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“You know,” Jaime began, careful to coat every one of his words in insolence, knowing he would soon be rewarded by the wench’s full body flush of anger. “I think I’m the first man in Westeros to say I’d rather look at your ugly face than stare at the back of your dull head.”
Brienne made no response beyond yanking on the rope attached to his chains. Despite the intricate knots, it would have been a meager attempt to restrain him if he actually wanted to run away, but the bigger issue was of course that he’d have nowhere to go. For now, it was mostly an easy way for the wench to vent her rage while she led him to King's Landing. The more noble equivalent of shoving at him, really.
Jaime could tell she wasn’t unaffected by his words from the hunch in her shoulders and the flex of her biceps. There were all sorts of reactions he could draw out of her, and Jaime was delighted to know there was always a new one out there that he hadn’t discovered yet.
“Because even though it’s appalling, at least there’s always something new to find in your face. The back of your head doesn’t offer much surprise, and I’m so dreadfully bored.”
Jaime started dragging his heels, noticeably slowing Brienne down. The way her entire body clenched up for a moment sent a quiver through him – likely from amusement. She had no sense of artifice, and was so viscerally physical in all her reactions.
“Walk faster,” she snapped.
“You’re a hard taskmaster. Even my master-at-arms at Casterly Rock growing up was never so harsh.” But Jaime did relent and continued forward at a more reasonable pace.
Brienne didn’t bother to react immediately, instead taking care to examine the road ahead of them through the spaces between the foliage, before daring to lead them out of the cover of the forest to a more public traveling path. He suddenly imagined her as a much younger girl, looking both ways before crossing a road to make sure she wouldn’t get run over by a horse. Though maybe the horse would have found her mulish face intimidating.
He became so caught up in this fantasy that her response jarred him back into reality rather abruptly. “Perhaps if someone had bothered to be harsh with you as a boy, you would have grown into a less abysmal man.”
“Once again,” Jaime’s sigh was long-suffering. “It’s impossible for any of my words to penetrate your thick skull. I spent a year in a prison. You don’t think that was harsh enough? All my muscles have practically withered away. You’re lucky I can even walk, you know.”
“Far less than what you deserved,” Brienne dismissed. “And your muscles are doing fine.”
“You noticed, did you?” Despite himself, Jaime preened. “Even starving, I’m quite a fine specimen of a man, aren’t I?”
Brienne’s withering look in his direction pulled a laugh out of him, because she blushed so red despite all the irritation on her face. “I was – ” she sputtered, “Very… very clearly not – ”
Jaime ignored her. “The finest in all the land, I’ve been told.”
“Once again,” Brienne growled. “You can’t see anything but your own glory.”
He considered asking her what punishments she would devise to humble him, but decided against it in the end. She was too honorable to come up with anything unique – much more awful people had listed many interesting punishments for him to experience, and listening to those options was at least entertaining. As his mind drifted, a much more enticing conversation topic arose in his consciousness.
“Does my trailing after your imposing form remind you of anything?” Jaime asked. Even though he couldn’t see her face, he was sure that mistrust was clouding her features. Her silence all but confirmed the presence of her rising anxiety.
“Do you know the tale of the man – the son of some king or whatever – who used his music to call on the Stranger and reclaim his dead wife?” It was most popular in the Westerlands and the Riverlands, after all, though it was likely familiar to a woman like Brienne, who had grown up in the Stormlands. It didn’t hold much sway in the North, where death walked side by side with people all throughout the Winter; they likely didn’t need more stories about trying to converse with that dark figure of unknown, especially a member of the Seven. They were also much too caught up in their trees.
When Brienne offered no response, Jaime took it as a good sign to continue. “No one knows the words that were exchanged, but the agreement was that his wife could return to earth for all of the man’s life, as long as he never tried to turn back and look at her, not even once. She could eat and sleep and dance, but she would always remain behind him wherever he traveled, never to see his face, while he could never see hers.”
