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I
That first morning, Brienne wakes to a dreadful headache and a sleeping lion on her bed. There’s a bitterness rising in her throat that should compel her to stand and leave this cocoon of warmth, but her limbs ache pleasantly, heavy on the mattress. All of her aches, she realises, and not quite like it hurts after a particularly good fight, though there’s still some of that too, in the ways she is still bruised all over from the battle against the dead. But no, she aches… there, and that is most certainly new. New, too, is waking up with a heavy arm carelessly thrown around her middle, and a man’s warm breath in her ear.
Not just any man’s. Jaime’s.
He is shockingly handsome in the cold light of the morning, face peeking from under the furs they are sharing, just as shockingly handsome as he was the previous night, lit by the warmth of the fire and burning under her hands. Any other day Brienne would curse her weakness for his pretty face, but today is different: today she drinks her fill greedily, eyes roaming from the lines hardship has etched on his face, to the bump on his nose, the high cheekbones, the beard that conceals the sharpness of his jawline. His mouth, which she had - after much inelegant fumbling- learnt finally to kiss.
Give me a while longer, she asks the Gods. They never listen, but still, Brienne tries. All she wants is a while longer until his eyes open and this is over before it has begun.
But her prayers go unanswered: before she knows it, his eyelids twitch and her lion wakes. He startles for a second, eyes roaming around the room wildly, squinting against the blinding winter light coming from her window, and then he seems to register her presence beside him, the softness of her waist against his bare stump, and his body relaxes next to hers. And slowly, improbably, he smiles, and his eyes go soft and fond at finding her there, with him. It is too sweet to be true: no one has ever looked at her like this. She didn’t even know such a thing could be possible. One of his feet run down her calf, and he is evidently amused by how she jumps a little at it, how her treacherous skin blushes under his gaze. His eyes crinkle at the corners.
“Good morning,” he says mildly. “I trust you slept well.” Brienne cannot quite understand how Jaime can regard waking up next to her as something normal, something to be desired. Brienne has duties to attend to, Sansa will be expecting her – yet no task has ever seemed as unsurmountable as leaving this bed now.
“Good morning,” her voice, she is happy to notice, neither wavers nor breaks. For a moment they look at each other, not quite knowing what to do or say, and then they are kissing anew, mindless of their foul breath. It’s slow at first, their bodies still heavy with sleep, but it does not stay slow for long. She is uncoordinated and overeager in her need to pull him closer, and he is no less enthusiastic. Brienne bites the cutting edge of his smile, soothes it with his tongue, and uses her strength to roll them, until she has him caged under her and pliant, for once. Jaime laughs and laughs, surprise and delight warring on his face at this new development, quite different from the way things played out last night: “so this is what bedding a knight is like, is it?” he teases, knowing full well it will make her blood boil. “How long have you been waiting to put me in my place, good ser?” Brienne bends down and silences him the way she now knows how. It feels rather like steel clashing against steel that day on the bridge a life time ago, like fighting back to back with him against the night as if they were of one mind, one body; only it’s better, so much better than anything else she’s known, even if the burning it ignites inside her feels as dangerous as fire, and just as wild.
II
The first few days after the Battle of the Dawn will always stay with Podrick, he knows. The sun has come back to Winterfell, freezing cold as it is, and with the dead gone and the reconstruction started, every dawn brings with it a gratefulness to still be counted amongst the living.
To be fair, the dawn very often finds Pod with a very willing castle wench ready for another tumble in the bedsheets, which is a vast improvement over sleeping on cold ground amongst unwashed soldiers praying that day will not be their last.
When Pod first arrived at Winterfell, he thought it a proud and cold place, and the Northeners a cold and proud people, but now he knows they are decent and welcoming once you get used to their ways. People have been kind to him, with many fellow soldiers nodding at him and clapping him on the shoulder as they walk past him. Podrick Payne, war hero; it has a nice ring to it, does it not? He has done well for himself, by Ser Brienne’s side. He has heard the men talk: the lady was the Warrior reborn in the field of battle, strong, confident, unstoppable –Pod has never been prouder of following her and he will always owe the Lannister brothers a debt of his own, for introducing him to the finest, most honourable knight in all the realm.
