Slowly stars go out each night

Dark meets light, kiss the sun goodnight

New day comes as our life's just begun

You're now mine

"Meant to Be", Melissa Polinar

"…and then a friend told us about the most amazing marriage counselor, and we figured, what have we got to lose?" Walda Bolton was an effervescent person, every sentence more like a burbling brook than human speech.

Jaime had been charmed by it. At first. Now, as a headache burgeoned behind his eyes, he found he hated it. Hated her. Hated everything. He set the phone on his desk to rub his temple and slung his feet up on the squat filing cabinet, trying to get comfortable. Mrs. Bolton kept talking, clearly audible even with the phone face-down.

"And it worked! Not only have we gotten past the little… hiccup… that almost broke us up, but we're more in love than ever!"

Roose Bolton was the exact opposite of a burbling brook— more of a frozen pond, really— and the 'hiccup' had been the malevolent existence of Roose's son from an 'indiscretion' he'd had long before meeting Walda. Ramsay Bolton was, to put it lightly, barking mad and treated Walda and her baby like dogshit. Roose had not lifted a finger to control him until Walda began divorce proceedings.

Jaime had worked particularly hard on the case in the months since he'd acquired it; he hated seeing women mistreated, even if they were over-fond of bubblegum-pink and giggled despite being over the age of fourteen, which in his opinion should not be allowed.

"…so you see, Jaime, we won't be needing your services anymore," Walda concluded. "I'm so sorry that everything you've done is for nothing—"

"It's fine," he said wearily. "Was it Brienne Tarth?"

"…excuse me?"

"The marriage counselor. It was Brienne Tarth, wasn't it?"

"Yes!" Walda said excitedly. "Do you know her? She's wonderful. Such a way with people! I'm trying to convince her to be Ramsay's therapist—"

Ramsay's court-ordered therapist, Jaime mentally filled in as he pulled open a desk drawer and began rummaging for his emergency supplies. Crazy bastard had only missed out on a prison term due to his father's influence and the condition that he seek treatment for anger management and various of the more ominous personality disorders.

Ah, there it was. He grasped the bottle and the none-too-clean lowball glass and slumped back in his chair.

"—but she insists she only does couples counseling." She heaved a sigh into the phone. "She did recommend another counselor who might do, though. Samwell Tarly. Have you heard of him?"

"No, Walda, I haven't," he replied while pouring himself some scotch.

Jaime wondered if Samwell Tarly might consider taking him on as a patient, since Brienne Tarth was not only sucking away half of his clientele but, apparently, would not even be decent enough to provide him the therapy he needed to cope with his floundering practice and dwindling finances.

He let Walda prattle on another few minutes before extracting himself from the torment and ending the one-sided conversation. He tossed his phone onto the desk and tilted the chair back, sipping his scotch and staring up at the ceiling, deciding that something had to be done.

In the year since this Brienne Tarth had set herself up as a marriage counselor in King's Landing, his formerly-thriving divorce law practice had ebbed to a mere shadow of its former self. She was a one-woman marriage-salvation crew, single-handedly rescuing even the most tattered remains of the most desperate unions. If Jaime had made a national name for himself that saw people coming from all over Westeros for his counsel, Brienne Tarth had done the same with her own practice, drawing clients from hither and yon.

Hells, he'd recently heard that a couple from Essos had come to her to repair their marriage after the male half of the union had suffered a debilitating injury rendering him unable to perform his husbandly duties. Either the wife was a very understanding sort or Brienne Tarth was a miracle-worker, because there was nothing in the heavens nor on Westeros that would have kept Jaime with someone who he couldn't fuck. He could put up with a lot, but sex was a non-negotiable deal-breaker.

He'd done the chastity thing, though very involuntarily, when Robert's political career brought him— and his wife, Jaime's sister— under intense scrutiny. Cersei had forbidden Jaime so much as a buss on the cheek once she'd become a fixture in the gossip rags, but she still expected him to keep himself for her and her alone indefinitely, until the paparazzi no longer cared about the rising Baratheon star.

Since Robert intended to make his way up the ladder all the way to its highest rung of prime minister, Jaime had known he faced a cold and lonely few decades. The best years of his life, pissed away on a woman he could never marry, only occasionally saw, and hardly ever fucked?

I don't think so.

