Chapter Text
For striking the lord of the Sapphire Isle, Brienne was locked in her chambers. She fought with all she had the guards and servants her husband had set on her. Her size should have been a weapon. But it had been years since she had picked up a sword or used her fists. The heavy velvet skirts had tangled around her legs during the struggle and the slippers landed nothing but slight kicks on the knees and thighs of the guards.
And while found in her chambers was the bed canopied in silk, chairs upholstered in satins and pillows embroidered by the most delicate of threads and edged with Myrish lace, it was still a prison. Servants had boarded up the windows so she never knew whether it was day or night. Her lord husband humiliated her further by having her fed only stale bread and water once a day.
She was also bound at one of the pillars. She could only lean against it since the ropes were tight.
No one—not her father, misguided as he was in choosing the man that became her husband, nor her septa who had told her repeatedly she need only to look in a mirror to see the true lie of compliments bestowed on her—had treated her so appallingly. Her husband had never whipped her. Never had her stripped by his guards and used by them to remind her that she was a woman and nothing else. But he knew just how to humiliate her.
Men’s usual vices were drink, women and sword. Her husband always took pleasure in putting the Evenstar’s daughter in her proper place.
But if he thought her broken a long time ago, he was very much mistaken. Her early inclination to a martial life had prepared her for pain. Pain from cuts and slashes as she learned the sword, gouges from the morning star and the first, second and third times she broke her nose she remembered clearer than the frantic thrusts of his cock.
He always thought that the way to break her was to deprive her of things. It was why he had her witness the melting of her swords, shield and morning star while she still ached from her first time. Why he had her held by guards as her breeches, armor and boots were thrown in the fire.
And he thought that when she remained quiet and almost unmoving as he rutted in her cunt, she had surrendered and given him her body. A body that was his to do as he pleased since she was his wife. He had done many things to her body. Things she still sometimes felt even when he wasn’t inside her. Things the dark had saved her from. And it was one of those things that finally had his seed quicken in her womb.
When she was heavy with child and refused him in her bed, he paraded whores in front of her chambers. Sometimes summoned her late in the night and forced her to watch what he did to those women. He had wanted her jealous. Wished to provoke her. But she would just look at him with a blank expression until ordered to leave.
He had his head buried in the tits of a whore when told his lady wife’s birthing pains had begun. When he finally deigned to appear in her chambers to look at her baby boy, he still smelled of cheap perfume and rutting. In her anger, she had yelled for the guards to remove him. She refused her son to be dishonored.
The next day, she was dragged from her chambers and flung in a tower. As her skin burned from the might of the sun entering the window, her lips cracked from absence of water and her breasts hurt and swelled from milk, she pleaded and called for whoever might hear that she needed to see her son.
Those two days were the longest of her life. And the most painful. It was the first fissure in her resolve. Keeping her from her child was always going to be a definite blow, her husband had discovered. And he thrived in putting this fear in her whenever she tried refusing him in bed, or when she once again forgot what it meant to be a woman.
Still, he never stopped trying to find out what else would break her. Humiliate her. Little did he realize that Brienne knew more of mockery and humiliation than love and respect. Shamed for her coarse features her whole life, mocked for choosing the sword over needle before marriage. Years of such torment had hardened her. She was helpless when it came to her son but in all she was unbroken.
Until several days ago. When she found out what her husband had done. What he’d agreed to.
She who refused to be baited by his parade of whores and the sick pleasure he drew from depriving her of weapons, breeches, had been unable to stop herself and struck him. It had been a long time since her fist had punched flesh and bone but the resounding crack of his nose was satisfying. It left her knuckles on fire. The pain was enough distraction for the guards and servants to fall on her.
And now. . .here she was. On the brink of madness not from the lack of food and water, sunlight and air, movement. But because of who she might never see again.
All the pain her body had endured since that day in the sept and she’d vowed loyalty to the lump of a man that was her husband was nothing to what was going to happen. She was gagged so she couldn’t even try using her teeth to loosen the bonds. When she had to eat and drink, a guard had to keep a knife at her throat.
Everything that could be a weapon had been removed from her chambers. Her food came wrapped in cloth and the goblet holding the water had to be tipped to her mouth.
