In War

by SandwichesYumYum

Summary:

Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth. Vaguely canon future fic. The war at the wall. Post ADWD. Might be added to, from time to time. Please note individual chapter warnings.

Notes:

I simply had to write and post something...anything...to see if I still could. Unbetaed. Unplanned. Just words.

Disclaimer: I own this not.

Chapter 1: Stitches

 

IN WAR - STITCHES

She slumps down, her back against the wet, dark stonework of the battlements, and shivers. Jaime drops the guttering torch into an empty bucket, the flame left barely flickering above the wooden rim. He pulls the bucket over to them and crouches down in front of Brienne.

“Does it need stitching?” He lifts her cloak away from her sword arm and grimaces at the sight of her left hand where it clutches at her wound. Brienne stares down. Her fingers are dark red in the torchlight, the once pale, sweat-stained material covering her forearm near black with her own blood. She looks at him and nods. He can hear her teeth chattering loudly.

“The Maesters?” he asks, though he already knows the answer she will give.

He shifts his weight, his feet kicking at the deep slush as she shakes her head. “Too busy,” she mutters.

Jaime reaches out, under her cloak, and tugs at the small sack she keeps tucked behind her swordbelt at all times now. He places it on her thigh, unhappy, but knowing this is an argument he wouldn't win. It is one he has lost too many times in this long night. She is right, in any case. Yet another three men have just been carried away with far more serious injuries than this. He flexes his fingers, opening the drawstring, and removes the needles and waxed silk. Despite everything, he smiles at the slivers of metal, at the practicality of the wench as he unsheathes his dagger and puts it down next to the bag. Of course they are already threaded. He looks at her. "Ready, Brienne?"

"No," she whispers unhappily, but drops her head in muted assent, anyway. Jaime wraps his fingers in the end of the slice in the material, tugging and tearing at it until it is freed from underneath her hand, the much bigger hole allowing easier access to her wound.

"Let go," Jaime says and she does. The cut, on the side of her arm, just above her elbow, begins to bleed again, if not as heavily as it had at first. He replaces her fingers with his own, pressing hard as Brienne swallows, frowning before she picks up the first needle.

It is easier when he is the one injured. Then she will work swiftly, her large head bowed to his skin, leaving him with a tracery of sealed cuts with clumsy, yet effective stitches. But she is hurt now, her sword arm no less, and she shakes as she raises the needle in her off-hand to her skin. "Brienne...," he exhales, concerned.

"Don't." She scowls at him for a moment, but then her mouth purses, almost as if in amusement. "I trust you, Jaime. Just not with a needle."

He grunts in a grudging sort of agreement. She isn't wrong about that, either.

They begin to move in silence, a practiced, quiet dance of bloodied fingers mending broken skin. Jaime tries to keep the pressure constant, but has to let go every so often to help her tie the threads. More blood flows in these moments, but slowly the wound closes, even if, after the fifth stitch, Brienne leans over the bucket holding the torch, her stomach trying to heave up the nothing it holds.

When she sits back up, the look on her face is foul, and aimed purely at him. "Stop pinching so hard."

"Only one more," Jaime says. "Stop complaining."

"You moaned, not so long ago," she replies shortly, her lip twitching as she again passes the needle through her own arm. "As I remember," she finishes, as they tie the final knot together.

"It was very cold and I was shirtless." He tries not to think of the sudden itch that assaults the stitches hidden under his own damaged clothing, whilst Brienne trims the threads with his dagger, flexing her injured arm slightly and putting the needles back into the little bag.

"I meant to ask at the time." A half-smile lights her face, nothing more, but it shines through her bruises and the dark, dark circles under her eyes. She resheathes his dagger at his waist. "Why did you try to attack the Others with your chest?"

He huffs at her, almost a grin, too tired for outrage or his customary mocking. "And they think you humorless." He rises to his feet and reaches down, grasping the wrist of her uninjured arm to pull her up. She is unsteady for a moment, but once this appears to be gone he lets go, the stickiness of her drying blood on them both making the separation of skin strange and difficult. "Come, wench, let's get you to bed." The embarrassment this statement was once met with is long since gone. Blue eyes simply narrow at him.

"I can still fight." She glares at him mulishly, her determination to never be seen as weak still one of the forces which drive her, even now.

"I'll thank you not to take my honoured place as the castle idiot, my dear Maid of Tarth," Jaime says, amiably enough, as he pushes her firmly away from the skirmish further along the battlements. "You should rest. Besides, we have to get some honey on that wound."

She looks back at him, her mouth forced into a plump frown. She tilts her head towards the fight. "Do you think they'll hold?"

"For now."

He lifts the torch from the bucket and they carefully tread down the slippery wooden stairs and into the castle proper. It is warmer inside, but hardly any of it is from the few braziers scattered about. Much of it is the damper, sweatier warmth of so many people forced into too small a space. They make their way to the Maesters, Brienne whimpering loud enough to be heard more than once as her injury is knocked in the unavoidable movement of sheltering smallfolk and tired warriors.

Jaime waves, catching the attention of one of those caring for the sick and pointing out the blood on his companion. 'Honey', he mouths. A simple nod is the reply and Jaime pulls Brienne over to the table where it is to be found. "Not too much," she says quietly. "There is little enough left."

She tears away the lower portion of her sleeve entirely and Jaime smears a thin layer of the precious honey over her wound. Brienne is clearly planning to use the torn cloth as her bandage, but then a child, of perhaps nine namedays, appears next to them. Silently, the young girl ties a clean length of linen over the honey and pulls the bloody cloth from Brienne's grasp.

"If you change, I think I can mend this shirt for you, m'lady."

Brienne smiles down at her, not unkindly. "I'm afraid I can't. This is my last one."

"Oh." The child seems to think very hard for a moment. "Then I'll get you another."

"Thank you," Brienne says. "I sleep in the third cell."

"I know, Lady Brienne," the young one grins, gap-toothed and happy, curtseying with no skill at all and scurrying away. Jaime finds himself hoping that such a friendly child is missing teeth through nature and not a mailed fist as he starts to walk towards the place where he and Brienne sleep, the Maid herself following him.

Jaime, as ever, finds some twisted humor in the fact that when they seek the safety of indoors, they have ended up sleeping in the corner of a prison cell. They do not do so alone. There can be up to eight others in this one small space, though their own old furs and blankets are never disturbed by anyone who shares it.

Brienne says nothing, just burying herself under them until she is nothing but a pile of black fur with a straw colored tangle peeking out from it, trying to find some warmth. Jaime doesn't move, waiting.

Then it begins. Fur ruffles as she begins to cough. This has been happening for a short while now, a week he would guess, though a true grasp of time has long since fled him. Whenever Brienne lies down, her frame is wracked by a search for air, the sound sharp and brittle in her throat. Jaime doesn't know if it is illness, or the foulness he can smell about them.

She sits back up suddenly, almost comically, though this is offset by her need to cough into her hand, swallowing huge breaths in between. When she brings it under control, she looks up at him. "You're going to wait here until I'm asleep, aren't you?"

Jaime smiles at her. "Just how many times have you told me you'll rest, only to be back at my side within the hour?"

"You do the same," she says, stubborn as ever. He shrugs and she rolls her eyes. Then she lies back down, facing away from him and clearing her throat. "Jaime. Don't die."

"I wouldn't dream of it." This is how they always part now, in this never-ending night, though they rarely leave each other alone. It doesn't matter who says it, though.

It is a lie. Every time.

Whenever they fall into restless sleep, they dream of dying.

He watches Brienne's breathing slow, her occasional, hacking cough softening into a rattling wheeze as her own darkness finds her. As she finally seems to settle, there is a tugging at his cloak. The girl is there, holding out a tatty blue undershirt.

The scavenged clothing of the dead. It's all we wear now.

"Leave it here for her," Jaime whispers to the child, who looks up at him with wary eyes. It is clear that he scares the young, whereas the Maid of Tarth seems endlessly fascinating to them. He tries a warm grin. It feels oddly out of place, as if it is something he has forgotten to share with anybody other than Brienne. "Could you make sure she eats, when she wakes?" The girl nods, before disappearing once more.

With one last glance at the overlarge pile of furs in the corner, Jaime turns and goes to rejoin the fight.

I have an hour or so left in me yet, before I sleep.

 

 

Chapter 2: Watchers

Summary:

Future fic. The war at the wall. Post ADWD. Might be added to, from time to time.

Notes:

Unbetaed. Slightly tipsy. Etc. Shambling ramblings. That sorta thing.

Disclaimer: I own it not.

IN WAR - WATCHERS

 

The songs never tell of it. The tales are silent on the matter.

They are always full of the singing of blood paired with the thrust of a sword, the thunderous noise of battle with the glory of victory. Brienne thinks back to her girlhood, of the unknowing child she once was, when the tales and the songs were all she knew. How she’d listened and believed them; had clothed herself in armour to keep hurt at bay, turning a lifetime of loneliness into the will to fight for what was good.

They never told of this.

The endless hours of waiting. The feel of damp clothes, solid and heavy against her skin. Constant cold seeping into bones and the wind, when it rises, burning with a fierce chill.

The boredom.

Brienne has ever been one who is used to her own company, but even she sometimes finds herself losing her ability to keep her mind on the task at hand. Her thoughts wander to her home a great deal, and she sometimes fancies she can smell just a touch of brine in the air, even over the stench of the burning pyres of the dead. It is only ever a moment before she brings herself back to reason, making her imaginings go away and returning to the reality of fire in the darkness, of blood and the scent of stale sweat which fills this fortress of the North.