Oh, Cersei had raged when he'd informed her he was moving on, but the truth was that since her marriage, things had been bad between them. His innate possessiveness and need for human contact meshed poorly with her imperious, calculating self-involvement. It had become clear that she viewed him as existing for her convenience, and that she had no problem turning the razor edge of her ire on him when he no longer capitulated to her whims.

Jaime realized, after a while, how lucky he was, not to be able to marry her. If they'd had to divorce, it would have been the battle of the century. There would have been blood in the streets, and nothing but scraps of meat and shards of bone left in the end. No wonder Robert put up with her; the alternative was horrifying to contemplate. Jaime had put her out of his mind— mostly— in the intervening years since the break-up, and every time his thoughts turned to her, he was reminded of how closely he had dodged that bullet.

When his glass was empty, he contemplated having more scotch— even draining the bottle— but decided against it. His brother's fondness for drink had not been to his benefit over the years, and though he was high-functioning, Tyrion was still an alcoholic. Jaime was far too fond of his own liver to do such a nasty thing to it.

He'd get some Pentoshi takeaway, he resolved, and go home to eat and ponder his finances. See where he could cut back until the practice rebounded against the predations of this Tarth woman.

Jaime glanced at his watch. It was three-fifteen, late enough in the day to leave without his conscience being too feisty about it. He tilted the glass up to catch the last few amber drops, then departed while contemplating his options. He didn't need both cars, certainly, nor did he need to buy all his meals out. He knew how to cook; liked it, even. It was just depressing to do it for only one person.

He was so preoccupied in the elevator that when the doors slid open he automatically got out before realizing it was the wrong floor, sidling past the large person standing there waiting for its arrival. But instead of the spacious glass atrium he expected, he was faced with a long, door-lined hallway identical to his own a few floors up.

"Oh," he said stupidly, and turned around to get back in the elevator, and promptly had the unsettling sensation of seeing someone for the first time while also being irritated that they'd taken so long to get there.

The big guy he'd slunk past was, in fact, a woman. Jaime had trouble keeping himself from staring. She looked at him with curiosity and put her hand out to halt the doors when they started to close. He slipped back in, they jerked shut once more, and they began their descent again.

She was… gigantic, really, at least for a woman. She was as tall— or taller— than he, and had the build of an Olympic shotput champion and a face only a mother could love. He chanced another glimpse in the mirror-polished surface of the elevator wall and revised that opinion; with that oft-broken nose, square jaw, over-full lips, and simian-like brow, it was a face only the most devoted of mothers could love.

Cersei would have left her in the woods for the bears to eat, he thought uncharitably. His sister was not precisely known for her devotion to anything but her own interests. Damned fortunate that their children were as beautiful as they were, or the woods would have been well-trafficked during his sister's reproductive years.

It seemed everyone in their building had chosen to skip out early that afternoon; the elevator stopped at every damned floor for more people to jam themselves in. It made Jaime a bit cranky, but it also gave him time to ruminate. Something was nagging at him, tugging at the very edges of his awareness and splitting his attention from the covert surveillance he was attempting on the giant female beside him.

When he'd stepped out onto the wrong floor… the doors all had brass nameplates affixed at eye-level. There had been one directly opposite the elevator, and he had stared blindly at it as he'd realized his mistake. What was the name etched into the brass? Slowly, a mental image formed, pieced together from a split-second's memory.

Brienne Tarth.

"She has an office in this building," he muttered, incredulous. But, strangely, not all that surprised. What were the fucking odds? He felt strangely betrayed, as if the block of offices should have been loyal to him and not dared to house the dastardly wench who seemed hell-bent on eradicating his livelihood.

A few people standing around him glanced his way and shuffled back as far as they could. The huge, ugly woman looked at him, too, but didn't retreat. Instead, she offered him a little close-lipped smile that was surprisingly warm for being so small.

"Rough day?" she asked.

It was trite as hell, but somehow he could tell she meant it with genuine sympathy, wasn't just spouting a platitude or being cynical as he would have been.

So instead of ignoring her or sneering as he might otherwise have done, Jaime replied, "Yes."

"Well, now it's over," was her optimistic reply. "You can go home and relax."

"And then have to come back and do it all again tomorrow," he said gloomily. Which client would fire him next time? The damned wench had managed to save Renly and Margaery's marriage, for fuck's sake, and if that weren't the wonder of the century, nothing was.

