne’s seen him in less a million times before, but knowing that he’s about to crawl into a too-small bed with her makes her pulse beat as frantically as a scared rabbit’s. She’s going to have to try and sleep with his shower-warmed skin against her, his scent–even beneath the cheap motel soaps–surrounding her. She suddenly realizes what a terrible idea this is, but she can’t back out now, or he might know.

He hesitates at the side of the bed, finally giving up on scrubbing the excess water out of his hair and dropping the towel onto the ratty chair in the corner. He should have the decency to look ridiculous with his shaggy hair sticking in a thousand different directions, but, of course, he doesn’t. He looks sinful. 

She doesn’t know if he sees something on her face, because his own falls a little, a line creasing between his eyebrows. “I really will take the floor,” he offers. 

Brienne scoffs. “Get in bed, Jaime,” she makes a show of trying to scoot over to give him more room. “You’re not some knight in shining armor. You don’t need to sacrifice your comfort to prove your worth.” 

He doesn’t grin or flop onto the bed like she expects. Instead, he crawls in carefully, keeping as far from her as possible. That stings, for some reason. Maybe he’s so disgusted by the idea of being in a bed with her, that he can’t even stand to touch her, lest his pathetic beast of a friend get the wrong idea. 

Brienne swallows thickly and turns away from him, curling her arms around the pancake thin bit of fabric masquerading as a pillow.  She can feel Jaime shifting around, trying to get as comfortable as possible. She tries not to flinch away every time he brushes against her. 

She breathes a sigh of relief when he finally settles and doesn’t move for a solid fifteen seconds.

But, of course, just as she’s on the precipice of actual relaxation, he asks, “Hey, Brienne?”

“Yes, Jaime?”

He hesitates long enough that she rolls until she can see his face. He’s looking at her with a strangely heavy expression.  She would swear his eyes drop to her lips as he drags his lower lip into his mouth, scraping it along his teeth, leaving it shiny and deep pink. Her breath grows more shallow the longer he looks at her. 

“What?” she asks him, heart lodged in her throat for some reason, her voice trembling.

That seems to snap him out of whatever reverie he’s in. His eyes dart back to meet hers. 

“Goodnight,” he says faintly and lies down.

She blinks at him, his face so close to hers now. He’s close enough she can smell the mint of his toothpaste, and hear the soft sigh of his breathing. 

For a hung moment, she thinks about just doing it. She thinks about kissing him. Saying fuck it all, and at least trying. The worst-case scenario–well, the worst-case scenario is why she never will. He’s Jaime. He’s her favorite person. The best person she knows, even if he’ll never let most people see it. 

So, instead, what she says is, “Goodnight,” and rolls over.

It’s a while before she falls asleep, but she’s pretty sure he’s still awake when she finally does.

[anniebibananie]

au where jaime is a photographer who wants brienne to model for him

tbh this got sort of wild. thank you for sending this in who KNEW this idea was sitting inside me. 

__

There are, frankly, quite a few things Brienne finds offensive about Jaime Lannister. The list has been forming the last three days as he stalls her construction site for a photo shoot she wasn’t given an ounce of say in. The list itself has grown long and comprehensive.

One of the first reasons seems to be that the photo shoot concept doesn’t even make sense as far as she’s concerned. They’re all dressed in practically Cinderella-esque ball gowns and regal suits as they… mess up her construction site. It’s truthfully infuriating.

She just wants to get the building built, as she always does, and move onto the next project. Jaime Lannister is making that difficult as his demands grow larger (No, I know the crane is for professional use only, but I only want to borrow it for a minute), his photo shoot length keeps expanding, and the final thing. The real kicker.

“Tarth!” he calls as she walks by, plans under her arm as she’s trying to tell Podrick how he’s meant to divvy up the foundation tasks for the day. “You have to let me photograph you.”

Brienne thinks maybe for someone else this whole thing would be flattering, but she knows who she is, okay? She’s good at her job, hell she’s great at her job. Pretty much she’s been on a construction site her entire life, and by the time she’d hit 13 her father figured if she was gonna be around she might as well help. She knows the ins and outs, and she takes pride in her work. 