They still train together more often than not, though he has new duties at Winterfell besides squiring for Ser Brienne. He no longer helps her with her armour in the morning and at night; indeed, he has learnt that it is best not to go near her room –their room, for Jaime Lannister seems to have moved there for good three nights ago- early in the morning or late at night, lest he hears… more than he wants to. He supposes she has Ser Jaime now, to help her with her armour every morning, though considering how red faced she is sometimes when coming down for breakfast, he probably takes more than a few liberties with the task.
He is happy for her, though, he really is: the most he was able to coax out of her in all their months riding together across Westeros was a smirk, and that was mostly when he lasted more than ten seconds during sword practice before she knocked him down. Now she smiles often, small half smiles that she lets bloom into unselfconscious grins, not caring if she looks girlish or silly. Even when she is stern and demanding, commanding attention in the courtyard as she supervises his progress, there’s a lightness to her that is new and lovely to see.
And the best part? Sometimes she makes Ser Jaime spar with him, and it’s every childhood dream Pod’s ever had: now he gets to go toe to toe with one of the finest swordsmen in the land, and he clasps his arm like you would a comrade and tells him “good job, lad” as if this was in any way normal, because training with Jaime Lannister is now apparently his life. It is true, Ser Jaime looks very different to the man Pod remembers seeing in tournaments when he was a child: he is more silver than gold now, perhaps no longer in his prime, and still rebuilding his own strength now that he fights with his off hand, but he is still damably fast, light and sure on his feet, making him struggle to keep up. It’s different to fighting Ser Brienne, who is all strength and power, and who rolls her eyes at fanciful moves she says are for tournaments rather than proper fights. Ser Jaime is both an easier target, being a little closer to him in height and reach, and a harder one, because he is shrewd and unpredictable and, above all, eager to impress their mistress of arms.
“That was poorly done,” is all she says, after Podrick ends up face down into the dirt for the fourth time that morning.
“Apologies, ser,” he cries out, as he dusts out his trousers and picks up his sparring sword.
“Not you, Pod, him,” she corrects, and Ser Jaime bristles.
“Excuse me?”
“You left yourself completely open just then. Stop showing off and concentrate. If he’d been faster-“
“-he wasn’t.”
“If he’d been faster you’d be dead.”
“I do know what I am doing, you know.”
“So you’ve been reminding me for as long as I’ve known you. I remain unconvinced.”
By now it’s not only Podrick, but at least ten more people who’ve conveniently decided their daily tasks can wait to see the fast back and forth between the two of them, as Ser Jaime strides towards her, sword in hand and a challenge in his eyes. He’s never actually seen them fight each other, but he’s wondered. Ser Brienne told him once that she was the last person to fight him, back when he still had his right hand. Pod would have paid a fortune to see it.
“Want to have a go at it yourself, don’t you?”
“Not particularly, no,” she bites back. Podrick is both entertained and worried as to whether it'd be wise for them to “have a go at it” right now, in full view, considering. And then, she sets her shoulders back, lording over every extra inch she has on him, and delivers the killing blow: “I hear you fight dirty, besides.”
“Oh, and you’d know all about it,” he bites back, “come on, knock me into the dirt like the rest of them. You certainly enjoyed it once.”
“Are they at it again?” comes a voice to his left. He glances down to find Lord Tyrion, looking endlessly amused at the spectacle taking place before their eyes.
“They are always at it, my lord. But I think they might actually spar for once. I’ve never seen it.”
Lord Tyrion smirks. “Oh, they’ve been doing plenty of sparring, my lad. Very loudly, and very often. Only one sword is usually involved, but I hear the lady has been making use of it very enthusiastically all the same.”
He turns to the two knights, trying and failing not to chuckle at Lord Tyrion’s words, to find a scene that gives him pause. Ser Jaime grins, impishly, leaves the sword aside and his one good hand moves fast, gripping one of Ser Brienne’s in a flash. She is in full armour, looking as far from a fair maiden as it is possible to imagine, but Ser Jaime is ever the knight from songs as he bows and makes a show of kissing her knuckles gallantly, his smile wider as he looks up at her and she scoffs and rolls her eyes.