Jon Snow is down in the yard behind her, having made his way along the top of the Wall, possibly a sennight past, to see the worsening situation at Castle Black for himself. He has taken to training some of the older children and women in the use of blades, however briefly, though it isn’t his aim to have them man the battlements or face the enemy head on. Brienne waits, her eyes still fixed on the blankness outside the walls of this grim haven, as the laughter and welcome merriment ringing upwards falls away into nothing. Bitterness tightens her chest. She knows what the Lord Commander is doing.

He is telling them to end everyone, should we be overrun.

It is a bleak plan, but one which has merit, for all that she can hear a woman, likely a mother, starting to cry and it pains her. Their numbers, as warriors, are low here. They expect to fail. It is only a matter of time and when they do, any who survive will become the enemy within hours.

Her dark vein of thought is lifted by the sound of slow, careful footsteps on the wooden stairs.

How odd it is that I should not be alone now. Here, at the end of everything.

Brienne casts another quick glance out into the night beyond before she swings about to watch the now lank hair of Jaime Lannister rise above the parapet. She barely catches a glimpse, however, when she finds herself doubled over, wracked once more by a spasm of coughing. She shakes at the pain in her ribs, though she tells herself it is from the ever present cold instead and spits on the fresh snow by her feet. She pulls her body back upright and looks at the approaching man impassively.

“We are going to have to consider changing quarters if that doesn’t go away, wench,” Jaime chides. He says no more, for he knows she prefers sleeping amongst the families of smallfolk, rather than trying to find rest in larger rooms filled only with men.  As he draws close, he reaches out, one beaker of middling size balanced on top of another in his palm, his five fingers and forearm  holding them steady in a now practised way. “Come on,” he urges, “take it and drink, or it’ll freeze.”

Brienne does. “Thank you,” she quietly says, sipping the boiled water, which is already merely warm, even as sharp sensations ripple through her fingers, needles under skin. The shock of mild heat in this place of never-ending cold.

She sees Jaime leaning over the wall behind them, taking in the scene in the yard. He turns back to her with a grin. “Has Lord Commander Dour been frightening the women and children again?”

Brienne wants to smile back, but she can’t. “He isn’t wrong, Jaime.”

The edge of humour he customarily carries, his own sort of armour, she has long since learnt, drops away from him and he just gazes at her with deadly seriousness. “I didn’t say he was, Brienne.”

The look holds, deep and strange, but then Brienne feels almost forced to turn her face away. This is the greatest fear of those in this place who bear arms to protect the smallfolk dwelling inside. That once they are gone, there will be nothing left but for mothers to smother babes, and children or old men to slice the throats of anyone else left living. Jaime has told her he suspects that the whole castle would be put to the torch too, if it comes down to it. It would burn for a goodly while, as he put it, a signal of loss if not a call for new men who simply aren’t there. Brienne doesn’t disagree.

They stand for a while in silence, two pairs of eyes overpowered by the impossible task of picking out movement where nothing can be seen, as they have done so many times in this one, long night.

Eventually, Jaime speaks. He is almost always the first to do so, Brienne has found. “We are the watchers on the Wall,” he mutters, as if to himself.

“We’re not on the Wall, Jaime.”

He tips his head back, though neither of them bother to move to take in the pale torchlight, flickering over the nearest, low part of the sheer face of ice that they know is looming over them all. “Close enough.” Jaime chooses to stare at her instead, his smile returning to him. “Aren’t you tempted to join the ranks of our grim, Northern brothers- in-arms? Their cloaks look quite warm. And you would bear the black quite well, my Lady.”

Brienne snorts. “I look ill enough in anything, as you are well aware.” She looks at his features, the new bruising around his eyes and the bridge of his nose, which she had had to straighten whilst it still bled. “So would you, right now.”

“War has barbed your tongue, Brienne,” he laughs.

“No Jaime,” she replies, with her own, weary humour. “I think that was you.”

He huffs at her as he turns his sight back out towards their impossible task. “Do you think they will attack, in the next few hours?”

“There are no signs of it, so I don’t think so.” Brienne sips the last of the cooling water from the cup, wrapping her fingers around it to feel the small warmth left there. She coughs again and Jaime tilts his head at her, an eyebrow raised, not needing to say anything more. She ignores him and continues. “The Lord Commander did get a raven. Eastwatch is now fully besieged.”

Jaime grunts as he pours the last of his drink into his mouth. “Oh good, I’m looking forward to eating even less often, now our food supply is entirely cut off.” He glances behind them briefly. “Will he be heading back that way?”

“I should think so.”

There is a noise from outside of the walls and Jaime slams down his cup, lifting the torch from its nearby wall sconce and moving swiftly, waving the fiery light out over the edge of the battlements in short, rapid arcs, trying to see. After a little while, he seems satisfied that there is no threat, and comes back, replacing the torch and settling in to lean against the stonework, close to Brienne’s side.

They say nothing, just watching for what feels like an age, the air escaping their mouths making small clouds in front of their faces. Brienne senses when Jaime again becomes restless, can almost guess the very moment when he is driven to speak again. “Gods, they never tell anyone about all the blasted standing around, do they?” he says wryly, smiling up at her. “It’s been decades since I was raised to Kingsguard, and I’m still bitter about it.”

“I’ve been thinking of that myself,” Brienne says, knowing her mouth is twitching. “Well, perhaps not for decades.”

Jaime’s hand flicks up towards her and he gently places a fingertip on her cold, split lips, for the space of heartbeat. “Positively barbed,” he whispers, as they fall back into an easy silence, the stone cold and hard against their backs, their arms now touching.

And they watch.

Chapter 3: Dagger

Summary:

Future fic. The war at the wall. Post ADWD. Might be added to, from time to time.

Notes:

Unbetaed ramblings. Just a thing. There might have been beer.

IN WAR - DAGGER

 

She lifts her dagger and reaches up, her wrist snaking around her own throat.

Jaime thinks her a fool and wants to stop her, but he knows that this is something she feels she must do.

He says nothing instead, just kicking an untidily discarded blanket out of his way and walking through the mess between them. Large blue eyes narrow, the blade stilled in her hand, as he pushes the shoulder of a hulking Wilding over and shoves his way past the drunken group between himself and the Maid of Tarth.

He ignores the jests that always follow him now, when he is making his way to their shared sleeping place. Brienne’s gaze falls to her feet, stretched out in front of her, so far from her thick lips, which pucker into a frown. She is unmoving, one hand holding metal and her other the ends of a fistful of hair, in front of her ear.

Jaime is silent as he lowers himself down to sit beside her, doing little else but letting out a low moan of relief when he finally leans back and feels hard stone against his shoulder blades.

Not another sound passes between them.

He waits.

And then it begins.

It is a strange noise, the sawing of a straight blade through pale blonde hair. Jaime doesn’t like it. What passes for locks on her head had grown longer again, in recent years, but ever since they’d moved from the people she liked, in the place which made her ill, she has taken to keeping them shorter. Every few moons, he’ll find her hacking at herself with little skill, less care, and yet too much of both.

She could do better and they both know it. But she chooses to work her way through the strands she holds in hunks with a vicious brutality, too much for her not to be minding it.

Perhaps once he would’ve found humour in the fact that a woman who is so ugly would seek to become uglier, but he finds no comfort of any sort in it now.

She is alone in the company of men and she will do anything to make it easier.

Jaime listens to her continued denial of her own womanhood and longs for this bleak, endless night to find its dawn.

His wait, through that and through this, feels so long. He doesn’t look at her, but out of the corner of his eye he can see, time and again, her carefully holding what is shorn away, placing it onto a small cloth on her thigh. He thinks the scrap bears old stains, so it may have once taken her moon’s blood, though it has been washed since.

He wonders if she plans to do what she had done last time with what she shears from herself.

A part of him hopes so, though they had both been left bone weary during their next watch, after staying awake and laughing silently together at Tormund, who moaned and scratched and flailed at the short hairs Brienne had dropped over his sleeping form. It’d been deserved, truth be told. Some of his suggestions to her had been quite obscene, after all.

It takes an age, but eventually her dagger drops, and Jaime looks at what she has done. “You’ve missed some,” he says, as he always does. Brienne nods. And they brace themselves.

Jaime rises slowly to his knees, not without effort, and turns. He straddles the nearest of her thighs, nudging her knee outwards and is careful not to knock the leg bearing her lost hair. There is a roar of approval from behind them and they look at each other with tired acceptance.

“Here,” he whispers, firmly tugging on a clump she has missed. She curls her fingers around it, just below his own and he lets go. She passes him up her dagger and he cuts through it, not wanting to at all. Then he places her blade back down and looks again, his head leaning and his body moving around her, untouching, until he finds another place where her hair is now too long.

He goes to pull at what he has found, but a shout rings out from across this long room, suggesting what he should be making Brienne do with her mouth. It is followed by harsh laughter. She damn near flinches and looks at him.

“Rancid northern cunts”, he mutters, too quietly for anybody else to hear, and Brienne’s lips twitch at the bluntness of it. There has been too much of this lately, and one of them is going to have to make it stop. And for all that Jaime would love for it to be him, almost longing to put his golden hand to good use on men instead of monsters, he thinks he prefers the idea of Brienne making her own mark on their comrades. It would certainly be a joy to see.

The noise behind them begins to settle and he tugs on her hair again. They move quietly and with ease, quick pulls leading to fingers leading to the blade, and Jaime only finds it difficult when she lets her head rock forward to rest on him. Her long sword-arm sweeps up and around behind her, to grasp the hair still uncut at the back of her neck and he is distracted by the weight of her against him, if only for a moment.

But then they are as done as they can be here.

Though Brienne knows, just as well as he does, that he’ll spend their next shared time on the battlements trying to convince her that she has far too many stray locks left behind. There are likely to be one or two, in any case, and he will see to them if he should get the chance, in the cold of this winter. Better he fights the Maid of Tarth’s hair than anything else.

