come on now, baby girl
is a A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones High School AU fanfic.
Jaime Lannister and Brienne Tarth join forces as an unlikely Amateur Sleuth team to investigate the brutal murder of Jaime's sister and lover Cersei. Gradually, it gets clear that almost everyone around them has skeletons in the closets far worse than the Lannister twins' secret affair.
The fanfic contains examples of:
- Adaptational Villainy:
- In canon, Melara Hetherspoon is an innocent child killed by Creepy Child Cersei. Here, Melara not only kills Cersei, but she also — in a much more premeditated manner — kills Lyanna and Lyanna's unborn child, and Rhaegar.
- Hyle Hunt in canon flirts with Brienne as part of a Prank Date plan, but doesn't do anything worse, is implied to be sorry to some degree, and is shown to have a number of redeeming qualities. Here, he is a Serial Rapist who only tries to offer an apology when cornered.
- Affectionate Nickname: "Baby girl" is Jaime's near-constant one for Brienne.
- And the Adventure Continues: The fic ends as Jaime and Brienne prepare to investigate the crimes of Aerys Targaryen.
- Attempted Rape: Hyle Hunt and his buddies drug and attempt to gang-rape Brienne. She is saved by Jaime in the nick of time.
- Betty and Veronica: Innocent and thoroughly honest Brienne and cruel, manipulative and incestuous Cersei for Jaime. He begins to fall for Brienne even when Cersei is alive, but throughout the fic, he is still haunted (it's unclear whether literally or figuratively) by his feelings for Cersei.
- Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: We have Baelish and the rapists in his pay, Rhaegar sleeping with his underage students, Melara's murders, Cersei's blackmail and smear campaigns, and Aerys's arsons.
- Death by Woman Scorned: Rhaegar doesn't foresee that jilting Melara will be a fatal mistake. When she sees he is not coming back to her, she poisons him and frames him for the murders by forging a suicide note.
- Driven to Suicide: Melara drowns herself after confessing to the murders of Cersei, Lyanna, and Rhaegar.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: When Melara visits Lyanna to tell her that she was Rhaegar's lover and the mother of his child, Lyanna is appalled and thinks Melara wants to get Rhaegar behind bars for abuse. It never occurs to her that Melara is a Woman Scorned planning to kill her.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: Melara's son by Rhaegar is raised as her little brother.
- Freudian Slip:
- While performing "Gorgeous" by Taylor Swift, Melara sings "green eyes" instead of "blue eyes", staring at Jaime on whom she has a crush on. Subverted: it turns out it was a calculated move on her part to make Rhaegar jealous.
- Lyanna almost calls Rhaegar by his first name, which would have revealed their affair.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Pia is a kindhearted stripper at Littlefinger's Lounge who helps the investigation a great deal.
- In Love with Love: Melara thinks that one of the main reasons Cersei is so involved in what she believes to be an affair with Rhaegar is the Forbidden Love angle rather than the relationship itself.
- Incompatible Orientation: Like in canon, Brienne's First Love is Renly. Unlike in canon, she finds out that he is gay, and it's the first step towards her getting over him.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
- Jaime has dreams of Cersei's ghost. It is unclear whether it is an actual haunting (as he believes) or just a manifestation of his conflicted feelings about her and the guilt of not having been there to save her.
- Melara is Driven to Suicide by her victims' vengeful ghosts. It's once again ambiguous whether they really appear or she hallucinates them.
- Morality Pet: Unlike all his previous conquests, Lyanna is special to Rhaegar and he genuinely loves her and wants to start a family with her.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Melara kills Lyanna in the delusion it will bring Rhaegar back to her.
- Operation: Jealousy: Melara unsuccessfully attempts one on Rhaegar, pretending to publicly flirt with Jaime.
- Relationship Revolving Door: Ned and Cat spend the whole fic breaking up and making up. Last time we see them, the tragedy of Lyanna's death brings them together after what had seemed like a final breakup.
- Serial Rapist:
- It turns out that the Attempted Rape of Brienne was one in a series. Baelish pays Hyle Hunt and his cronies to gang-rape virgin girls and film it for his porn app.
- Slightly downplayed with Rhaegar Targaryen, whose encounters with his lovers are technically consensual. However, considering he is their teacher and they are underage, it's still statutory rape.
- What Beautiful Eyes!: Jaime is absolutely entranced by Brienne's Innocent Blue Eyes. He feels that her sheer gaze can bring any criminal to confession.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: Cersei is such a thoroughly horrible person, being a serial cheater, blackmailer, and all-around bully, that just about everyone in the vicinity has a potential motive to kill her.
- Wrong-Name Outburst: Right after Their First Time with Brienne, Jaime mumbles Cersei's name in his sleep, which causes a long rift between him and Brienne. Jaime is convinced Cersei's ghost had a hand in it.
- You Never Did That for Me: When Rhaegar learns Melara is pregnant, he angrily tells her to get an abortion, and when she has the child, he absolutely refuses to even look at the latter, let alone acknowledge him. When Lyanna gets pregnant by him, though, he plans to marry her and start a family with her and the child, and Melara is heartbroken when she learns it and sees how little she had mattered.
- Young Love Versus Old Hate: Sleazy politician Tywin Lannister and deeply honest sheriff Selwyn Tarth are not precisely delighted with Jaime and Brienne dating.