“It’d be my pleasure to get knocked into the dirt by you, my lady,” he intones, aiming for mockery and not quite managing it. Podrick doesn’t miss the way Ser Brienne briefly squeezes his fingers before pulling her hand away.
“Not “ser”, brother? After knighting her yourself?” laughs Lord Tyrion.
“We leave “Ser” for the battlefield,” Ser Jaime announces to his brother. “But she is my lady the rest of the time,” Pod didn’t know a man could purr, nor a Lion of Lannister, but that’s what Ser Jaime does. The lady in question sighs wearily in his direction, and Podrick suspects he and Lord Tyrion have wandered into an old argument, or a shared joke he does not know the punchline for.
The brothers move to a side as Ser Brienne moves to take Ser Jaime’s place, and Pod grabs his sword again and pretends to miss the way Ser Brienne’s cheeks have coloured, the way her eyes go soft when she takes one final look at Ser Jaime, watching her intently as she adopts a fighting stance. None of this is surprising, not really. Pod has known for a while she has a tender heart: as tender as any young girl’s, filled with dreams and hopes and kindness. For a wild moment he wishes there was any way to encase it, to keep it safe from harm. Something perhaps like the steel he used to fasten to her body so that no swords would harm her.
And then Ser Brienne barks at him to concentrate and his thoughts skid to a halt. Pod rolls his shoulders back, takes a deep breath and presses the attack.
III
Here is the oddest thing about Brienne, that Jaime both loves and hates about her: against all evidence to the contrary, she seems to think he is a good man. Worse yet, she thinks him kind. And when Jaime is not trying his best to live up to her good opinion of him, foolish as it might be, a perverse desire rises in him sometimes to prove her wrong. The urgency of their first night burns in him anew as he nips at the tender flesh of her long pale neck, at the place where the ugly welts of the bear’s claws end, and he bites down until she whines, high and vulnerable in her throat. Jaime never learned to take his time, and so the first few times he shared her bed he was greedy and impatient in his passions. At first, he pleasured her as he’d learned how (their joint enthusiasm somewhat making up for his hopelessly clumsy left hand), like one does when moments can only be stolen in the dark, like they could lose themselves in each other and cheat time, cheat death, cheat the whispers he hears in his head sometimes, when it’s late at night and sleep won’t come.
When he finally got it into his thick skull that that there was no need to rush if he was not getting kicked out of bed before morning, he switched tactics. So now he makes it a point to drive her mad with wanting and delays her pleasure just to feel her trembling under him, sobbing out his name so loudly he is sure all of Winterfell can hear what he does to her. It turns out she has a dirty mouth on her, his not so prim, no longer Maid of Tarth; she has picked up a thing or two from soldiers, and from the filth that comes out of his own mouth. Jaime has only known one woman, one who could be as soft in bed as she could be unyielding everywhere else, so all he could anticipate were sweet, tender pleas for mercy, for her to succumb to him with a sigh. Really, he should have known better: instead, Brienne trashes on the mattress, threatening bloody murder if he just won’t get on with it, tearing the sheets off the bed in her clenching fists and spurring him on with her heels on his side as if she was trying to keep an unruly horse in line. Jaime ought to give her what she wants, anything she wants, but he is at the moment out of custom armour, fancy swords or knightly tokens of esteem – instead, he moves his mouth away from the bruise he’s pressed into the creamy softness of her thigh and kisses her, finally, precisely where she wants it, enjoying the litany of groans and curses it earns him.
Whether Brienne puts up with him despite his many rough and sharp edges, the many ways in which he is callous and greedy and insufferable, or because even a paragon of knightly virtues enjoys the dark thrill of fucking the Kingslayer, Jaime doesn’t know, will not ask her.