She’s smart, funny if you appreciate a dry sort of candor that can be hard to understand, a good friend and loyal as all hell, but she isn’t pretty. She isn’t someone you ask to take a photo of for your weird, nonsensical photo shoot. 

All she wants to do is tell him to fuck off, please and move right on, but she thinks Catelyn might have a problem with that. Brienne loves the matriarch of Stark Construction, Inc. so she doesn’t exactly want to upset her. Even if it means dealing with this highly inconvenient situation. 

“No, thank you!” she calls back, a fake cheer evident in her voice. Another thing she’s not that good at? Covering up her feelings. She’s pretty much a completely open book, unfortunately. “Hurry up and get off my construction site.” 

So, maybe she hasn’t really mastered any sense of being nice in dealing with this ridiculous joke of an experiment. Brienne doesn’t care if having a famous photographer use their construction company as a backdrop will get them more press. She’s not entirely convinced it’s actually going to help them land more big name clients. 

“You will not elude me, Tarth.” He smiles at her in that wicked way that is definitely on her list of things she finds offensive about Jaime. It’s like he smiles as if he knows it wins people over, as if he thinks it’s some sort of magic spell to getting what he wants. 

Maybe it works on other people, she isn’t sure, but she knows it doesn’t work on her. 

__

When Brienne walks into her construction site the fourth day to see Jaime Lannister sitting in the chair behind her makeshift desk, she’s pretty sure she’s never been closer to murder than this moment. 

“You were supposed to be gone,” she says, dropping her bag on the desk anyways.

If his legs, which are up on her desk may she add, just so happen to get hit with her work boots than that’s not her fault.

“You were supposed to model for me,” he replies. His eyes take their time looking over her, which she doesn’t understand because she’s in muddied jeans and a flannel, hair still wet from her morning shower.

“I get the joke, Jaime, but it’s gone on a bit long, don’t you think?” she falls into the only open chair besides her own because it’s way too early in the morning to be dealing with this without a cup of coffee, and she’s tired. 

“You do know my first name.” He perks up at that, face looking genuinely happy in a way that isn’t manufactured. “I don’t get why you think there’s any joke about it. I’m a deadly serious man.”

“Yeah, I get that impression of you.” She rolls her eyes as her fingers twiddle in her lap. Really, she’s not sure why his presence is setting her on edge, but she can’t help but feel a little put off. “I’ve seen your models. I’m not a model.”

“Why?” he asks, and the only thing she finds tied to the word is curiosity.

“Lannister…” she trails over the word, elongating it so it’s apparent she switched back to his last name. Making clear she’s saying what’s to come next with complete factual honesty. “I’m not beautiful.”

He scoffs. “Since when has art had anything to do with being beautiful. Here’s the deal,” he says, leaning forward and capturing her eyes with his own.

Really, captured. She feels like she can’t look away. It’s intense and sort of terrifying. In this moment, she sort of does feel like art the way he’s looking at her. 

“You take a single photograph for me, and I’ll disappear off your construction site today.”

“Deal.” She reaches across, not caring that her hands are forever scattered with dirt underneath the fingernails or aren’t painted and pretty compared to his clearly manicured ones. “To get you out of my life, I’d do just about anything.”

“Oh.” He smirks. “Who said anything about out of your life, Tarth. I just said off the construction site. I never make promises I can’t keep.” 

She grits her teeth, hands clasped at her side, and keeps the frustration inside. She hates being teased, hates being treated like this by men like Jaime Lannister. He thinks he’s playing some new sort of joke she hasn’t heard before?

He’ll leave, she reminds herself. It calms her at least a little. “Let’s get this over with.”

__

He puts her in a ruffled skirt and a sleeveless flannel tucked into it, which seems not only ugly but also incredibly impractical. He allows her to stay in her work boots, which are worn and dirty and not at all classified as anything but practical.

Luckily, he agrees to let them do it somewhere her employees can’t see them (she’s pretty sure she’d never hear the end of it). Which leaves them in a back, unfinished room with minimal lighting. Jaime swears he can make it work (I can make anything work, darling). 