He rolls himself back over her knee to sit next to her, his own knee clicking at the change of place. He ignores it. “You’re getting better at that, Brienne.”

“Thank you, Jaime,” she says. He watches her fold the stained piece of cloth and what is in it carefully. Then she leans forward, her body and arms reaching just further than her legs as she sets the little bundle on a bare patch of floor. She sits back up again.

“Can we sleep now?” he asks and she smiles. A rarity here.

“Yes,” she says, and they start to pull their blankets and thin furs over themselves, not interested in the shouts that rise away from them as they find each other close.

Chapter 4: Gate

Summary:

Drunk. Sorry.

 

The badly mended door has to be shoved firmly four times to force it open and snow swirls in. Jaime can't help but think it a bad idea to do such a thing that way this far north, but suspects the tiny room was only ever used as a quiet place to take a shit in this last summer, before Castle Black was overrun by people seeking shelter in this Long Night. And it's as good a place as any left to use as a store for his rarely needed metal.

Jaime follows Tormund out into the yard, but instead of heading to the Tunnel, he finds his feet moving without a moment’s thought as a wordless cry rends the air.

Brienne.

He is simply running before he knows anything of it. Through the falling snow and in the torchlight, he can see her form, her back braced against shaking wood, her features twisted in desperate effort. “I didn’t know we were under attack!” he shouts at her. He barrels into the main gate, to her right, taking the impact with his left shoulder, and grimaces at the pain that lances through it.

“It just started,” she grinds out, the muscles in her neck bulging. She glances at him. “Armour?”

Jaime begins to lose his footing and kicks some of the muddy snow away so he can find some purchase on the cobbles. “I was heading north for a few hours.”

“Not now,” she grunts.

Tormund slams into the gate on the other side of her, his eyes shining with thoughts of a nearer battle than the one they might have found on the other side of the Wall.

In quick succession, three of the larger Thenns join them.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Even with more of them, the creaking of the gate increases. “What’s happening?” Jaime barks, digging his heels in yet further.

“How should I know? There was a bang, then this,” Brienne bites out, as something large beats against the gate repeatedly, making their shoulders shake. The crossbeam holding it in place begins to groan in protest. "Vaymar!" she calls to the huge smith, who is running to some nearby steps with a bucket of sharpened weaponry. "Kill them!"

"I think that's the general idea, wench," Jaime mutters, feeling the edge of an icy timber scraping the side of his neck. He hopes she hasn't heard him, in the very moment he realizes that he is the smallest one here, which is an odd sensation.

The Gods are not with him, but given that he hardly ever spares them a thought, he is hardly surprised. Brienne turns and shoves her own shoulder under the beam with a sharp cry, though it would seem only so she can glare at him from inches away. "Shut up, Jaime."

"Oh, I like this one, Kingslayer!" roars Tormund, who appears to be enjoying their shared and fast approaching deaths a little too much. "She has spirit! And was the Mad King wearing a crown when you killed him?"

"This really isn't the time, bearfucker," Jaime hisses back, which only makes the unreasonably enormous northern man laugh. There is another huge bang and the gate creaks yet more.

"There might not be another time, sisterfu-"

"Pitch! We need more pitch!" A timely cry rings out from above them, and while she braces herself yet more against cold wood, her feet moving again to find firm ground, he can feel a low chuckle rumble through Brienne. She is simply that close to him. She shakes her head and he can see, through the strain turning her face bright red, even in this everlasting torchlight, that she is silently calling him an idiot whilst reassuring him that the truth of that matter is still something she keeps.

Jaime means to acknowledge it, but as he starts to shift himself, trying not to think of the unknown they are trying to fight, the gate starts to truly rattle above them. Sharp, deafening blows shudder through them all and even Tormund Giantsbane himself is rendered silent by the onslaught.

Their muscles are pierced with burning as they all push back again, but now that the attack is somehow higher, more fierce, they know they cannot stop it.

We are to die here after all.

He looks to Brienne again and there is a glint of bright fear in her extraordinary eyes. It wounds him, as it should. He knows full well she would not be here, were it not for him. But still he gets to glimpse a moment of crooked, broken teeth, to know that she isn't unhappy to be here at their end, before the gate cracks and his head is forced down. Covered by a familiar weight. He feels the impact of a broken plank and it jars his neck, for all that it doesn't hit him.

Then there is a sound he has never heard before. Something is twisting and rubbing. Otherwise, there is a near silence.

He has to gather himself, but the moment he does, he pushes back harder and reaches for the hand that remains placed solidly and protectively over him. He tries to see if Brienne has injured herself yet again, to save him, but the light is low. Although nothing is broken, she has dark splinters in her skin and will surely be badly bruised, should they get to wake on the the morrow.

The lady herself barely notices, for her gaze is fixed above him. "Is that a mammoth?"

"I don't think it's one of ours!" Tormund blusters. Even he is now starting to appear weary under the strain, his breathing a stuttering beat as his vast furs seem to disappear, pressed into the wood behind him.

Jaime looks up. And the Husband of Bears is right. About two feet of tusk are rasping back and forth through a missing section of plank in the gate. There is a twist to the movement, as if to pry further timbers away, but the force of it is easing as wisps of thick, choking smoke make their way into the fortress.

They haven't seen this before. Jaime leans his head back further when he feels the pressure against them ease a little. What he can see of the tusk is small, but it is enough. The surface of it is covered with ice. It looks like one of the few windows to be found here in this true winter, permanently coated with a cracked, pale patina of the lightest blue.

"They have mammoths?" Jaime manages to ask no-one in particular when the tusk disappears from their view, followed by the slumping noise of a great weight onto frozen ground.

"They have horses," Tormund gasps, as if this explains everything. It takes Jaime a moment or two, where he swallows gulps of air into his body, to see that it might.

Their little group pauses, all of them breathing heavily, tensed for the next impact. But it doesn't come.

Kantyr, the Thenn to Jaime's right, suddenly lurches forward, taking a few unsteady paces and turning to look upwards. "Is that all?" he asks, nearly challenging the darkness to bring them more.

Shut your thrice-damned, man-eating mouth. We don't need it.

Jaime's strength is sapped and he can't even think of voicing a cutting remark in the time it takes for the voice of someone young, too young, to call back down. "That's it. We can't see anything else."

The boy's words echo around the yard whilst they peel themselves from the gate, though Jaime has to reach back and grab Brienne's hand to pull her away. She is the last to part from it. She takes but a single step before she shakes her fingers from his own and crouches low, on her haunches. She wraps her arms about her knees and the cold air escapes her nostrils, twin plumes of chill smoke rising high above her in the frigid air.

And she looks like a child too, he sees, the rapid rise and fall of her ribs somehow clear to his eyes under layers of wool and leather, for all that she is hunched and hiding. He knows she is hurting, but also that she was as afraid as he tried to pretend not to be.

Blue eyes flicker about, taking in slush and torches and wet boots and damp, dark walls, before they rise enough to settle on him. And it breaks his heart, for they are so brilliantly tired and alive and he knows her.

You should not be here, Brienne.

He takes a half-step back to her and leans down, threading his arms under hers, far more than he would've ever had to do, were he still in possession of both of his hands. He pulls them both upright, and they stand too close.

The Maid of Tarth looks down at him wearily, and Jaime shifts away a touch, though he doesn't let go of her. "You've been up for hours. And bested the might of a mammoth," he lightly finishes. He nods vaguely in the direction of where they currently sleep. "Go, Brienne. Rest."

"Don't die, Jaime." Without pause, she shakes his arms from her and trudges away through the dirty snow, and he waits and watches her steps gradually slow as she listens for his expected reply.

He says nothing until she has almost come to a full stop. "I wouldn't dream of it."

Brienne looks back at him. "Liar," she smiles.

"With you? Only about that." That much is true and they both know it.

"Good," she says, and leaves him.

Jaime doesn't move until the closing of another slab of rough-hewn wood swallows the pale, yellow candlelight that means warmth. And her. Then he follows the men from the north up wooden stairs, though he aches and longs for sunlight. She has been watching. Now it is his turn.

Chapter 5: Curtain

Notes:

CHAPTER WARNING: A RAPE IS DISCUSSED (not graphically).

Disclaimer: I own it not.

IN WAR - CURTAIN

The curtain has been hanging here for so long that it is heavily spotted with mildew, the damp air having begun to eat at it. What was once a soft, brown blanket is now weighed down and stiff with moisture, rank waves of smell filling the air about her when Brienne pushes it aside to step through. She looks up at where it sags between the nails holding it up in place. "I keep meaning to find one to replace it," she mutters to herself.

"The last thing we can spare is blankets, dear Maid," a voice says, "and it still does what we need it to." Brienne turns to find Skana there, naked as her nameday. The dark-haired wildling seems, as is usual for her, unbothered by the persistent cold, which Brienne is sure may never be shifted from the marrow of her own bones, it has been there so long. It could be that Skana sees her wonder again at this in the light of the lone candle, less than an hour from guttering out on the stone bench, for she just laughs. "I keep telling you, Brienne, I've been far colder than this."

Brienne says nothing, though her lips twitch in some amusement at the woman's ease. She is so very easy in her skin. In this place. In this vile winter. Brienne finds it all the opposite with every waking breath, barring the times when there is nothing to think of but the blade.