A better man would marry her, perhaps. Or a worse one, considering. Jaime has made her no promises, and he doesn’t know what that makes him. “I am to stay here, serving Sansa. At least until the war is done. Do you wish to-?” “Yours to command, remember?” And she smiled and kissed him and that was that. He feels oddly lighter now – things are easier with Brienne. Is this what it’s like, for other men who have no white cloak to soil, no sister they would burn a kingdom for? In Brienne’s bed there are no more conflicting vows for Jaime Lannister, no kings, no queens, no castles to sack, or children to cripple: everyday that comes and finds them both whole and alive is a puzzling gift from the Gods. Half the time, he is surprised he breathes, still. He hopes all the fighting and the politics are finally behind him.
Before he knows it, they have a routine together, having breakfast side by side in the great hall and dinner in the room that is now theirs, with a fire that Jaime learns to tend to diligently, without complaint. It’s so good with her, so warm and natural and uncomplicated, that at times he forgets himself, and he becomes another man, a man he barely recognises. Sometimes tenderness, of all things, comes to him, and that always seems to undo them both when they stumble into it by mistake. She lets him take the armour off her every night, piece after piece of this gift he gave her a lifetime ago, eyeing him patiently with those large doe eyes of hers while Jaime trembles like a green squire undoing his first corset. Some nights he has hot water brought up for her, so she’ll find a steaming tub by the fire when she arrives. Jaime has never been more painfully aware of all the ways in which he is unworthy and inadequate, than he is in those moments as he helps her undress after a long day and walks her to the bath. In truth, he has never done this for anyone in his life; there has been no one to care for, other than Cersei, who would not have allowed it -she had maids for that. But he tries now, because Brienne once did it for him, and more besides; because Brienne would let no one else come close enough. He kneels by the tub in his shirtsleeves next to the roaring fire, while she lowers her large, strong body into the water with a sigh. He helps her wash her hair, rubs away the tension at her shoulders with his one hand, and when that is done, he presses careful kisses down the back of her neck. He doesn’t need to look at her to know she is smiling softly, indulgently, her back to him, open and trusting in a way that breaks his heart every time.
In truth, Jaime is a selfish man, has always been. Here he is in the North, away from it all, refusing to think about what he has left behind even if it kills him, gorging himself on Brienne’s warmth and trust. He has the strangest urge then, to press his forehead against the back of her neck and weep. He tells himself it’s relief that he can finally have this, relief and surprise and gratefulness, but there’s something darker too, which he dares not examine. Every night, he watches her as sleep claims her and it’s both the sweetest pleasure he’s known and the worst kind of agony. In those dark moments, when sleep won’t come, he doesn’t find living with Brienne quite so easy. He wonders, rather, whether dying in her arms in the Long Night would have been easier still.
IV
Even before Sansa, even before the news that change everything, Tyrion readies to leave Winterfell with a troubled mind and a heavy heart. But whatever happens, he wants to part in good terms with Jaime. These few evenings of shared laughter and drinking and commiserating with his brother have taken the sting out of one too many strategy meetings, taken his mind off the doubts that are brewing as he tries to work out what exactly Daenerys is thinking. Those few nights laughing and teasing Jaime will be memories he’ll treasure, he knows – Tyrion has had few friends in his life, and his brother is the only one whose company he has never had to pay for. So, for Jaime, he smiles, and fakes a confidence he doesn’t feel. They meet in the courtyard Brienne and Pod use for sparring, blessedly quiet compared to the rest of the castle, which is awash with preparations as their army prepares to leave.
“Take care, little brother,” Jaime says. Tyrion is reminded of all the times Jaime was the one to leave while Tyrion stayed behind. Back then he was young and golden and everything the family could have possibly desired, and Tyrion watched him go on his white horse and ride off to adventures one too many times. How things have changed.
“With two dragons and an army on my side, brother? What could possibly go wrong?”
“She won’t surrender, Tyrion. You know it.”
There’s no need to ask who this she refers to. Jaime’s tone, revulsion and longing and despair all tangled up in a grotesque knot he’d rather not untangle, tells Tyrion all he needs to know.