She feels big and awkward. Usually, on the site, she feels like she was made for it all. It’s sort of her comfortable place, really.

His eyes, even behind a camera lens, make her feel bare.

“Just… take the picture already, won’t you?” She knows she sounds sort of frantic, which isn’t exactly a look she’s comfortable with in front of him, but she hates this.

“I only get one. I’m not going to waste it,” he replies, not bothering to pull away from the camera. With a huff, he pulls it back and looks over her. “Here. Sit.”

He pulls a flipped over bin near her and taps it, watching her with a raised brow until she follows the instruction and finally sits. It’s smaller than a normal chair, and she feels as if her legs are too long for the whole space. They stretch forward, the pale skin of her calves peaking out below the skirt.

“Can I adjust you, just a little?” he asks.

She nods.

His hands are gentle as he moves her, completely in his element. He adjusts one leg to rest up on a pile of wood, a hand to hold onto the bin behind her. He’s stretching her out, in a way, giving her the space to exist in the way she’s meant to.

“How’d you end up here?” he asks as he adjusts something on the camera.

She shrugs. “My dad used to be the site manager, and with no one to look after me when he was here I was just… always here, too. Got used to it, sort of like my family.”

Living construction site to construction site had certainly never done anything good for her reputation, and maybe if she had sought out popularity she would have separated herself from it more. But on the flip side she had always had a place to go where she was known, where she was given permission to be herself.

How many people had that? A place they knew their body and personality and strengths could be accepted, and so in turn she had just been left feeling bad for everyone else. Popularity be damned.

It doesn’t mean, though, that she isn’t still susceptible to the cruelty of others. She’s known Jaime Lannisters her whole life

Click. 

She looks up, eyes wide and lips open in a small ‘o’. “You took it?”

He’s looking at the shot he captured, and his face is open and happy. There’s not a trace of humor there, and she stands up to go over and see.

There isn’t much light in the room, but the way Jaime had positioned her it seems almost as if it’s all on her. Her body is long and stretched, creating an arched line, and it’s like her body is somehow pulling the light in. Her face, caught in the moments after her admission, looks oddly peaceful.

“See,” he says, turning his stupid golden boy face toward her. “Art.”

She doesn’t know how to argue with that, so she doesn’t.

__

“Tarth!”

“I thought you were leaving,” she calls back. She’s three floors up, but there isn’t actually any wall up yet between the foundation beams so she can see him on the ground from here.

She moves toward the edge and stares him down.

“I am, see.” He points toward his car, which is shiny and new and somehow had managed to sit in this lot for three days without a single drop of dirt on it. “I want another shot.”

“I gave you one. One was the deal.”

He tilts his head to the side, and she can see his smirk form in its familiar place.

“Another shot with you. I’ve never had a muse before, it’s exhilarating.” He has a hand on his chest dramatically, somehow making his eyes sparkle, and Brienne hates him. She really truly, does. 

Except she sort of doesn’t.

“This is just embarrassing. Stop yelling across my construction site, Jaime.” She scratches at the side of her face, doing her best to ignore the fact that she can hear Podrick and Gendry gossiping behind her. “Come back tomorrow, at the end of the day, and we’ll see what happens.” 

“It’s a date,” he yells, already walking away as if he knows the chance might be fleeting.

“It is not a date!” 

“A date,” he cheers, blowing the whole site a dramatic kiss as a few of them catcall and yell in excitement.

Brienne can’t help laughing so she lets herself. Even if she knows later this is going to be hell, or Jaime Lannister really is one of the most infuriating people she’s ever met.

It just so also happens… she might sort of like him. Hopefully, the two can cancel out.

[apiratecalledav]

Okay, reluctantly leaving my happily ever after AU/denial land for a minute because it’s been like two months and I still see people say bullshit like, “If Jaime was going to go back to Cersei, then Brienne should have died” and urgh. No. Just... no.

I won’t even get into how awful it is to reduce Brienne to that as a character within her own right because trivializing and misinterpreting her relationship with Jaime is bad enough. The main reason being that it completely overlooks one of the most important and poignant parts of Jaime’s character:

That even though Cersei was “the end of” Jaime, Jaime was in a lot of ways “the beginning of” Brienne.