"But then it'll all be over again tomorrow night," the ugly woman replied promptly, radiating a calm that seemed to penetrate Jaime right to his bones. "Even awful things have to come to an end eventually."

She fell silent, studying him carefully, and Jaime realized that while the rest of her was the cruelest joke the gods ever played on a person, her eyes were the most extraordinary he'd ever seen. And he'd seen his share of beautiful eyes: his own and Cersei's, of course, being a piercing emerald green, and quite pretty, if he said so himself.

Various of the Tyrells had lovely eyes, too, and he recalled Oberyn Martell as the proud owner of a fine pair of sloe-eyes that, when used to gaze slumbrously at a person, were damned near guaranteed to have said person wriggling free of their smallclothes in short order. Jaime was not too proud to admit that his own hands had wandered near his waistband when he'd been the target of those eyes on a particular, not-very-sober occasion. And he was one of the straightest men he knew; such was the power of Martell's sex wizardry.

And yet, every one of them— every one— paled in comparison, faded into obscurity, next to the pair of eyeballs trained upon him at that moment. She blinked them at him, and he noted her lashes were long and blonde, an incongruous frame to those entrancing little circles. What the hell color were they, anyway? Regular old 'blue' was far too mundane. 'Cerulean' was too light, 'indigo' too purple, 'azure' too greenish. No, they were a pure blue, deep but not dark.

He kept trying. 'Cobalt'?

No.

"Sapphire," he said at last. Aloud, to his chagrin.

She blinked at him again, her brow creasing in confusion, then clearing as she seemed to hit on some explanation for his weird non-sequitur.

"Yes, it's called the Sapphire Isle," she said slowly, "and no, there are no actual sapphires there. Trust me, I searched my whole childhood. Nothing. Not a single one."

It was his turn to blink in confusion. "What?" he said at last.

"The Sapphire Isle," she replied; then, when he failed to respond, continued with "...Tarth." He just stared blankly. "…where I'm from? Where my family is named after?"

Huh? She… what? He was feeling a little dazed after looking at her for so long. There was strength in those eyes, and goodness, and a capacity for love that damn near took his breath away. This was a woman as solid and unwavering as a mountain, who he could strive to deserve for the rest of his life and still not manage it. This was a woman who would never disappoint him, and never ask him to disappoint himself. He'd long since given up hoping he'd ever find one, and there she was.

His lungs labored to draw breath, his heart to start beating again. And there was a worrying amount of solidity occurring in his trousers, the spontaneity of which hadn't happened since his teens and was impressing the hell out of him, twenty years later.

Then her words coalesced into some manner of sense in his poor wrung-out brain. He felt like his thoughts were one of those sets of magnetized words, where you stuck them to your fridge and rearranged them at whim to make dirty limericks. He shifted her words around until something logical emerged.

She was from Tarth. Her name was Tarth. She was… she was that marriage counselor. She was Brienne, Destroyer of Law Practices, and somehow she was both the ugliest and the sexiest woman he'd ever seen.

"You look familiar. I feel like I'm recognizing you, somehow… have we met before?" she asked, and then turned a blotchy-yet-charming pink as she continued, softly, more to herself, "I'm pretty sure I'd have remembered you…"

"It's you," he said through numb lips. "You're her."

"I'm… who?"

"You're Brienne Tarth."

By this point, they'd finally reached the lobby. Their elevator companions had not delayed in escaping its confines, no doubt eager to shed themselves of the strange people staring at each other and talking at cross-purposes. Jaime envied them; he wished he could just pelt out of the building and pretend he'd never met the wench. Then he wished he could back her up against the wall and kiss her senseless. Or that she'd do the same to him. Either one.

"Yes, you are," he continued before she could say a word. "Of course you are."

Of course she'd have an office in his building. And they'd bump into each other in the elevator. And she'd have a sweet smile and beautiful eyes that could turn him on like a stark-naked Cersei hadn't in over a decade. He began to laugh, so hard he couldn't see through the tears in his eyes. He felt a warm hand grasp his wrist, guide him out of the elevator, and then his laughter was echoing off the atrium's steep glass enclosure.

When he finally calmed enough to just be grinning stupidly, he realized she was still there, instead of having fled with the rest of them, and was watching him with deep concern.