“She might. When she sees she cannot win.” And there’s the matter of the child, the child his brother has apparently resigned himself to have lost, but that Tyrion can’t quite give up on. He does not rue Joffrey’s fate, but he sent Myrcella to her death, and he was away helping their enemy while poor Tommen came to a bloody end. The children had been good, had been decent, and he cannot possibly imagine the dreadful hollowness their deaths have left in Cersei’s blackened heart. Surely it might be possible to make her see reason, if only to save the only legacy she is like to have.
He sighs and looks at his brother in the eye: “I will see to it, Jaime. I will try to parlay, and if it all goes wrong, I’ll argue for her life to be spared. For the babe. Leave it to me.”
Jaime goes down on one knee as if he were to embrace him, but instead says softly, a shameful confession: “I’ve become the worst sort of craven, Tyrion. I can barely stand to hear you talk about it all. I cannot bear to even think of it. I-“
“You were at the frontlines in the last battle, brother. Let me handle this fight. It’s better suited to my talents. Stay safe here. Be happy.”
Jaime scoffs at his words, and tenses when Tyrion tries to hug him. He has seen Jaime so content in these last few days he is surprised to see a flash of this bitterness back in him. Then again, mentions of Cersei do tend to spoil everything in Tyrion’s experience. Jaime’s smile is a hollow thing now, his old self-deprecating grin with no mirth reaching his eyes. “What right do I have to happiness, after the things I’ve done?”
This is not a line of questioning Tyrion is comfortable with, in general. While sober, it is intolerable. What right do any of us have to anything? Good people die, and bad people live, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. But the big brother he once idolised might as well be a lost child now, and Tyrion’s heart softens for him. Jaime was the only one to ever show him kindness, the one to go against their family so his life would be sparred: the man may love foolishly but still…
“You deserve to be happy,” Tyrion argues back, as fiercely as he can. “As much as anyone deserves anything. Not that any of us get the things we deserve in the end, but you’d have to be twice the golden fool you are to get a chance at happiness and squander it. It’s a precious thing and in all too short supply.” He thinks of Tysha, of Shae, of the wonder and the bitterness of it, and the pain when it ends. Let Jaime stay safe, up here in the North with his lady knight. It is never easy with Cersei, but it might be easier, he thinks, if he doesn’t also have to deal with Jaime impossibly torn in the middle of them.
V
She doesn’t know it yet, but she will go back to this night a thousand times over. She will catalogue every sign she missed; she will collect every gesture of tenderness, every show of affection, every proof that he felt for her, truly, that it was no lie, even if it is somehow no consolation at all, only a bitter, helpless sort of pain she has no defences against.
But that will be later. Now, there is only the present, a present she hopes will stretch on forever. There’s no helplessness here: rather, she is powerful and treasured for it as she sits astride him, as she takes him inside and stakes her claim on this man. Now he is hers and no one shall take that from her.
“The best part of me, you carry with you always,” he’d said one morning, as she readied for her duties and he looked on her with pride. He did not mean the sword, she knows, though that too, will be hers to wield in his name, for as long as she lives. She wishes she was better with words, that she might find it in her to tell him the weight of everything between them. That he might better understand the ties that bind him to her, have bound him to her for as long as they’ve known each other. But when they are together like this, words seem to fall away, and it’s easier. Here she feels she can prove them all wrong: her body is not brutish or freakish or unsuited to passion but rather, it has been made for it, because her strength and her height and her built mean she can -if only for a little longer- keep him safe in her arms. She is strong enough to hold him when he is weak, and to match him when he is strong. She fights him and she comforts him and she loves him the only way she knows how: honestly, without pretence, with the same fierceness she’s channelled to fight a thousand hopeless battles. This the only peace she can offer him: she cannot promise him that there will be no bloodshed, that he will manage to forgive himself for the choices he has made, that his heart will not break should he find himself the last Lannister standing, when all this is done. She cannot find words to erase the pain of too many loses never mourned.
There’s only herself on offer; it’s all she has.
VI
Sansa has learnt the value in listening first, and listening attentively, and saying precisely what she means to say, after carefully weighing every possible outcome. So it surprised them both, one afternoon, when she forgot her place, and asked Brienne about it: asked why Jaime Lannister would not marry her, but seemed content to share her chambers every night all the same. She immediately regretted it when she saw Brienne tense, but Sansa did not back down. “There has been no talk of that. We are both knights, Lady Sansa. It’s a different sort of promise, but no less binding.”