While Cersei and Jaime were like kindling and oxygen getting devoured by fire and were destructive and toxic, Jaime and Brienne were like music and lyrics; complete individuals in their own right, but when they’re combined they created something new and amazing. Like two Valyrian steel swords reforged from one greatsword. If fate had been kinder, they would have been very happy together.

Unfortunately, growing up with Tywin (and Cersei), serving Aerys, and spending half his life being unjustly reviled, Jaime had a lot of issues with guilt and self-loathing that no one who didn’t take several advanced psychology classes would have been able to help with.

But despite Jaime’s personal demons, he tried as hard as he could to build up Brienne, not drag her down the way that Cersei did to him. Instead of using his relationship with Brienne for his benefit, he used it to benefit her: He helped Brienne to fulfill her oath to Cat and indirectly led to her being able to avenge Renly. He made it possible for her to go from being regarded as a failure and an oddity to being successful and respected. He knighted her. She fell in love with him and he loved her, too. No, it wasn’t enough to “fix” him (news flash: love isn’t a cure), but it was way, way more than what everyone around her ever expected. He loved her, not her father’s title or lands. And he loved her not in spite of her unusual, knightly demeanor but because of it.  And it wasn’t wishful thinking or all in her head or “but only as a friend.” Jaime Lannister, who was like, a five time winner of Westerosi Weekly’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” looked at Brienne of Tarth like this (so fuck you, Ronnet): 

Cersei saw Jaime as an extension of herself— her “other half” who got to have the kind of power and autonomy in society she desperately wished for herself because he was a man. Her feelings for him stemmed from narcissism and selfishness, dooming Jaime to virtually never being “good enough.”

Jaime also saw Brienne as everything he wished he could be— a true knight who was valiant and honorable, not because she was sworn to do so, but because she wanted to be. The difference here is that Jaime’s feelings for Brienne developed from admiration and respect and he is the one who didn’t feel worthy of her.

Because while Tyrion saw Jaime being with Brienne as Jaime finally allowing himself to be happy, I felt like Jaime saw it as being selfish. Telling Tyrion to “say something snide” made me think he was looking to be chastised. When Brienne tries to talk him out of dying with Cersei and tells him that he’s a good man, he nearly bursts into tears and reveals all of the worst things about himself. The most genuine and heartbreaking “it’s not you; it’s me” speech, like... ever.

If he truly believed that Brienne needed him, he would have stayed with her. We saw a long time ago that he was willing to leave the road that led back to Cersei to save Brienne from the bear pit, and risk his own life in the process. Just as he lost his right hand, his sword hand— when he believed that he “was that hand” and once said he’d rather die than be “grotesque”— to protect Brienne and keep her “whole.”

Even if it was only on a subconscious level, he obviously believed Brienne deserved to live more than he or Cersei did. But Brienne is safe after 8x03; the dead are defeated and she’s not only on the side with a damn dragon, she won’t even be expected to leave Sansa and Arya to fight. The only thing Jaime believes he’s doing for her is clouding her judgment, i.e. “tricking” her into thinking that he’s good and that he deserves her. In his mind, he did the same thing to Brienne that Cersei did to him. He thought Brienne would start making excuses for him, just as he had done so many times for Cersei. Look at his face and eyes when she says “You’re a good man.”

When Jaime told Tyrion that he “never cared” for innocents, I don’t believe he’s a Scooby-Doo villain removing his mask and saying, “Surprise! I’ve been an asshole all along.” It’s just the way he saw himself because he didn’t know how else to explain his mistakes, the (innocent) people he had hurt, or his inability to stop caring about Cersei even though she was horrible. We know that Jaime’s attachment to Cersei is unhealthy and the result of emotional abuse and other factors resulting from trauma. But Jaime saw it as proof he was a bad person.