"Why is it funny that I'm Brienne Tarth?" she asked cautiously, trying to guide him toward one of the ass-killing marble benches lining the walls.

He locked his knees and stood firm. "Because I'm Jaime Lannister. You know, the divorce attorney whose practice you're killing?" He put out a hand to shake. "The thrill of a lifetime to meet you at last."

Her gaze fixed unwaveringly on him, Brienne Tarth took his hand and gave it a distracted shake that was no less pulverizing for the lack of attention she was giving it. Jaime felt as if his hand had been through a laundry mangle. Then she seemed to realize what he had said, and snatched her hand back, to his relief.

"I am not killing your practice!" she protested. "I'm helping people save the most important relationship of their lives!"

"And killing my practice in the process." He brought his hands up to wipe the tears of laughter away, but ended up grinding the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. "Well, shit."

Jaime took a deep, cleansing breath. Straightened his shoulders. Evaluated the state of his trousers. Decided his confused-but-persistent half-erection wasn't too obvious behind the fall of his suit jacket. Turned and, without another word, left her there. He knew she'd follow.

It took her no time at all to catch up with him.

"Are you serious?" she demanded, her long legs effortlessly matching his strides. "Am I really affecting your practice that much?"

"I stood to make tens of thousands from Walda Bolton," Jaime replied as they left the office building. "Now, thanks to you, I'll be lucky to make even one thousand, and that's for a whole month's work."

He squinted across the street at a restaurant he frequented sometimes; perhaps instead of Pentoshi he'd have Lysene. Handmade noodles tossed in a savory sauce with duck and mushrooms, and then a cherry tart afterwards for dessert, with fresh cream… his stomach growled at the thought. And he had a feeling she liked Lysene food.

"You hungry? Let's get dinner."

"I… no. That's not… no." But she was right behind him as he blithely jaywalked across Muddy Way to the restaurant.

"I barely even know you," she protested as they entered.

It was fragrant within, lit by pierced-tin lanterns hanging at seemingly random intervals from the ceiling and draped with lavish printed silks in every possible color. The lanterns sparked gold and silver filaments in her eyes, lighting them up like constellations, dazzling Jaime in a way that had a clutch of longing in his chest. He wanted to whisk her from the restaurant to somewhere private, strip her naked and go down on her until she agreed to marry him.

"I don't want dinner," she stated after they ensconced themselves upon plush velvet cushions at a low table and gave their order to the waiter.

"I'm not going to share a meal with you," she informed him when their drinks arrived.

"I have far better things I should be doing right now," she said as the waiter placed their steaming dishes on the table.

"I don't even like Lysene food," she complained, then spooned more risotto into her mouth.

But she expertly maneuvered a tiny two-pronged fork between the edges of a scallop shell, extracting its bounty and placing it courteously on his plate before starting on one for herself. He'd have wondered how she knew he'd want it, but he'd given up marveling at the way the coincidences were piling up.

For someone so huge, with such large hands, she was capable of great delicacy (her brutal compression of his fingers earlier notwithstanding). He knew, just somehow knew, that her dexterity would extend to the bedroom, and only sighed in resignation as the thought of those big, deft hands on his cock reawakened his erection.

"Oh, a pearl." She held it up for him to see. It was blue, but not just any blue. He could have run through all the shades of it, searching for the right one, as he had for her eyes earlier, but what was the point? Even in the dim, moody light, he could tell they were a match, the pearl and her eyes. Sapphire. Definitely sapphire.

"Only lion's paw scallops create pearls this color, did you know?" she continued, and this time, he didn't even bother laughing.

Lion's paw, hm? Why bother being surprised anymore? At this point, Jaime wouldn't blink if she told him they had matching birthmarks, or that fairies had paired them from the moment of conception. An inescapable, inevitable sense of doom had settled over him, but it wasn't a bad doom, not ppressive as he might have thought a mere hour ago.

No, it was a comfortable doom. A soothing doom. Fitting. Secure. Right. There was, he realized, a certain feeling of relief, to know he'd met his fate. For better or worse, she was it.