Knight or not, she wanted to tell her, you are a woman. A woman in a world that is no kind to women, much less women like you. You are a fool if you think the armour he’s given you will protect you from it. Some things cannot be beaten with a sword. It was a familiar voice she heard in her head sometimes, the honeyed voice of Cersei Lannister dripping poison in her ear, a voice she tried (and failed) to ignore. So she turned a seemingly indulgent eye to the pair of them, but watched carefully all the same. It was not her place to question Brienne’s choice, and it would have never occurred to Sansa to question her loyalties, and so she didn’t. It was him she had doubts about, him he was really watching, because she knew full well that Cersei Lannister stays with you, and no one was ever more exposed to her influence, and sought it out eagerly besides, than the man who was currently their guest. Still, Jaime Lannister had fought for them, and fought well, seemed to care little for strategy for the war ahead, and was apparently in no hurry to leave them. Perhaps it was best to keep him here, as far away from his sister as possible, and close enough to keep an eye on him.
And then, the day after the news of the dragon’s death, the day after Sansa named the ghost they shared, Jaime Lannister rode away to his doom.
Sansa ordered five of their fastest riders and best men to go after him, knowing full well it was probably futile. She tried not to rage at his betrayal, or to panic over what it might mean, but rather went carefully, methodically, over how it could affect them: if he had indeed gone back to his sister, whatever battle plans he might have overhead in Winterfell, Tyrion and Daenerys were probably reevaluating just now. There was Jon’s army in the middle between King’s Landing and Cersei, and any structural weaknesses in Winterfell he might have noticed would be repaired in the off chance Cersei’s forces prevailed and rode north. All of this Sansa did in silence, alone in her solar as dawn broke. And she made sure she was composed, and the matter had been dealt with, before Brienne came to her, fully armoured and grave, eyes red-rimmed and face carefully blank.
She wishes she didn’t look upon her friend and champion and see what Cersei Lannister would see: a plain-faced, unmarriageable woman, maiden no more, cast away by a man as if she was worth less than dirt. Ah, but this is the price a woman pays for a maiden’s folly.
“Lady Sansa,” Brienne starts. She looks brittle, as if holding herself together through sheer force of will. Her eyes stare ahead, but she won’t make eye contact, which tells Sansa all she needs to know.
“I know what happened, Brienne. You need not explain.”
Tears well up in the woman’s eyes, but they refuse to fall. She is clenching her jaw so tightly Sansa fears she’ll snap it in half. She knows she must tread carefully here, for Brienne will not appreciate pity, and will have no patience for platitudes.
“I do not blame you for it,” she says firmly. “Blame him if you must blame someone, but do not blame yourself. You conducted yourself honestly and honourably. And if anyone in Winterfell were to imply otherwise, you have my permission to beat them black and blue.”
Brienne inhales sharply and says nothing. Sansa watches her patiently, as she starts and stops herself and tries anew. Brienne has never been good with words, but she is honest to a fault. Sansa will never doubt this. Her promises have value. Unlike the promises men make, even when they claim to love.
“I thank you, my lady. But I have dishonoured myself. I was – indiscrete. It was unbecoming. If you wish me to leave…”
“I do not. You are my sworn sword, my protector. I don’t trust easily, yet I trust you. That has not changed. If you wish to leave, that’s another matter. But I would never force you to leave my service over this.”
Brienne nods, visibly overwhelmed, and Sansa hopes Jaime Lannister joins his dreadful sister in the deepest of the seven hells for what he’s done to her. Dishonored. The word, more than anything, feels heavy between them. Sansa thinks back to the dozens of evil men Brienne has fought, the time she has defended those in need, guarded her and Arya and her lady mother, abandoned all comforts, led men into the Long Night with the kind of courage that ought to be written of in songs… and yet none of this will matter to some. Again, Cersei’s beautiful mouth curls in bitter disdain. You see, little dove, when the fearsome knight took her armor off, it turned out she was only a woman, and a woman of honor has but one treasure to guard.