She goes to one of the bowls lined up on the bench and leans over it, but the water in it is a reddish grey, so she tips it into the shallow gutter at the side of the cell. Moving to the barrel of snowmelt, she dips the bowl in and her fingers protest at the icy chill as it fills. Brienne returns it to its place and pulls her shirt from her body, stepping away to tuck the dead man's clothing over the edge of the iron bars. She is aware that the stink of the blanket hanging against it will stay with her for a few hours, but it doesn’t matter. The shirt reeks of her old sweat in any case and there are no other real choices. The bench is wet and the floor is worse, the stench of urine spilled from a half dozen chamberpots rising far more strongly than the last time she visited. As things are, it is hardly a surprise. She places her bloodied smallclothes and breeches with her shirt, once she has kicked off her boots.

She shudders at the cold slickness of the stone floor against the soles of her feet, but picks up a damp cloth and starts to rub her armpits, ferociously hard. Goosebumps rise all over her, or so it feels, and the chill of the wet on her skin makes her gasp.

Best this is done quickly.

Brienne rinses the cloth and moves it to her thighs, to wash away her moon’s blood, not caring for anything in between. She makes her movements yet swifter, wanting nothing more than to be back in her clothes. As tight curls become clean, Skana holds out some cleaned rags, with an apologetic look. “Here. I hadn’t thought it quite your time yet,” she whispers.

Brienne nods her thanks, dropping the cloth back into the bowl and taking the offered scraps. Marya is good enough to wash them in exchange for a few extra rations for her family. It is a kindness which Brienne repays with as many meals as she doesn’t have to eat and the old laundress likes to jest that the cold water she needs to ease the task is hardly lacking hereabouts, anyway.

Brienne makes to move to the bars, but Skana halts her. “This one is new,” she says. A very womanly hand flicks out to a bright red weal, a slash near Brienne’s left collarbone and she cannot help herself. She flinches at the contact. Apart from Jaime, nobody touches her. Nobody would. The wildling woman’s shoulders fall, and Brienne finds herself the subject of an odd look, as if she is something other. Yet it isn’t in the way she is used to. There is no scorn in Skana, nor even pity. It is something else. “You kneelers are a strange people,” she says, slowly reaching up to tweak at Brienne’s chin. “You really are still a maid, aren't you?” Brienne can only think how peculiar it is that a state considered so noble by those in the South is thought of as an oddity in the North while Skana pats her shoulder lightly and turns away, shaking her head. “I wouldn't be, in your place. I've heard all sorts of things about the one you bed down with, but he looks like he would ride well enough.”

Brienne’s thoughts simply stop at that. She knows her mouth is moving, as if trying to forge a reply, but words are suddenly made impossible. Not that it matters. A dry voice floats in from the other side of the curtain. “You are aware that I can hear you, Skana?”

“Yes, Kingslayer.” But then grey eyes regard the curtain curiously. “That you would guard this place now is good. It shows you worthy of trust. But Brienne is capable of looking after herself. Surely it would be better that you do it when the girls come?”

“What?” Jaime asks, and Brienne reaches out to Skana, but she has gone to pull her dress from the latticework of bars.

“Did you not hear of the raping in the Flint Barracks?” the wildling asks as her head disappears under her skirts.

“I did not.” The reply from outside of this one place for the women of Castle Black alone is quiet, but edged as if it were fashioned from the finest of steel.

Skana continues as she finds her way into her clothes, oblivious to Jaime’s change of mood. “She was barely more than a girl. Surely you know how men can be, when their blood is up? The younger girls and women stay together now. They come here in groups so they can use the pots and wash. Brienne has been helping keep them safe, when she can. I can't see why you don't.” Her head emerges from her dress and Skana finally notices Brienne’s hand, still outstretched in a desperate plea. “Unless...”

“Don't go anywhere, Jaime,” Brienne says, softly but with utter conviction. “The matter has been dealt with.”

There are long moments of silence, when the only thing to be heard is the tapping of a boot on wet flagstones, before Jaime answers. “In the correct manner, I trust?”

“Yes,” Brienne says, unflinching in the face of the memory of bright red blood sprayed across the pale surface of the base of the Wall. Not her doing, no, but not something she thinks wrong. Yet then she becomes uncertain, for she cannot know what is to come. “But there may be others who try. The Night's Watch...”

“...is hardly the most noble company of men,” Jaime finishes shortly, as if he has heard her thoughts. “I understand.”

Then there is nothing, and Brienne would think him gone, if she did not know better. She rushes herself back into her clothing, wrapping rags around the bloody parts of her smallclothes so they won’t chafe later and is barely pulling herself into her boots by the time she pulls the stinking curtain aside. Skana follows her out, blowing out the flame on the stub of the candle as she does so. Light is a precious thing here, and must be saved where it can. The wildling will wait for the next woman who needs this place before leaving. And may well guard her then, Brienne thinks as a short sword is leant against the curtain and an elbow jars Jaime from his place on the small stool outside.

“I’ll be back later, Skana,” Brienne says, straightening her shirt whilst a knight rises to his feet. Silent nods are exchanged, and she and Jaime move away.

He seems distant at first, barely noticing the smallfolk they weave through as they walk up and out into the training yard. As soon as their boots begin to catch in the sodden snow, however, he reaches for her, his hand clasping at hers, turning her to him. “That was something you failed to tell me, wench. This happened when I went north?”

Brienne regards him and sees he isn’t angry. At least, not with her. She tightens her fingers around his. “I know how your golden hand starts to itch, when certain things come to pass.” It isn’t said with any lightness at all, for it is a simple truth. He knows it too.

“The girl?”

She merely shakes her head. Brienne will not tell him how the girl had wasted away in front of her mother and father; good, if poor, people of The Gift who had come here for the safety of their family and found anything but. How the Maesters had even tried to force weak broth into her, going so far as to use long funnels, only to find it covering the floor moments later. How empty her eyes were. She will not tell Jaime her name, though she will carry it with her for all of her days. It would not be wise to give him that much to think on. She knows him too well.

He looks up at her sadly. “There was no need to keep it from me, Brienne.”

“I think there was, Jaime.”

They speak no more. Their hands fall apart and they make their way up to where they sleep in a tower full of men, turning over their ragged furs with their feet to find the things Brienne needs to go and take her place on the battlements. She leaves him to rest, which is surely what he must crave, for he has been awake for two watches.

Yet, as Brienne’s time atop the walls of stone and wood begins, she glances down into the training yard to see Ser Jaime Lannister leading a handful of women and girls across the slush, making their way to the cell with the damp curtain. Perhaps she should find some warmth in his choosing to serve so, but cannot, for he is exhausted, and one of the younger girls is weeping as she grasps onto another’s hand. Her skirts are wet, her wait for one of the chamberpots in that small haven having been too long already.

Chapter 6: Post

Notes:

Disclaimer: I own it not.

IN WAR - POST

Jaime holds the torch out into the darkness, as if to pierce the black veil which smothers the world. It makes no difference, for the light pushing out is too weak to dent the armour of the night. The rhythmic sound of the pickaxe digging into the frozen earth behind him ceases and he hears another frustrated groan. "Will you stop that, Jaime?"

The torch protests with a hushed, unsteady roar as he swings it back towards Brienne, the flame guttering and rising again as he brings it to stillness. "Sorry, wench."

She pulls roughly at her tool, dislodging it from the hard ground and hauling herself upright to glare at him. Her voice is unusually high, almost reedy, and her face is red with effort. "What do you think you can do with a lone torch? Better we get this done, so we can bear our blades instead." Jaime would swear he can hear her softly add 'even if I am the only one of us doing anything' as she drives the metal downwards once more, the splitting of ice a crack in the air.

He looks her, at the sheer force of her making the unforgiving frost give way as she repeats the motion. It seems to travel up from her very feet, twisting through muscle and bone and sinew, only to change direction and plunge back into the hard soil, a mere inch from her toes. Perhaps that closeness of metal and foot should give him pause, yet it doesn't. Brienne is too good to make such a mistake.

"You're supposed to be watching the dark, Kingslayer!" a voice booms, and Jaime turns to his right, keeping the torch still, as the Lady wishes.

"I was hoping one of the others would come and take you whilst I was distracted, Tormund," Jaime calls back. "The Seven know we have no bears, and you must be dying for a good fuck. I thought they might have some for you."

"I like my cunts a little warmer!" Tormund grins back, kicking away a huge clod of icy waste from his own hole. It rolls down the banking and disappears, swallowed by blackness. His smile grows yet wider, and his teeth begin to glint behind his vast beard in the faint light reaching him. "And hairier, most likely! The fluff on the heads of those dead ones looks so thin!"

Harrenhal.

Just a heartbeat sees Jaime taken back to warm baths, steam roiling and dancing over the wash of the water hitting his skin as a maid, a woman, stood and faced him, naked, vast and unashamed in a way she might never have been before. He shakes the image away and laughs at the Wildling. "Well, if you will pass up such an opportunity, you might be in for a dry spell, old man. Do you think you'll last until spring?"

The warrior from so far to the north lets out an explosive boom of noise, his humour at that unrestrained. It seems to echo off the mass of the Wall itself, a confirmation of their folly. "Do you think any of us will last 'til spring?"

"What's spring?" Jaime asks lightly, as if he had never heard of it, let alone spoken of it but a few breaths earlier. And still Tormund Giantsbane laughs, though only, Jaime thinks, because they all know it may still be so far away.

There is a dull, heavy thud in the snow behind him and Jaime spins about, only to see a long wooden post sinking lengthwise into the uneven snow, mere feet from Brienne. The Maid has paused but twice in her work since her last chiding words, only told in short, more halting beatings of the cold earth beneath her, as far as he can tell, and this is one.

"Be more careful, Quint!" he shouts up at the empty looking battlements. There is a huge gap in the palisades here, a meeting of grappling hooks and monsters having brought down near a whole section of timbers the watch before, taking three men with them. It is an odd thing, seeing the floor below the planks that they walked exposed and crusted with fresh snow. Chairs and blankets and beds so swiftly abandoned to ice.

