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“I do not believe it!”
Brienne Tarth did a double take as she drove down the Kingsroad as fast as she dare in the half light of a grim Westoros winter’s evening.
No! No no no no!
She had to be mistaken, but she thought she had just seen Lannister’s car broken down at the side of the road, hazards on, going nowhere.
No. I am not stopping. Absolutely, positively, unequivocally NOT stopping!
The memory of Ser Jaime Lannister’s smug face as she had been shown the door of the exclusive Kings Landing Gentleman’s club still would not be banished from her head. It had been so mortifying.
Brienne had gone there to confront him over Lannister involvement in a highly suspect building project. The rather questionable development of part of the Kings Landing docklands area. Not everyone necessarily wanted to live in down town Fleabottom, but if that was where your home was, no one else had the seven given right to bulldoze it into the ground to make way for a luxury development.
Fleabottom Piazza - honestly?
Brienne had not even had five minutes to present her arguments to the head of House Lannister before she had been hustled out of the door by four no nonsense security men.
Now she was on her way home to Tarth for the weekend, having had an absolute peach of a week. Not.
She had just been served notice on her tatty (if temporary) flat and at least one of her best friends was refusing to talk to her.
It was all the driver of that stranded cars' fault.
Brienne looked in the rear view mirror, looked at the hazards blinking through the distorting effect of a downpour of rain on the rear window, the wiper smearing the amber light into splodges of gold.
And it was rapidly getting dark.
You can’t just leave him there.
It was as if her father had just spoken in her ear, she heard the words so clearly in her mind.
Oh, can’t I?
“Okay! Okay!” With a snarl of frustration, she braked and did a U turn, returning to the broken down car at the side of the road.
She parked behind the sleek black luxury car, and pulled her anorak out of the boot of her battered old estate along with a hazard triangle. It took a few moments to get her anorak over her arms given the blustery wind and driving rain, the triangle being successfully deployed a little further down the hard shoulder of the Kingsroad to give other drivers a fair warning. One of them showed his appreciation by driving through a particularly deep puddle and drenching her from head to toe.
Ye gods, why me?
Brienne took a deep breath, turned and marched up to the window of the black car and banged on it with a wet fist.
The electric window descended with an expensive whine.
Well that seems to be working fine, Brienne thought crossly.
“Are you okay?” she shouted at the open window, the wind snatching her words from her lips as soon as she said them. The atmosphere from inside the car wafted out to surround her before the next gust of air swept it away. It smelt of cigars and expensive after shave and sounded like soft jazz music. “Do you need some help?”
The breathtakingly handsome Jaime Lannister stared at her from the driver’s seat, green eyes looking her up and down as she stared back, the gusting wind enthusiastically trying to push her off of her large feet merely ruffled Lannister’s fair hair with a modest breeze.
“Good gracious,” was all he said, “its big bird.”
Brienne’s initial reaction to his greeting was to want to turn on the heel of her sensible flats and march back to her own, working, car and leave the miserable wretch to it. But then she looked at the passenger’s seat and caught sight of the wreckage that was his attempt to open a pre-packed sandwich with one hand.
By the seven, why does it always have to be me?!
“Do you need help with that?” she asked him, flicking her head in the direction of the Jaime Lannister proof pre packed meal. He stared straight ahead; Brienne was ready for him to say no, or worse for the window to slide shut and for her to have to undergo the long walk of shame back to her car, no doubt being watched in the rear view mirror by Lannister. She’d already decided to leave him the warning triangle to maybe save his sorry life.
But in the end, “Get in,” was all he said to her.
Brienne rolled her eyes and stomped round to the other side of the car, threw the passenger door open and scooped the packets of sandwiches up from the seat before she sat down,
“You’re soaked,” was all Jaime Lannister said.
“You’re welcome,” she answered, her eyes flicked over to the steering wheel were it had been adapted for a one handed driver. He had lost his right hand in the motor accident that had killed his business partner Aerys Targaryen, crushed beyond repair in the smash.
The changes made for the loss of his right hand were really clever, she thought, from the adapted steering wheel right the way through to a whole bevy of gadgets within reach of his left.
“It must be great being able to drive again,” she said to him nodding at the controls.
“I didn’t have much choice,” he replied, “the person who drove me about after the accident left.”
“Poor you,” Brienne replied.