She can’t think of Brienne in those terms. She can’t, and she won’t. To turn her back on Sansa and her siblings would have been dishonourable, and Brienne never did. To run, selfish and craven, with Jaime Lannister of all people to some forgotten corner, that would have been dishonourable. She never did that either. Perhaps she indulged in the thought, from time to time – perhaps this is why Brienne looks away now, why she seems so mortified at the thought of having failed her. But Brienne had trusted him, had born a sword with a lion’s pommel while serving the Starks with pride, and from the way she told the story, had ridden and fought and slept by Jaime Lannister’s side and held his honour and his life in her hands. And she had done it gladly, openly and without shame.
No one will question Brienne’s honour, not if Sansa has any say in the matter.
“Do you know why he left, Brienne?” she asks. It’s a cruel thing to do, but Sansa does it anyway, and she watches Brienne attentively for anything she might give away.
“For her,” is all she says. She will not speak Cersei’s name, but even that her seems to cut her deeper than swords ever could. “He is going to die. He knows it. His choice is made.”
So it is.
“He feels responsible, I think,” Brienne says slowly. “For everything that’s happened.” That there’s still such sympathy in her, when so many would curse and rage…. Sansa is not feeling quite so charitable.
“He is responsible, Brienne. He has done terrible things. He stayed by Cersei’s side for years.”
“I know all of that, my lady. I know. People must think me naïve and stupid and stubborn as a mule, but I know. He told me, back in the Riverlands, back in his chains in your brother’s camp and later, when we were….” She reddens at that, but keeps going. “I know everything he’s done. He is more than his bad deeds, my lady. He always has been.”
Poor woman. What can she possibly tell her? Most people are more than their bad deeds, yet those bad deeds return to haunt them all the same.
She wonders if he’ll get there in time, when that blasted city falls at last. She thinks of that night in the Red Keep, siting with Cersei, convinced it was their last night on Earth. She thinks of the stories she’s heard, of the horrors of the sack of King’s Landing, the screaming soldiers, the whispered prayers, the desperate weeping, the reek of fear and sweat. She thinks of dragon fire, of Arya walking amongst the dead. Of Jon, and the Queen he has decided to be loyal to, to his own bitter end. Perhaps she should be grateful to Jaime Lannister for merely breaking Brienne’s heart, rather than taking her with him. She would have walked into hell besides him – he can’t be that much of a fool, then, if at least he knows Brienne’s love is a blessing he does not deserve.
“That will be all,” Sansa says softly, as sympathetically as Brienne will allow her. “You can take the day off. I shall manage.”
“Sansa- “
“That will be all. Let yourself grieve if you need it. Or go to the training grounds and break the ribs of whoever dares cross you today.” All Sansa can hope for is that she doesn’t ride after that ungrateful idiot. Too many people she cares for have ridden south in a fool’s errand. She fears for Arya and Jon every day. She won’t force Brienne to stay, though she knows she could. But she wishes, still. She wants to tell her not to throw her life away.
Sansa is not impulsive, never has been. She has taken a gamble, sometimes, when the opportunity presented itself, but it is easier to be in control when every move has been carefully planned and executed precisely. But she doesn’t think as she reaches out and takes one of Brienne’s hands in both of hers. It’s as large as a man’s hand, and not at all delicate, but it is steady and warm. She must have dressed in a hurry that morning: she’s forgotten her gloves. Sansa clasps her hand strongly, fiercely in her own, and Brienne clings to her, for the very first time. When she finally looks her in the eye, Sansa sees terrible pain there, but there’s surprise too.
“Thank you,” is all Brienne can say, her voice rough with tears and thick with words unsaid. Sansa watches her wipe her tears away, collecting herself slowly one layer of resolve at a time. This is what they do, Brienne and herself: they armour themselves every morning, in their own ways, against a world that has hurt them. Brienne rests her hand on the pommel of her sword gingerly, like one prods a wound that may never fully heal, and her fingers slowly curl around it as if she had to learn the motion anew.
“With your leave, my lady.”
Sansa nods, and watches her go.