So many people will be forced to live in an even smaller space until it is mended.

A plain, if earnest, face appears over low stone. “Well, I’m not going any closer,” Quint says, looking at the missing part of Castle Black. “Why should I?” The carpenter’s place above them lends him more courage than he would normally have if he were standing in front of any of those striving to keep him safe down here, Jaime is sure. They will be here for whatever days are now, making sure those who mend this fortress do not die. People who fight are few. Those who build are now fewer, and they must be protected.

“Go fuck yourself, Quint,” Jaime whispers to himself, forgetting for just a moment that in this cursed night, noise travels far too well.

“Would that I could, Ser,” the young man replies, tipping another post over the side, though now being careful to make sure it falls farther from the Maid of Tarth. “But then I reckon no work would get done around here.” He pushes the last two long planks over. “Now that you mention it, though, I think I’ll go and fuck my wife now. I hope you enjoy your watch.”

Then he is gone, and Jaime waits as long as he can before sharp, short words spill out of him. “Gods, I loathe that boy!”

The first of her tasks since she woke now done, he can hear Brienne laughing, a soft huffing in the unmoving air at his side as Tormund walks across to them, his boots crunching in the snow. “He makes my dirk itch too, Kingslayer,” the huge wildling says, picking up a post with one hand and moving away again.

“You do know the Maesters might be able to assist you with that, don’t you, Tormund?” Jaime calls to him, trying and failing to do the same, with just his leather-wrapped stump. Long, chilled fingers aid him as Tormund roars his amusement into the night, and so their shared taking of the post into it’s place goes unnoticed. They pack snow in tightly around the base, stamping fiercely to make it hold and he wonders if her feet are as wet and cold as his. For they are blasted cold. Then Brienne plucks the torch from Jaime’s hand and slips it into the thin metal strip nailed there to bear it.

They look at the Thenns doing the same to their left, and then become perfectly serious, staring at each other as Tormund curses his lightbearer for not having noticed that he’d placed his post in the ground upside down at first. It becomes harder as the wildling’s words grow ever more colourful, and Jaime sees Brienne shudder under her cloak. But not because of that. The sheen on her skin tells otherwise. Jaime wipes the sweat from her hands with the edge of his cloak. From her face. “I do feel I must apologize for all of the crudeness you have encountered of late, my Lady,” Jaime offers loudly as an excuse for his closeness, well aware that Brienne has spent years in war camps. She is used to the callous words of men.

Brienne looks down at a patch of trodden snow with a small smile, letting it fall away before her head rises and she clasps his shoulder, her face that blank, dull mask he has long since known to be hiding a girl who is not that at all. "I do believe it began with you, Ser." She steps away and draws Oathkeeper from its scabbard, making it sing, her shoulders rolling gracefully as she swings the blade around and above her head, letting it settle into a gentle, low guard, as if safekeeping the cradle of her hips.

Jaime frees his own steel, his actions a mirror of hers as faint tendrils of mist begin to creep into the weak arc of torchlight protecting them and those within this place of men.

Chapter 7: Bowl

Summary:

For RoseHeart.

IN WAR - BOWL

"So. It's true."

Brienne of Tarth looms over him, the weak light flowing from behind her making her appear like the shadow of fierce, mythical warrior. It makes him feel, yet again, rather as if he is some kind of small animal, being inspected in a godly farmyard and found wanting.

It's off to the butcher's block for me.

Jaime doesn't mind. If anything, he finds a comforting familiarity in it, by now. He nods.

"That's good," she mutters, kicking at the frail edges of their furs where they lie by her feet. "I think we’re running low on horses." She spins slowly about and flops down next to him, forcing the shoulder of her sword-arm back against the wall with a light groan and stretching her legs out about eight-and-twenty leagues or so in front of them. Or so it seems.

He watches her cast a look of abject longing at his bowl. "You have none?" he asks.

"No," she sighs. “I didn’t bother trying. They’ll likely have run out of it by now.”

"You could always have taken something raw," he offers. Brienne just gapes at him, giving the impression that the very idea of her stealing food she would’ve eaten later, anyway, offends her blasted sense of honour as much as if he'd offered her a newborn babe for supper. He huffs before turning away. "Well, I could only carry the one bowl," Jaime says. He lifts it from his other side and holds it in front of her. "But I saved the carrots for you."

"Thank you." The wooden bowl is simply gone before Brienne even says it, and she ignores the spoon entirely, fishing out a purple lump of carrot between thumb and forefinger. She closes her eyes and plops it in between her thick, chapped lips with a satisfied moan.

That catches his attention and he feels his head tilting slowly, quite caught by the difference between her square jaw chewing away like a cow on cud, and her stupidly lengthy pale eyelashes, arcing low and long, flickering across the very tops of her cheeks, breaking up some of her little freckles almost girlishly. All the while, she hums happily, as if she were a beautiful maiden in a flower garden in one of those childish stories he stopped believing in when he was very young. Jaime can hardly think of anything more preposterous, yet there is something charming in the way Brienne is suddenly transported elsewhere. Taken away from this darkness, if not for long. She swallows, and the thick muscles in her neck seem to pulse and flow beneath her skin.

“What?”

Jaime looks back up to find huge blue eyes regarding him suspiciously. “Nothing,” he replies, sitting up straight again slowly, half daring her to say otherwise.

She holds his gaze for a little while, but then her eyes roll in her head and she turns her attention back to the bowl cupped in her vast fingers. “Is the siege fully lifted, then?”

“Yes,” he tells her. “Eastwatch is freed. My Lady will now be suitably supplied with carrots. At least for now.” With the front of the war moving back and forth across the North like the breathing chest of an untold giant, none of them can know how things will be mere hours from now, and they all know it. She shrugs her agreement to his unspoken point and plucks another morsel from the bowl to eat it, with much the same reaction as before. Jaime thinks it fascinating, and can’t help but comment. “Had I known you loved them so well, I would have simply carried a sack of carrots about with me during this war, instead of attempting to do right by people to improve your opinion of me.” One eye cracks open, just a touch, and Jaime wonders at how just a sliver of that blue can make him feel so thoroughly chastised. “It seems a much easier prospect,” he blithely adds.

Brienne swallows and coughs into her hand, only to say, “I’m sure, Ser,” with a small grin.

They are interrupted by the noise of clumping footsteps, as enormous, furred boots they know all too well heave into view.

“What poor gift is this?” Tormund bellows, crouching down, staring at the bowl Brienne is clasping with some disdain. He brings up one of his own hands, holding another. “Here, my Lady Brienne, a whole bowl of this potage stuff for you. In truth, it was going to be my third, but I don't see what all the fuss is about, myself.” Tormund sighs woefully, or as well as he can, but it comes out more as a dissatisfied rumble. “It could do with some meat in it."

“He calls you my Lady now?” Jaime asks her in a quiet whisper.

Her glance speaks of nothing but her confusion as she lowers Jaime's bowl and reaches out to take the offered meal. “Thank you, Tormund.” She goes to lift it, only to let go again as Jaime damn near feels a sharp stab of panic from her. “Would this also serve as a wildling offer of...” the Maid of Tarth starts to blush, though it is barely noticeable in this feeble light, “...something else?”

“No!” the old man booms out, holding his gut with his free hand as he laughs boisterously, for what can only be described as an age. Jaime looks at Brienne, who lets out a long and slow breath of relief, not even caring enough to be offended whilst the Northerner revels in the joy of that question. She carefully raises the nearly spilling bowl from his fingers, Jaime suspects more to prevent Tormund scalding himself than anything, as more very loud words find their way out from behind the mass of hair sat upon his face. “I would just steal you, were that the case.” The wildling pauses to consider the matter, it would appear, and Brienne slowly lifts another piece of carrot to her lips. Jaime is sure she is doing so to hold herself to silence. He may be reading her badly, but he believes this war hasn’t yet taken enough of the Lady out of her that she will ever speak when her mouth is full. Tormund’s beard bristles as his jaw works with his thinking, and his eyebrows march all over his forehead like the most intemperate skulk of foxes. Then he looks at her as if in surprise. “I quite like the thought.” he nods to himself. “You are good and strong, my Lady. I think you'd put up a mighty good fight, but we would end up being well together.” His pale gaze turns to Jaime, and it becomes troubled. “I just don’t want to anger your little cripple, here. I've become quite fond of him.”

Little cripple? Little? It’s hardly my fault I’ve ended up fighting amongst a motley collection of the overly large.

A huge hand swiftly comes towards him and Jaime strains not to bite at it, as the wildling blunders into making things worse. Tormund ruffles his hair, as one would a small boy, and grins at Brienne. “He does his best, doesn't he?”

Brienne promptly slaps a set of fingers across her mouth, trying not to spit out her precious carrot.

Does his best?

Jaime can only glare cuttingly at the man while his fingers retreat to a safer distance. And for all that most of this is meant to be amusing, just talk amongst friends and fellows-in-arms, Jaime knows his nostrils flare as he warns, “One hand or two, Tormund, it'd be easy enough for me to open your throat.”

“Then make sure you lift up my beard when you do it, boy,” the old man laughs, rising unsteadily to his feet. Then he tugs on the tendrils of hair which are wispy and thin, just above his waist, and for the slightest moment, there is seriousness in him. A statement of what he would truly wish, as opposed to his unlikely longing for bears. “I've been growing this for a long time, and don't want to be parted from it, even when I'm dead.”

That kills any ire in Jaime. He waits, and then drops his head deliberately, as a promise. The deed is already done, should it prove needful.

Heavy, hairy boots thump away, and they both watch him go.