"Here's what's going to happen," he told her as they emptied their plates. "We'll finish eating. I'll bring you home— you live somewhere around Cobbler's Square, don't you?—"

"I live on the corner of the Street of Flour and Cobbler's Square," she said haltingly, her expression shifting from pleasure at finding the pearl to confused apprehension. "How did you know—"

"Because I live on the corner of Cobbler's Square and Barracks Row and I knew you'd be somewhere nearby," he answered, then continued briskly. "Tomorrow we'll drive to work together. I had been going to sell the SUV, but we'll need it once the children start to come, so I'll sell the convertible instead—"

"Children?"

"—we'll see each other every night. I'll flirt with you, you'll pretend to hate it, I'll kiss you, we'll end up fucking by the end of the week. It will be amazing. After a few months, one of us will move in with the other. I'll tell you about three little secrets I'm none too proud of, and somehow you'll see something in me to stick with despite what a shit I am.

"After a year, we'll get married. Another year, a baby. Then a few others, one every other year or so, at least a dozen of them. If my luck holds, they'll all have your eyes. After forty or so years, one of us will die— probably me— but that's okay, it'll have been a good life together. How does that sound to you?"

She just blinked at him, silent. The waiter came, cleared away their dishes, and took their dessert request: nothing for her, the cherry tart for Jaime, of which he already knew she'd end up eating half.

"And to drink?" asked the waiter. "Coffee, tea, sherry?"

"Tea. Lemon, no cream," Brienne replied absently, still glancing at the dessert menu. Jaime was marveling at how she even liked the same thing to drink when she blew his mind and continued, "for both of us."

"How did you know?" Jaime asked when the waiter had gone. It wasn't just him? She felt it, too?

She looked startled. "I… I'm not sure. I just… you seem like the type to prefer it with lemon?"

" 'The type'?" he repeated. "What type is that?"

She shrugged and ducked her head to hide a shy grin that he found impossibly charming. "The you type. You're…" She shrugged again. "A little sour, a little like a prickle on the tongue. But not… not in a bad way." She paused, fiddling with her dessert fork and avoiding looking at him, and pink rose in her cheeks. "An acquired taste, I think?"

The waiter returned with Jaime's dessert and their tea.

"Have some," Jaime said, holding out a spoonful of cherries in a flaky crust, Lannister red-and-gold, crowned with fluffy whipped cream. "It's your favorite."

"How do you know that?" she demanded, verging on belligerent, but there was a tinge of alarm around her eyes. She was as unnerved as Jaime was. It made him feel a little better.

"Because it's my favorite, too," he said.

She stared, clearly about to protest. He waggled the spoon at her and, looking resigned, she opened her mouth so he could feed her. She chewed slowly, staring at him the whole time.

"Three," she said after swallowing.

"Hm?" Jaime nipped up another spoonful and offered it to her.

"Children," replied Brienne upon finishing the second mouthful. "I'm negotiating. You're insane if you think I'll have a dozen. I'll give you three, max."

He couldn't have stopped the smile from stretching across his face even if he'd wanted to. "Nine," he countered. "I need at least that many to play baseball without involving anyone outside the family."

Her face acquired a mulish expression that didn't do it any favors. He loved it. "Six," she countered. "Final offer."

"Done," was his prompt response, and then he grinned wider at her expression of dismay when she realized she'd been had. He'd only wanted six to begin with. Lannisters were pro bargainers. He knew what he was doing.

"You—" she sputtered, then stopped, seeming bemused and a little lost. "What's happening?"

Jaime reached out and brushed his fingertips over her blushing cheek. "We're falling in love, that's what."

"But…" She trailed off helplessly. "It doesn't make any sense. How? Why? You're— and I'm not—"

He knew what she was saying. They were unmatched, or so she thought. He'd been with someone for almost twenty years who was identical to him in nearly every way, who'd been his equal in looks and wealth and temperament, and where had that gotten him? Nowhere. Alone and resentful and bitter. And lonely, so damned lonely.

"Details," he therefore said with a negligent wave of the hand. "Fuck the details. I never worry about them."

"Fuck the details," she repeated softly, more a stunned reiteration than an agreement. Her eyes were wide, startled, beautiful, as she studied him. "Jaime, seriously, what is this? What… what are we?"

"Can't you tell, wench?" He took her hand, lifted it to his lips, grazed a kiss across the freckled back. "We're meant to be."

The first baby came after one year, not two. She did indeed have Brienne's eyes. They named her Pearl.