Just a fool.

It’s the verb here.

Jaime scrambled to his feet.

It’s not rose, it’s not stood up, it’s not got up, it’s not pushed himself to his feet.

Scrambled.

It’s haste, it’s a loss of composure. Immediate movement. Instinct, really.

Throughout the first part his chapters of AFFC, Jaime cannot think about Brienne without reaching for some protective layer of mockery. Everytime he wonders where she is, or remembers her, or hopes she’s alive and well, he cushions those thoughts with insults. Stubborn, ugly, a face that could curdle milk. Wench. The longing for her is there, but so the reflexive need to disguise it from himself.

Then two very specific things happen, shortly from one another:

1) Ronnet Connington. Learning from her ex that she was once engaged, hearing him sneer and mock her. Ronnet laughed. Jaime did not. Golden slap as we all know it. Sending the guy away because he can’t stand the sight of him. After this, something changes in Jaime’s head. The insults disappear. The wench disappears. She becomes Brienne now.

2) He remembers the bath they shared in Harrenhall. It’s a very specific scenario. He’s kind of aroused by Pia hitting on him, and his mind recalls this other time where he was also aroused, when he saw Brienne naked and he had a boner. And he thinks that now, with Pia, he no longer has an excuse like he did before. Which is an astonishing thought when you stop to look at it, because no longer has an excuse for what? The implication is obvious. Deep very very deep down he knows he has been making excuses. It’s interesting because he doesn’t feel the need to excuse his attraction to Pia or to Hildy later on. But he felt the need to do that with Brienne.

And after these two very specific scenes, there’s almost a silence where Brienne is concerned. It’s as if Jaime is deliberately avoiding thinking about her.

And I wonder if it’s because he’s running out of ways of explaining things away. Running out of excuses. He can’t hide behind the insults anymore, behind the disrespect, behind the jokes. He lost the taste for it after Ronnet, he doesn’t want to be Ronnet for Brienne. So silence is the next best defense. Which is Jaime’s preferred method for dealing with anything that genuinely moves or unsettles him and that he’s not ready to confront yet. Avoidance. Ignore it.

And then in his last and only chapter in ADWD, there’s that little thought:

Brienne, where are you?

It almost feels accidental, like something that slipped out before he could stop it.

A few pages later, a guard tells him a woman is demanding words with him.

A moment later, Brienne walks into the tent. For one brief second, before the defenses come up, we see exactly what Brienne causes him when he doesn’t have a moment to compose himself.

I think mostly he’s afraid of becoming the man he is at the end of the dream who in his final minutes is paralysed by the shame of what he’s done and what he’s failed to do, and it provokes a realisation that he has kind of already become that man. he has treated so much with resignation, and was even on the brink of doing so w Brienne bc even though he’s clearly upset about what might be happening to her, for a minute he almost believes there’s nothing he can do. and yeah the dream just wakes him up to the fact that there’s always something you can do, and Jaime decides he’s willing to die for that alone ig. like I always think it’s worth stressing that when he throws himself in the bearpit, he doesn’t actually know how he’s gonna get them out. man is throwing sand n shit at the bear. so i don’t think Jaime is lying that he’s ‘unafraid of death’ (or at least he’s willing to face it head on), but he’s no longer willing to live so passively that his eventual death is ultimately the pointless of a passive life??