He turns to the woman at his side and waits until she looks at him. ‘Boy?’ he silently mouths to her. Brienne grins down at her knees.

He knocks her shoulder lightly with his own. “Thank you for wading in there to defend me, by the way, wench.”

She swallows her carrot, which by now surely can’t be thicker than milk in her mouth, with all the chewing she’s been doing. “I don’t think you needed any help, idiot,” she says bluntly, only to suddenly look at him with a care he doesn’t know, and can’t define. Her eyes rise to him and fall again, a good number of times, before she will let them settle on him. Her gaze is shy when she stumbles over the words, “And your best is generally good enough.”

“Oh, such high praise,” Jaime says dryly, not wanting to think too much about about her meaning; picking up his precariously discarded bowl from between their thighs, and carelessly slopping some of the thin broth onto the leg of his breeches.

Brienne’s muscles tense, as she waits to see if he is hurt by it, but he has been here for long enough for the potage to be quite cooled. Having had some of it, she knows it too, but it doesn’t seem to matter. For the briefest time, it worries her. In this endless cold, Jaime is at least warmed by that knowledge.

Chapter 8: Blankets

Summary:

In which Brienne misunderstands just about everything. Also, yay beer!

Notes:

Disclaimer: I own it not.

IN WAR - BLANKETS

 

It has never been the sensations of sound, or light, or even touch that have stirred her to wakefulness, though Brienne hadn't known it at all until their stay in this dreadful place.

Though she might be wrong. It may well be that it is the very strength of the stench, hanging like a thick fog in this tower room, which makes it quash everything else. The stink of boots and feet of so many men, all rotting in this state of never-ending cold and dampness. The smell of sweat, even the sharp, unpleasant tang of her own, can be enough to stir her when the edge of blind exhaustion has been blunted by rest for a short time.

So it is on this morning in the night, the rank scent of her old clothes dragging her, in mute protest, from the blessed abyss of sleep. Truly, it does not lift her far, almost pausing enough to tip her back into a more comforting sort of darkness, until touch comes to call. And with it, a taste that isn't even real will arrive. Bitterness.

Still swathed in the mists of sleep, Brienne is certain of it. It doesn't start that way, with the tickle of fur on the end of her nose, where it has been buried beneath their blankets, her breathing having made it near wet. This, however, is over as quickly as it begins, replaced with the curling of long fingers that aren't her own on the skin of her stomach and a pulsing surge of heat in her where she chooses to think of herself as unformed, and as undeserving as her Septa always told her she was.

It is familiar, for it has happened many times now, but it is something she only barely understands, though Castle Black has brought her more of it than she ever had before.

One of her recent trips to the room of women had seen to that. Being known as the Maid of Tarth made her the subject of some kindly meant advice from Skana. Brienne's face burned like fire as the wildling gave a whispered, yet blunt description of certain places on a woman's body. Brienne had hardly been able to take her words in. Though she wasn't, by that stage, unaware of some of the sensations the beautiful warrior described, they didn't fit into what Brienne knew. What she had always been told was truth.

Her discomfiture didn't go unnoticed, and she found herself being gently asked, "What do the southron folk teach women of their pleasure?"

She was unable to speak for some time, eventually softly stammering out, "That it is not for us. It is only for those of ill repute."

This was met with gales of laughter, which were noted by the man unfortunately stationed outside of the curtain. Skana was charitable enough to pretend they had been amused by some jest or other as Brienne clambered back into her foul clothing, yet the shorter woman grasped at her arms fiercely before they went out, hissing, "It is not wrong for a woman to find pleasure, Brienne."

She wonders at that now, as wide, rough fingertips stroke at her belly, around her navel, again bringing her something inside that blazes and makes her clasp her hands into fists to stop herself grasping at the man laying at her back. She lies perfectly still, needing to provoke nothing, but craving more.

Certainty comes to Brienne.

I want.

She is both curiously driven, unnerved and ashamed by it. For all of Skana's sureness, the notion that women should find as much pleasure as men can when they lie together is alien to her. Something other. An idea that cuts, because it means that Brienne has settled for a life that is even more barren than she could have possibly known.

Were she not here. Under these blankets. With him.

And then Jaime, all unknowing in his rest, makes it worse.

Suddenly, he pulls her closer, and three things happen at once. His lone hand digs into the meat of her stomach, though it does not hurt in any way. Quite the opposite. His head moves, a sort of nuzzling from side to side, until his lips rest on the nape of her neck. And then there is him. His hips rock in to hers, and Brienne grits her teeth at the flood of pleasure, and it is pleasure, in that feeling of him pressing hard against her. She resists the urge to push her own hips backwards, to bring him nearer.

And it is then that the taste of bitterness rushes in upon her, overwhelming.

This will be all I will ever know of the touch of a man. And it must stop. It is not fair to Jaime. He is sleeping and it is not me he thinks of.

She allows herself the space of two more breaths of this madness before pressing down hard with her elbow, applying pressure to the arm that is beneath her own and wound so tightly about her. He wakes swiftly, and she can nearly feel Jaime's confusion in his lips, yanked from her skin as if scalded. That is signal enough, for Brienne.

A few stuttering breaths which wash over the back of her neck like honey, causing her only to want him more, are followed by the slow tilting away of his hips. It is as if he is hoping she is still asleep herself. That she will not notice it.

Brienne slows her tortured breathing, as well as she can.

Yet whatever she was trying to do, and she isn't sure herself on the matter, it doesn't work. They both feel him remove his fingers, one at time, with no urgency at all, from skin she only now realizes is slicked with her own sweat. The tips of them seem to slide over her as much as possible as he pulls his hand away from her, without deviating from their path.

Then he is gone, and he finally speaks. "I'm sorry, my Lady." His voice is rough with the trouble of having woken up with her, yet it is quick and hitched, a mere breath in the night, given so quietly as to be unheard by anybody else in this room. Only now does she hear the shuffling of large boots and the murmur of quiet conversations.

She notes his kindness, but will not turn to him. A sharp, single nod is enough for Jaime to know that she has heard him, even if all he can see of her is the back of her head and what she is sure is her flush-reddened neck. The rest of Brienne, still buried beneath their blankets, is roiling in shame. Once it is noted, Jaime rolls out from in under their covers. A quick waft of cool air hits the sliver of skin he has left exposed on her back before they drop behind him, when he hauls himself up to his feet. She doesn't look. She can't. She hears him lift his cloak and walk away, his footsteps becoming more hurried as he passes those others who share this space and gets closer to the door.

Brienne knows him too well. The haste in his escape and the strain in his words can mean one thing, and one thing alone.

He believes he has been disloyal to the woman he loves.

She knows a thing or two about loyalty, and the Kingslayer, thought of by all but Brienne herself as the the ultimate betrayer of oaths, has come to teach her of it in his own way as well. That his love for his sister is wrong she cannot doubt. It remains unflinching, unbroken, even by the tales which have made it this far north.

Cersei's being dragged through the streets of King's Landing was something they had known before the citadel was put to ruin. Long before they journeyed here. Yet still, the more outrageous tales arrive, of the Queen who bedded a barracks, who murdered her father and her child, who blinded all of Westeros with her beauty. Brienne doesn't know what Jaime believes about his sister anymore.

Whereas, far earlier in their journey, his reactions had been quite pronounced, he has become a closed book, when it comes to Cersei. But Brienne knows some things. It isn't uncommon for Jaime to cry out for his sister in the night. She has learned how to quell it. The agonised, strangled mutterings of that name seem to idle when she pulls his arm around her. Brienne is thankful that she can at least give him this, if little else.

It isn't hard for Brienne to conjure up a vision of Cersei Lannister in her head. The Queen of Beauty is indisputably that, after all. Brienne's rare glimpses of Jaime's sister have shown her what a woman should be. She is graceful and beautiful. Stunningly so. She knows how to bear herself. Even the reports of her being made to walk naked through the streets of King's Landing had afforded her some pride, though some were not as complimentary.

Cersei is the epitome of a woman. She is elegant and alluring and drowning in all of the sorts of womanly skills Brienne could never dream of aspiring to, for all of her wish to do so.

And here I am, sleeping under tattered furs with her true lover. If Cersei is a beauty to be hung amongst the stars, to be gazed upon and marvelled at by every one living, Brienne knows that she herself is but a beast scrabbling around in the mud, unwilling to even bear the burden of looking at the reflection of that sky, so brightly bejewelled, in a puddle. The comparison would flay her.

She considers Jaime's leaving. 'I'm sorry, my Lady.' That is what he always says, when this comes to pass.

Brienne thinks of the woman he had, and the woman he has been reduced to sleeping next to.

Of course you are sorry, Jaime. How could you not be?

Chapter 9: Flint

IN WAR - FLINT

"I'm doing my best, Jaime!" Brienne spits out, his somewhat cutting words of advice clearly unwelcome. The sharp scrape of her blade against the flint becomes swifter and firmer.

At least it brings forth a few more sparks, Jaime thinks, though the sorry looking handful of tinder still shows no sign of wanting to take light.

Tormund crouches beside her and picks up the small ball of flimsy and relatively dry wood scrapings they've managed to gather together, between them. He holds them out in his palm before the Maid of Tarth.

"I don't want to burn you, Tormund," she says, all bluntness tangled with concern in her.

"Even I'm past the point where I care, my lady," the old man loudly reassures her. He waves his free hand in front of her face. It is pock-marked with little, round scars. "And look. Do you think I haven't done this before? I'm not not some softly made southron lord, used to feather beds and such. I've seen a few winters."

Jaime ignores the unsubtle slight from Tormund. There have been a number of them, of late. Brienne's agreement to the wildling's point is shortly told by the flint rising from the meagre fireplace of flat stones they had all gathered together above a bed of firm ice and metal striking at it again. She does so even before she speaks. "It will be quicker."