Days since her imprisonment, the double doors were suddenly swept open. Brienne, head slumped forward from a nagging, splitting ache beginning from between her ears towards the top of her skull, stared as Humfrey Wagstaff lumbered in. Her lips quirked in a weak smile seeing the bandage on his nose.
He was two and seventy and looked much older. He had no need for a cane yet but walked slowly, and he was squinting at her through milky eyes. Soft when she first laid eyes on him, and softer now that he was lord of the isle, no one would pick him as a fighter. Not even the most desperate.
But because he knew that he’d done Lord Selwyn the huge favor of accepting a daughter so ugly and so unwomanly, he had somehow gained power and enough allies such that no one dared the softest whimper of protest in his treatment of his wife. Those who had were stripped of their titles and even lands. It was why her old maester was sent away. Why Ser Goodwin, the master-at-arms who taught her to fight, just disappeared. The same went with servants sympathetic to her. As a result, nearly if not all servants and guards in Evenfall Hall were loyal first and only to Humfrey.
Besides, Brienne had overheard two women whisper to each other one day while clearing her chambers of stained sheets, it wasn’t like he hit her. He was only being a man, a lord husband, reminding her now and then what a woman should be like. He was no more different from a peasant who owned his wife.
Brienne licked her cracked lips as he stood in front of her. He was not every tall and looked clownish in the blue and rose colors of her house. He let out a sigh looking at her.
“Get her up,” he told someone behind him. He sounded tired and impatient.
Immediately, two servants tried pulling Brienne up. Seeing her bonds were too tight, Humfrey sighed. “Guard, cut the ropes.”
A guard stuck a blade between her wrist and rope and slashed. As he worked on the bonds on her ankles, she removed her gag. The servants helped her up.
Brienne gasped from the sudden rush of blood to her legs. Seeing white for a moment, she felt herself fall if not for the quick hands of the servants seizing her. As she steadied herself, Humfrey looked at her with distaste.
“Are you proud of what you’ve done? Bring her to the looking glass.”
“What other truth is there that I do not yet know, my lord husband?” Her voice was as rough as parchment.
Still, she was pulled and put in front of the full-length looking glass. Her pale hair was limp and greasy from sweat and being deprived of a wash. She was pale too, rather than the usual blotchy skin. Her dress was creased in so many places she doubted it could be smooth again.
“What do you think will your lord father say if he can see you now?”
“Perhaps it is best you tell me. I have no skill in communing with the dead.”
“Why must you always make things so difficult?” He whined. “You don’t even inquire on my health after what you’ve done to me.”
“Milord appears to be as well as he can be, considering he’s been free to move about.” She rubbed the red welts on her wrists.
He watched her, looking pained and resigned. “Did you think striking me should go unpunished?”
“`Tis a woman’s instinct to strike,” she replied, turning away from the mirror. “And you have done your duty in teaching me not only my place but also my behavior.”
“Fishwives strike and shriek. You are my wife. The Evenstar’s daughter.”
Brienne bowed her head slightly. “Thank you for reminding me.”
Instead of replying, he turned and nodded to the servants. Brienne froze when they started undoing the laces of her bodice. Reddening, her head snapped to the door and saw a guard standing there. She looked at Humfrey. “Wait—”
Humfrey saw the guard and let out another sigh. “Fetch the gag.”
Brienne shook her head but still the cloth was returned around her mouth. Stripped down to a shift that left little to the imagination, Humfrey nodded at the guard and then the servants. The gag was removed from Brienne.
“Leave us. Close the door.”
She tried not to look murderous when his cold hands took hold of hers. They were cold like dead fish.
“I know you still mourn your father. He was a good man. It is only natural that you admire him. But this behavior of yours, Brienne. . .questioning me. . .striking me in front of everyone.” He looked baffled and betrayed. “Tongues are still wagging about our marriage. And now you’ve given the isle another reason for gossip. It gets tiring teaching you how to be a woman.”
Brienne waited until he let her go. She had known never to trust anything her husband said. He behaved like a spoiled, entitled child in an old man’s body but he can just as easily be cruel.
“A woman’s place is with her child.” She couldn’t stop the tremor in her voice.
Humfrey frowned. “You bear my children but you belong at my side.”
She had barely swallowed the instinct to strike when she realized what had happened. She had walked into a trap.
Air left her lungs when Humfrey’s hand fell on her thick waist. The other fondled her breast through the linen. She was taller but it did her little when his lips rubbed her collarbone.