“Yes indeed, poor me,” he replied sarcastically, “would you like me to get out so you can have a better look at my equipment?” Jaime Lannister raised his arms away from the controls and the steering wheel, but Brienne’s attention had now been claimed by the way his bespoke suit rode his thighs and arms as he moved, the fabric clinging to him like a well-fitting second skin.
You look like a god in pinstripe, she thought wistfully, and your equipment's not too bad either, Lannister.
Brienne ran her tongue round her lips, suddenly aware of a real lack of moisture in her mouth. “Don’t be stupid you’ll get wet.” She told him, turning her attention to the sealed sandwich containers, picking at them with her badly bitten nails in an effort to rip back the plastic seal. At least she didn’t have to look at him if she was busy with the food packaging.
“You are looking well,” he told her.
“I wish I could say the same about you,” she told him brutally, pausing in her task and looking up at his drawn features and the dark smudged shadows under his eyes.
“Well, obviously I was being polite about the hole in your face,” he bit back.
“I was mugged,” Brienne sighed and ran her hand gingerly over the newly formed scar on her cheek. The stitches not long removed, had left a row of pink marks, “It wasn’t pretty, but it happened.” She shrugged with rather more nonchalance than she felt.
“I heard,” he was staring out of the front windscreen again, his jaw clenched. “What the hell made you fight them Brienne? Why didn’t you just let them have what they wanted? They could have smashed your teeth in.”
“You think I care about my teeth?”
“No, I don’t think you care about your teeth – that’s what scares the bloody life out of me!” Jaime turned a furious green gaze towards her, “What in the seven hells were you doing in Fleabottom at that time of night? Have you genuinely got some kind of death wish woman?”
“I was organizing my campaign,” she told him calmly, “against your redevelopment of the area.” Brienne offered him a sandwich from the plastic pack, having meticulously picked away at the plastic seal.
Jaime took the sandwich and sank his teeth into it as if it had been some time since he had eaten anything at all.
He looks wretched, she thought.
“Have you been eating properly?” she asked him.
Jaime looked at her briefly before continuing to chew his sandwich, the muscles in his lean cheeks bunching and flexing as he ate. He shook his head.
“Oh Jaime,” Brienne chided him, offering him another sandwich from a newly opened packet, “You’ve got to eat you idiot!”
It was Jaime Lannister’s turn to shrug.
He chewed for a few moments, swallowed what remained of his sandwich, and then turned to face her fully, “Have you got a silver stag on you?”
Brienne looked at him, puzzled, and then went through the pockets of her anorak in an effort to oblige him.
What on earth does he want a stupid silver stag for? She thought to herself grumpily, secretly despairing at how the heavy rain had managed to soak her ancient anorak right the way through to its lining. Then, right at the bottom of the last but one pocket, wet from the rain, she found a single silver stag.
“Here,” she said, thrusting the coin at his good hand, “don’t spend it all at once.”
“I don’t intend to,” he replied, catching her hand in his and shaking it. “I’ll get the lawyers onto the paperwork in the morning.”
What lawyers and what paperwork?
“I’m sorry but I don’t understand,” Brienne told him, confused.
“It’s yours. You can have it all, the land, the options; the lot… take the whole bloody mess and do what you like with it. The Fleabottom development is now yours. You have just bought it for the princely sum of one silver stag, congratulations. What a bargain. You can turn it into a theme park for all I care. Just come back home to me Brienne,” Ser Jaime Lannister rubbed his face with his good hand a few times, “since you left, it’s all gone from bad to meaningless. When I heard about how close you’d come to… gods, I need you, you stupid, brave idiotic woman.”
Oh, Jaime...
“You told me my principles were getting in the way of our relationship,” she told him softly.
“No, it was my principles that were getting in the way of our relationship,” Jaime told her, “now cut me some slack and tell me that you love me and that you’ll come home with me right now because I suddenly find I have a need to show you just how much I’ve missed you.”
“Jaime,” Brienne suddenly found she had an odd lump in her throat as she stared at him, terrified it might just be another stupid day dream and she would wake up at any moment “I can’t just abandon my car at the side of the road and I thought this one had something wrong with it.”
“Don't be ridiculous woman, there is nothing wrong with my car, I've been sitting here for hours waiting for you to drive past,” Jaime told her, sensing victory as he leaned over to gently capture her unresisting lips in the gentlest kiss, “And don't worry about your car, I'll send Peck back for it. It’ll be as well to get him out of the house. We've got an awful lot of catching up to do.”