She would know. It is a strange quirk of fate that she has been unveiled as one of the swiftest makers of fire in Castle Black. Jaime would guess that this is the very reason that Tormund hasn’t yet demanded her flint and made it his own, his having been taken about three major skirmishes ago, before they even ventured north; when he lost not only a goodly portion of his favourite furs in a sharp sword slice, but the small sack, tied to him, which bore what he simply and furiously called ‘what I need to live,’ later on. Though it has become a state of being that just stealing a flint when someone sleeps is enough to get folk killed. In truth, there have been three to die after doing so, that Jaime has heard of.

They are still close to half a day from getting back to the Wall, and the relative safety of Castle Black, by his reckoning. Yet they are also out of all supplies, as they have been for two days, as well as Jaime can read it. They are all near to broken by tiredness, despite this particular task having proven utterly fruitless. The distance of their travel was not so very far, but had been slower going than they had thought it would be, the drifts of snow north of the Wall now being some feet deeper than they were during Tormund and Jaime’s most recent and longer ranging.

The tinder catches light in Tormund’s palm. And they all smile at it. The Husband of Bears curls his fingers in and huffs over the precious warmth, before almost nimbly placing it within the few pieces of firewood they’d found or fashioned. Even Jaime had held middling sticks between his teeth and knees earlier, scraping off frozen bark with a dagger in his lone hand, for the hope of a little fire.

And here it is.

They wait and watch, barely daring to breathe as little flickers of orange begin to take hold.

There is so much tension in it. The three of them sit there, willing warmth to come to them, and even Tormund is silent during the wait. But then they see a single, dancing flare of yellow, rising up and dancing from this paltry pile of wood, and they grin at each other.

Still, they don’t speak, not wanting to curse this good fortune. It is a good while before Jaime feels brave enough to whisper, “How long do you think we have?”

Tormund glances down at the small pile of sticks he is keeping from the snow, in curled up folds of his furs. “Two hours at the most.”

Jaime feels, more than sees, Brienne nod next to him. She may be as quick as the Smith, when it comes to finding fire, but Tormund is better than either of them at keeping it alive, and they both know it. They gather in closer and reach towards the feeble light. Jaime throws part of his cloak about Brienne as he does so. She looks at him curiously.

He says nothing, just holding hand and stump out to try and capture some of the weak warmth wending its way out from the newly born blaze. If he freezes during their return, it would be bad for him. If she does, it could be worse for them all.

The sound of a man’s footsteps, each one muffled by a fair amount of snow, comes to them. They all begin to grasp at their weapons, but Kantyr comes out of the darkness and drops himself into the place by Tormund. “There is nothing,” he says, reaching out for the flames himself. His findings are not a surprise.

“Where do you think they have all gone?” Jaime asks, though he both knows and fears the answer.

“South,” Tormund says, with certainty. “The Gift was a gift to them, I think.” He laughs, and it is a bitter, harsh sound. It grates, and Jaime thinks it must be so much harder for this man, to have seen all of that which he has known become barren, the lands of his life made dead. Though Jaime has come here to fight in this desolation, he can at least still hope that everything is not lost.

He glances at Brienne, who seems to be entranced by the the growing fire, and instead of throwing out so many of the cutting words which traipse through his mind, he says, “I’m hungry.” He is. They all are.

That makes Kantyr grin. “I can make you a meal. Would you miss the rest of that arm?”

Jaime looks at the Thenn harshly. “You would eat me?”

Kantyr seems to consider the matter. “Yes,” he says,” and you, Tormund, if I had to. Sorry.”

“It’s what you do,” Tormund says, though he doesn’t seem to like it, pulling his furs tighter about himself and cursing as the pieces of wood still held within them make it difficult. Jaime leans back a touch and points at Brienne, who is still spreading her fingers out widely, collecting as much warmth as she can from the flames. Carefully going about not listening. He suddenly understands that this is something she has probably done since Highgarden, so long ago, a way of coping with the words of men, in a place of them.

Kantyr shakes his head firmly , and Jaime can guess what he means.

He feels it now, more so than he had when he was her prisoner, yet a stitch less than when he gave her the sword she still bears.

Stop lying to yourself.

If Jaime thinks for a moment that she means any less to him than she had on that day, when she had meant so much, it is a falsehood. Since then, they have fought for each other. Bled for each other, too. She is better than he had known, even then. She has proven it, a thousand times over. She is more.

Jaime glances at Kantyr and knows that this man who eats men, as deeply flawed as he is, can see it too.

It may well be that this is not a time for beauty, or women deemed worthy of song. But it is a time for women who are simply worthy. Who are good.

He looks again at Brienne, who is doing nothing other than rubbing her hands over the fire.

And you don't see it, do you, wench? You don't see it at all.

Chapter 10: Stab

Notes:

This was not haplessly typed out in my normal three hours of drinkytimes, but in two batches of the same. It was all, I can promise you, written whilst under the influence. Even this. *Hic* True story. My thanks to RoseHeart for her support and extra super-duper thanks and biscuits for this chapter must go to Nurdles, who put up with my epic, tragic and drunken worryworting after drinkysesh number one, when I was having a weird-bod freakout about breaking my own stoopid rules.

 

IN WAR - STAB

 

The Wall has been looming over them for what must be days elsewhere, ever pale in the moonlight. The end of their ranging seems to have stretched as the first sighting of its vastness, which brought them such joy, drew out into hour after hour of fighting through snowdrifts, bringing it no nearer.

Yet this most recent spell, since their final little fire spat forth its last heat, has been by far the most trying part of this time away from Castle Black. Their group was on a thickly frozen path in a small ravine, not long after they silently agreed to go on, still moving but blessedly shielded from the cutting wind and deeper drifts, when a boom of laughter from Tormund was met with a slip of snow and ice from above their heads.

She and Tormund had had luck enough to remain standing, if a touch unsteadily, with the rush of snow swirling in and settling quickly to a thick, fresh layer reaching to just above their knees. Jaime and Kantyr, who were perhaps ten feet behind them, were not so fortunate. There had been just the briefest moment where everything was perfectly still and silent, before she turned and lunged toward the newly formed bank of hardening snow, with Tormund close behind her.

Brienne attacked it as she met it without hesitation, but Tormund reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her sideways. “Where they were is not where they’ll be, girl!” he whispered harshly, clearly afraid of bringing down yet more snow upon them. So Brienne had let herself be led by him, well aware that this man was far more used to perils of this sort. They scrabbled their way around and downwards some, until lower on the shallowing slope, Tormund became very still as his gaze, dark in the shadows, scoured the slip for any signs of life.

“Unbelt your sword,” he told her, and she did so immediately. “Come with me, and do as I do.” He began to make his way up the slight incline into the slip, treading carefully, his own sheathed blade in his right hand. There was a moment of horror in Brienne when he first stabbed his covered weapon down into the snow, but reason had been swift to come to her when he did it again.

He is feeling for them.

She joined the Husband of Bears in the search then, some feet away; Oathkeeper, nestled safely in rich metal and leather, sliding no more or less smoothly in and out of the field of white than Tormund’s less renowned sword. “Take off your gloves,” Tormund muttered to her. “You may only catch as much as the edge of a cloak. You need to know it, when you do.”

Brienne complied and tucked them behind her leathers, the frigid air stinging as soon as her hands were uncovered. She barely noticed the rawness always present in them flare into greater life when the scabbard plunged deeper, her fingers with it. Cold bit, but all she knew was what she was wanting to feel through her hands and the soles of her sodden, booted feet.

“I have one!’ Tormund grunted, already obscured by arcs of glittering snow, being thrown up at a tremendous rate, his arms working furiously towards his quarry. Brienne left her blade standing where she last used it and waded over, all the time feeling guilt as one name coloured her every conscious thought. As though there were not two men in danger.

Jaime.

She assisted Tormund in his task, just a moment’s watching enough to tell her how this was best done. It took them longer than she’d thought possible, though it may not have been so at all, to free the black clad legs of a man she hoped would live, yet did not wish to see. “Help me pull him out, Brienne, and we’ll keep looking.”

So it might have been, but as Kantyr’s head emerged, he was already screaming. At first Brienne believed it was in fear, but it became obvious as his outflung arms were tugged out that one of them was badly misshapen. Soft falls of snow, sounding like sand running through fingers, but looking more like waterfalls in the low light, started cascading from the higher parts of the ravine at the dreadful noise which came from the sorely injured man.

Tormund had grasped at her shoulder most firmly then, passing her his sword so that time could be saved. “Keep going, girl. Try closer to here. I will have to gag our Thenn.”

Brienne did so without pause, and even if her movements might have seemed hurried, were anyone to have seen them, she truly bent every part of herself to finding Jaime. She had known that her fingers would tell her, would she but let them, that there must have been dirks being pushed in behind her nails and that her skin was gone, burned off in the cold fire of winter. It hadn’t mattered. Her desperate search was reduced to what little sensation was left in the palms of her hands and it wasn’t until the slip was as deep as her hip-bones that she felt something. So unsure was she, that she stabbed the same spot thrice more to make it certain.

“I think I have him,” she’d softly yet urgently called, only then aware of Kantyr’s having fallen into quietness, his pain reduced to low moans by a strip of Tormund’s cloak, newly torn away and shoved into his mouth. When the wildling finally stepped close to aid her, she had taken two feet from the snow in front of her by herself, her want to get to Jaime no longer a want, but a need. They worked with speed, but it felt like forever. Brienne was filled with the fear that he could not breathe, or that his neck was broken.