He did for Brienne what (I can easily imagine) he wished Cersei had done for him— He tells Brienne that he’s hateful and effectively sets her “free” of him. When he perceived himself to be perpetuating the cycle of abuse, he stopped it (more “break the wheel” imagery?). Yeah, he did it in an awful, hurtful way but we have to remember that Jaime had no access to therapy, self-help books, advice columns, google, etc. He hadn’t had or even really seen a healthy relationship since his mother died when he was like seven. On top of that, his last real moment of pure love and acceptance was with Myrcella... about thirty seconds before she died in his embrace. That alone would screw up anyone. It’s tragic and devastating, but Jaime wasn’t in a place to make Brienne happy long term and he had absolutely no idea how to change that. It was easier to shut down those negative feelings when he could say, “I have a noble purpose: help stop ice demons and zombies from destroying the world.” When he couldn’t say that anymore, it got to be too much for him.

I’ve long thought that applying the “redemption arc” label to Jaime (or any asoif/got character, really) was a little too... simplistic. Like most major characters, Jaime has undoubtedly done some reprehensible things, the worst being his attempt to kill Bran. But unlike say Joffrey or Ramsay, Jaime’s thought process wasn’t, “Hey, let’s push this kid out of a window and see if his bones make a sweet crunching noise when he lands!”

He was thinking, “Oh, shit. This kid is probably too young to ‘play it cool’ for long around his parents after being threatened or bribed... And if he blabs, that’s my head cut off, Cersei’s head cut off, and if Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella aren’t immediately executed right behind us, they’ll be locked up until they’re old enough that people are less squeamish about chopping off their heads, too. And gee, I bet dear old Dad isn’t going to take that lying down...”

In a world as brutal as theirs, it’s difficult for me to condemn anyone too harshly for trying to protect themselves or their loved ones, provided they aren’t cavalier about collateral damage (for example, Cersei blowing up the sept with more than just her enemies inside and people in the surrounding area ending up getting crushed by the debris).

Early on, Jaime appeared to be arrogant, callous, and convinced that violence was an “easy solution.” As the series progressed, mostly through his growing friendship with Brienne, we discovered that a great deal of Jaime’s behavior was a defense mechanism.

After his “Kingslayer” persona slowly falls away, we eventually see “Jaime” (re)born in Brienne’s arms.

Soon, we even saw him gain a shiny, newly reforged Valyrian steel sword to go along with his new beginning . But he didn’t even have the sword very long before he turned around and gave it to Brienne— and kept the “tainted” Widow’s Wail for himself.

And when Brienne tried to return Oathkeeper,  that precious symbol of hope and honor and second chances, Jaime refused it and told her, “It’s yours. It will always be yours.” (Emphasis mine)

I know we were hoping that Brienne would “save” Jaime— and I firmly believe she was instrumental in saving his soul— but Jaime ended up ultimately saving Brienne. He saved her life, but he also saved her from an existence of loneliness and ridicule. In 4x02 (written by GRRM btw), Brienne tells Cersei, “In truth, he rescued me, Your Grace. More than once.”

Jaime was a flawed and deeply troubled person, but he tried his damnedest to give Brienne everything. No, he couldn’t literally do so— he couldn’t give her his whole, undamaged heart— but he still gave her so much: His admiration; his faith; his trust; his sword; his right hand; her protégé Podrick; helped her fulfill her vows and find good friends like Sansa, Tyrion, and Davos, and a kindred spirit in Arya; and made her dearest wish come true. What is that, if not love, of the truest and deepest kind?

Though Jaime likely thought his knighting of Brienne was merely a nice thing to do for her on their supposed last night on earth, it ended up having an unexpected and incredible impact once the North gained independence: Knights were already mainly a Southern thing and Brienne’s knighthood would have been absolutely worthless in an independent North. Sansa, being completely safe and secure and obviously knowing how much being knighted meant to Brienne, would assure her that she was released from her vow to Catelyn’s daughters. And so Ser Brienne is free to return to the Six Kingdoms, and offer her services to the new King, Cat Stark’s last surviving son. To Bran.

While Jaime once hurt Bran for Cersei’s sake and accidentally paved the way for years of war and destruction, Brienne, thanks to Jaime knighting her, will be able to dedicate herself to protecting Bran, insuring peace, and helping to rebuild.

All of the best parts of Jaime live on in Brienne and not just because she finished his entry in the Book of Brothers. She, and the doors that Jaime opened for her, are his legacy.