“You are still young enough to bear many heirs,” he said while licking her and undoing the laces of her shift. “The maester says there are herbs he can put in a tea so you will bleed again.”
Whenever his hands and mouth stained her, she retreated far deep inside herself, looking to get lost. This time, she couldn’t distance herself. Instead of his touch being blunt presses on her skin, she shivered from the hot slobber of his mouth on her nipple. She stared hard at the painting of a garden on the wall but the looking glass was too big. Reminding her there was no getting away no matter what.
“Please.”
They stared at each other in shock. It was a word she had never spoken to him before. Nor had she spoken so brokenly.
“I-I—I implore on your mercy to let me see our son,” she whispered. “A woman is not fully realized until she is mother. You made sure I never forget that. It is what you told me on those nights. . .”
Whores, his cock, his constant humiliation of her—she would endure them repeatedly for as long as she saw her boy. The light of her world. The one reason she had stopped dreading every sunrise. Why she had never thrown herself from the highest parapet of Evenfall Hall and into the crushing waves.
“Indeed you are his mother,” Humfrey said, unmoved by her plea. “But what lord would allow his daughter to be betrothed to him with you as a mother? Do you not feel shame for what you’ve done to me? If six years had still not taught you—”
“You will teach me. You will continue teaching me,” she said, scraping what she could from within to say the very words that made her sick to the soul. “My husband. Do not deprive me of my son.”
“He is my son, not yours. You only bore him. It was my seed that made him. That honor I gave you seemed the farthest from your mind because you struck me.”
“I was—I was upset.” Brienne clutched at her heart. “You are sending him to squire at Ashemark.”
“Be grateful for the terms. Queen Cersei had House Tyrell decimated and they are a far greater House than Tarth. She had every right to call for our heads for siding with Renly Baratheon.”
A fist to his broken nose was too good. He didn’t deserve another moment with his head attached to his neck. Be grateful for the terms. She would rather lose the godsdamned isle than her son be a ward of House Marbrand.
A ward, indeed. She knew little of leadership and games that lords play. But she knew exactly what it meant. Squiring was barely a convincing disguise for the truth: her son was going to be a hostage to ensure the rest of the Stormlands never took up arms against Cersei and Jaime Lannister again.
Her son. Her young, innocent boy flung in a game of death. Brienne had no need for steel or any blade to hurt her husband. But if she failed. . .
There was nothing she wouldn’t do. Walk through fire. Let the skin of her back be flayed. Whippings. Anything and everything.
Looking at Humfrey, Brienne fell to her knees. His green eyes widened.
“Please,” she repeated, clinging to his boots. “You must let me see Lyonel. I shall do all that you ask for as long as I get to hold and see my son before he departs. I. . .I-I beg you.”
She then hugged him around the knees, shaking so much. Shaking from the first of the many ordeals she knew lay ahead just to see her son, and many more once he was far away. Renly—her sweet Renly who told her no man deserved her tears. Advice she had taken to heart until she held her baby for the first time.
Of all that she had endured, the absence of her son would be the one to shatter her.
“All that I ask?”
She looked up. “All that you wish, my lord husband.”
A fat finger stroked the hard line of her cheek. “I admit to never having expected this of you.”
“W-what? What do you speak of?”
“This. Seeing this love from you. Being as it is the first time I see it I clearly have never been on the receiving end of it.” He looked disappointed.
Brienne said nothing as he continued touching her face. “It is quite the touching sight,” he murmured. “And there is something really becoming of a woman on her knees.”
An icy dread spread in Brienne as she understood what he meant. Despite the winter taking hold of her heart, her veins, a tear slid down the corner of her eye. Humfrey caught it in his thumb and licked it.
“And tears too. You look like a woman for the first time, Brienne.”
“I implore on your kindness. I ask as your wife, as a mother.”
“I need to see first how you will earn my favor as a woman, Brienne.”
Another tear fell down her cheek. She released her hold on his leg but he stopped her. “Show me, my lady wife. I confess to feeling a kind of eagerness I’ve never had for you before. I thought ‘tis only for whores.”
Her throat was tight. As if a noose was around it. As she stared silently, Humfrey smiled slowly. It did not reach his pale eyes.
“I—I could benefit if you will show me instead,” she managed to say.
In response, he brought her hand to the laces of his breeches.