When they got to him, all they could see was his back and thighs. Tormund kicked viciously at the shallower snows behind them, revealing Jaime’s calves, before he slapped Brienne’s hands away from the boiled leathers at which she was already grasping. “I will guide his head out, girl. You take his legs.”

Though part of her had railed against just that moment of delay, she knew it was right, and followed every word Tormund uttered. The search had been long, but this last part was not, a twisting of limbs and a concerted effort seeing Jaime pulled up out this icy tomb, and laid by their sides atop the slip.

Alive.

That first, lengthy sucking in of air as they wrestled him into place was as beautiful to Brienne as birdsong. She’d been unable to hide what she held within her, shoving Tormund out of her way so she could cup her hands about Jaime's head. "Are you hurt?"

He did nothing but shake, his frame tortured whilst his chest heaved. "Jaime. Are you hurt?" Only then had he appeared to hear her at all, though his gaze skittered away from her face almost as soon it settled there. His head twisted in her grip as if to free it, and Brienne gentled her hold some. Tormund told her Jaime's legs seemed unbroke, his rough checking of snow covered limbs done.

"We'll have to get him moving," the wildling told her. "If it were just Jaime, we could stop to make him warm. But Kantyr -," Tormund grimaced, "that arm of his is in a bad way, girl. He might not survive it, if we don't get him back."

Brienne looked at the vast man and knew he spoke it true. "Get Kantyr onto the horse. I will see to Jaime." That their smallest horse, a thickly-coated, stubborn animal which had outlived all of it's companions by what might be three days was the only one surviving, meant that both of the men caught in the slip could not be borne upon her hairy back to safety.

And it was already clear then that although Jaime's face was bleeding, the Thenn was in a far worse state.

So she had not been able to afford the knight in their company any gentleness, hauling him off his snowy bed and dropping him to his feet, catching him with one arm when he threatened to fall under his own weight, as she scrabbled inside her leathers. "Jaime. Listen to me. We must get to safety on foot. Do you hear me?" He only did so the second time she asked, some kind of thought in him brought about by her slipping her retrieved glove onto his right hand, albeit with some difficulty.

Jaime had weakly nodded, enough to tell Brienne that he was with her, however hard his ribs worked against hers through thick wool and leather, still seeking precious air that was no longer hard to find. The burden of him was burning her right arm without them having taken a single step, so she abruptly told him to hold tightly onto her whilst she removed his frozen cloak and some of the sodden layers beneath it, discarding them and replacing them with the same number of her own. And then one more.

That being done, she held him to her side and firmly told him not to let go of her whilst they began to move, barely able to reach out to retrieve Oathkeeper as they passed it by.

The following hours must surely have been brewed in the Seven Hells, even if Tormund was good enough to keep the pace slower than he might have done, were he on his own. He also made sure to leave as wide and deep a path through the snow as he could, his legs kicking out wide as he went, which eased their way some. But Jaime was almost insensate and unspeaking. His legs, if unharmed, were often given to failing underneath him. Despite that, his arms never left her waist. Brienne, by then sure that the constant twitching of her calves must be due to the daggers of ice stuck within them, was occassionally forced to softly sing the songs of children and even those of men to keep him from falling into the neverending sleep of winter at her side.

If singing 'The Bear and the Maiden Fair' once or twice was unpleasant, she hadn't noticed it, particularly once she knew that Jaime, in that state, might prefer 'Old Stone Bridge is Falling Down', his head nodding against the leathers covering her chest at the simpler melody. He almost seemed to form the words with his mouth, from time to time, though there was not a sound from him.

Time had dragged, and now it still does too, even if there are only yards left to the Wall.

Brienne is being hurt by the chill as she never has been before, understanding the talk of it burning more than she had ever thought possible, when Tormund, in front of them as he remains, bangs on the ill-repaired gate with his fist.

There is no response.

She and Jaime struggle through this last, short distance, and there must be something in the feel of the badly repaired patchwork of metal as they bump untidily into it which stirs Jaime to life. It is as if the very closeness of safety brings him back to himself.

The arms which have gripped her so tightly since the ravine are gone, and he is now woken from the horror which has clouded his mind during this final part of their ranging. He is unsteady on his feet, but seems not to care as his boot lashes out. “Let us pass!” Jaime suddenly shouts, kicking at the gate. “Let us the fuck in!”

Brienne rests her forearm against his back, so that he might not fall, even whilst he kicks again. And again. He does not stop until the barrier opens, and she worries that although there is little strength left in him, he will have bloodied his feet, within his boots.

Once there is a sliver of torchlight through the parting gate, Jaime falls silent and begins to shake once more. Brienne looks to Tormund as she takes a hold of Jaime, bringing him close. "Get Kantyr to the Maesters. We will speak to Jon. Thank you."

Tormund just nods and moves the small horse bearing the injured man into the passageway into Castle Black.

They follow the men and the animal through this place, made of ice, yet somehow so very much warmer than any other they've known for some while.

As they walk by one wall-mounted torch after another, Brienne notices something she would rarely have expected to in the man keeping a shuddering arm about her waist. He is small, next to her; made so, in true fear. She has known him before, when it had him clasped in its jaws, but this has simply been too much. Whereas fear would make him give her all manner of unsightly names in the past, this is not a day for such things from either of them, it would seem.

"I can speak to Jon myself, Jaime."

He merely shakes his head, his teeth clacking. She knows what he is thinking. He had led them, north of the Wall. He is determined to report, as his position demands. Brienne knows there is little to be gained in arguing the point. She would be the same herself, in Jaime's place.

Instead, Brienne swipes her left forearm over his cheeks, trying to remove the blood which ran and froze there, though it simply smears the stains on his skin yet further, so she leaves them be, and they move on in quiet.

When they get to the other end of the tunnel, they find the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch waiting for them. With Tormund and Kantyr having swept hurriedly through ahead of them, they come to a halt, waiting to be asked about what they have seen. Jaime shuffles away from her.

"How went the ranging?" Jon Snow asks, politely choosing not to notice the movement, or how desperately they had been clinging to each other before it.

Brienne goes to tell him, yet finds the meat of the matter being spilled from Jaime far more precisely and easily than she'd thought he could manage. “It was pointless,” Jaime spits through chattering teeth. “Fuck all to be seen.”

The Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch looks at the bloodstains, cuts and scratches on Jaime’s face. “Then what happened to you, Ser?”

“He was caught in a snowslip, my Lord,” Brienne quietly tells him. “Kantyr, the Thenn, was as well. He has broken an arm quite ill.”

Jon Snow is a practical man, and must have known his fair share of men who have found themselves consumed by snow and ice, many of whom will not have survived the experience. And he surely cannot fail to see how Jaime is shivering as he stands apart from her now, though he is trying to hide it by grasping firmly at his handless arm with the other. “Do you need to see the Maesters?” he asks.

“Fuck the Maesters.”

“I’ll take that for a refusal,” Jon says wryly. That he is not offended is clear. There is even some concern in him, when he continues. “Jaime, go and get some rest. If there is nothing I need to know now, we can speak later on.” He nods at Brienne, a silent order for her to take care of him. It is one she is all too willing to obey, unhappy with the idea of even letting Jaime out of her sight for a while yet. Her hand, as stone cold as it is, does not leave Jaime's, after his grabbing at it when they leave the Lord Commander.

She leads him out to south of the Wall and to the large, crowded chamber which has become their home, in this dismal place. The warmth inside is astonishing, though Brienne knows it is not truly so great. They have just been so cold for so long that the heat from others and from torches alone feels like bathing in sunlight during the height of summer.

They pick their way through the mess of stinking blankets, as ever discarded in the place where folk are supposed to walk, while they make their way over to their own.

Once they are standing by their familiar pile of comfort, Brienne takes her cloak from Jaime, and does not stop there. When she is done, she has removed almost all but his breeches, knowing that wet clothing will only serve to make him unwell. She is careful to check his feet, and a toenail is indeed split and bleeding. She can see to that later, however. Now he must be warmed.

"Get under," she tells him, pointing at their blankets, and Jaime does. Brienne strips herself down to her breeches and shirt, leaving the clothes and leathers she removes in an untidy heap which Jaime will no doubt comment upon, when he is more himself again.

She joins him beneath the covers, and unusually, does not give Jaime her back. They rarely sleep face to face, although it has happened before. He does not reach for her, which is also the normal way of things. He simply lies there, shaking, and still so small. So Brienne pulls him close instead, going so far as to twist about until she can rest his head against her chest, where she is warmest. She doesn't know why, but it seems like the right thing to do. "Come, Jaime. You are safe now," she whispers. There is a twitch of hesitation in him, but she sets his mind to ease with words spoken at her own expense, though they do not hurt to say to him. Not anymore. "You need not fear, Jaime. You will find little enough here to smother you."

At that, an arm tightens about her waist and Jaime nuzzles against her, only to settle his cheek on the place over her heart. Brienne feels his breath, damp, warm and alive, washing over her, and begins to pray silently to all of the Seven, in meagre thanks she has so scarcely given them, of late, that he can at all. Though the Gods are soon forgotten once more, when a strange kind of laughter, more a hitch in the breath, emerges from the man she is holding, and holds so dear, followed by some haltingly offered words. "There’s enough to tickle the end of my nose, wench."

That is more like Jaime and she smiles to herself, lifting her hand to tangle it fondly in the hair behind his ear. His shivering starts to abate shortly thereafter, and he has a question for her. "How many times did you stab at me? I can't remember."

"Four," she tells him. "I had to be certain. I couldn't waste time digging if you weren't there."

He thinks on that for a while, before quietly saying, "Thank you, Brienne."

"Sleep well, Jaime." She strokes his hair until he finds his rest, only then allowing herself to give in to the exhaustion which cloaks her too.