Brienne will be able to do the kinds of things Jaime wanted to do but couldn’t. She’ll help restore honor to the knighthood. There will be more Ser Briennes and Ser Davoses and Ser Podricks and fewer Ser Gregors, Ser Armorys, and Ser Meryns.

It truly baffles me to see people bitching about “wasted character arcs” and yet in the same breath are ready to throw Brienne and everything Jaime did for her away. Jaime’s character was frustrating and heartbreaking and maddening but it wasn’t a waste precisely because he made it possible for Brienne to have a bright future and a good life and it’s the proof that he truly was ultimately a much better person than his sister.

TL;DR:  If we must pigeonhole Jaime into the whole “redemption” thing, can’t we see that he did redeem himself through Brienne— by supporting her and validating her and making it possible for her to do the kind of great things he wished he could do himself?

PS: I’m fairly certain Jaime and Cersei’s ending was “softened” for the show, the way so many other characters and events have been. I highly doubt she’ll be pregnant and the idea that he was largely motivated to save their child certainly helped make the whole thing easier for me to swallow. As  Tyland Lannister, hand to the “broken King” Aegon III,  screams “Tyrion and Bran,” and Elissa Farman appears to be foreshadowing Arya’s similar journey/let’s us know it’s very possible she’ll survive... Aelora and Aelor Targaryen make me wonder if book Jaime will accidentally kill Cersei and then freak out and commit suicide. And if that’s the case, I’m glad the show went with something different, as rushed and clumsy as it was. I am glad that Jaime’s last moments weren’t violent or angry or otherwise cruel and didn’t have to add more to his overwhelming guilt and despair.

If he had to die, and especially if he had to die with Cersei, then it’s a good thing that he got to die as Joanna’s son— not Tywin’s— and as Tyrion’s brother— not Cersei’s. He got to die as the man who Brienne fell in love with: Someone who was brave and compassionate, fulfilling his oath, and being honorable in his way, even if it’s not in the way society (or the audience) understands or likes. Even though he was with Cersei, he remained as the man who could see— and love— the vulnerable human being beneath their “monstrous” exterior, just as he did for Brienne and Tyrion. Maybe Cersei didn’t “deserve” that, but Jaime certainly did. And in the White Book, when it’s said that Jaime died protecting his Queen, it’s not a lie. Which is the last thing Jaime would have wanted: “I'll hack the bloody book to pieces before I'll fill it with lies.”

I don’t know if Old Jaime would have intentionally hurt or murdered Cersei, but I definitely think he would have at least hurled out one last massive fuck you in a similar “why have the gods made me love a hateful woman?” way. He’d have reminded her that none of this would have happened if she wasn’t such a stubborn, vindictive wretch: If she hadn’t pushed Joffrey to ditch Sansa for Margaery, whose grandma ended up killing him; if she hadn’t tried to get Tyrion falsely executed, she wouldn’t have set off a chain of events that led to Tywin and Myrcella dying; if she hadn’t tried to screw over Margaery by giving the High Sparrow power; if she hadn’t blown up the Sept, Tommen wouldn’t have killed himself; if she had kept her promise to fight in the North; if she had just stepped down when Dany arrived, etc then maybe they wouldn’t about to damn near literally get crushed to death by all of Cersei’s bad decisions.

Old Jaime talked a lot of shit to people, presumably trying to make himself feel better. But he realized at some point, all it did was make them as miserable as he was. So in the end, when Cersei is so pitifully scared and sad, instead of getting pissed off or bitter, Jaime comforts her the best he can; an ability I don’t think he would have developed if it hadn’t been for his relationship with Brienne. We even see some rare moments of genuine selflessness from Cersei (“You’re bleeding” and “I don’t want our baby to die”). In Jaime and Cersei’s final moments, they act as close to normal siblings as they are capable, seeing as they don’t even try to kiss (thank goodness). This leaves Brienne as the last person Jaime kissed. And to me, that says it all.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled “Grey Worm and Missandei said ‘fuck you, Westeros’ after The Long Night and dropped Jaime and Brienne off at Tarth on their way to Naath” way of life.