“I know the story,” Brienne remarked with a clipped tone, clearly intending to silence him, but Jaime happily ignored her.
“I can never remember what instrument he used to play. Was it a lute or a fiddle? I’m partial to reed pipes. Can you imagine the Stranger succumbing to reed pipes, of all things?”
“What’s the point of this?” she interrupted, while tugging him off the road and back into the dense foliage of the trees.
“Well, don’t you think they’re a little like us now?”
Brienne choked on her own gasp, which Jaime felt was a little dramatic. He hadn’t meant to suggest that they were lovers, though the implication would have been amusing if his heart and existence were not bound entirely to Cersei. “I only meant it feels like I’m destined to trail after you, my brave savior, desperately waiting to receive a single glance that you will never deign to give.”
“What nonsense,” she said.
“I think it’s rather apt. If I fell over dead right this second, I’m sure you’d be stubborn enough to confront the Stranger himself to take me back.”
“For the Stark girls, not out of any care for you!”
“So you would?” Jaime counted her admittance as a victory. “Confront the Stranger, I mean?”
“Oh for bloody – ” Brienne ground to a halt and whirled around to face him. The shadows of the high branches played along her pale face, and made him wonder how a woman who someone loved would look to them after death. “What are you trying to achieve by bringing up such a stupid story to me?”
That sent a flush of sudden emotion through Jaime, so fast it was dizzying. “Stupid?” He had to repeat his exclamation to comprehend the word. “I know you’re built like a piece of rock, but I didn’t think you had the heart of one!”
Brienne eyed him incredulously, because even he could tell by now that her heart was as easily bruised as a ripe peach, which made her remark all the more shocking. She yanked on his rope to keep him moving. As they trudged on, this time almost arm in arm, Brienne was clearly trying to ignore his comment, while Jaime fumed silently, but neither of them were ones to leave words unsaid.
“Aren’t you the one who’s obsessed with silly tales about knightly honor?” He scoffed, while she muttered at the same time, “Of course you’d like the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.”
Jaime sputtered, while Brienne, for once, didn’t trip over her words when trying to retaliate. “The stories I care for aren’t silly. They remind us what knights are supposed to be. Good. Kind. Just.”
“And a story of love isn’t impressive enough for you?” he exclaimed.
“Love?” Brienne scoffed. “Is that what you think?”
“Of course!”
This time, when he stopped in his tracks, Brienne made no move to goad him back into walking. Instead, she paused to consider him, the disdain in her eyes briefly dimmed by her curiosity. Jaime still thought she looked remarkably confident in her view of love for someone who blushed at the merest hint of innuendo, romantic or sexual.
“If he loved her, he would never have looked back. Especially not after just a single day.”
Her comment buried itself into Jaime’s skin, but it also delivered a great deal of perverse satisfaction. Of course this little girl from her little backward island wouldn’t understand what it meant to desire someone so fiercely, that a life spent without the chance of looking at their face would be torture. Of course she would turn her nose at the scorching pain of it. Of course she wouldn’t be able to comprehend the need of being with another person to even feel alive.
“You would have had her live without him?” Jaime scoffed. “Forever satisfied with life as a shadow?”
Brienne shifted, biting her lip, for the first time unsure, and she considered her words carefully. The wench was rarely haphazard with anything, unlike Jaime. “People don’t talk about how she felt. Or even what walking the earth as a returned soul would be like. But if he loved her… he would have wanted her to live, above all. Her… breath should have been enough for him. It should have been enough to know that she could look at the moon or eat berries or even laugh, if only he was selfless enough to let her… do it all without him.”
It was more than Brienne had ever spoken before, and she even seemed proud of her words, but Jaime’s frustration only grew. “And you’ve never wondered how she would feel about that?”
Brienne pursed her lips. “Are you saying you’re a defender of women, now?”
Jaime shook his head automatically. “Wench, I don’t pretend to understand all the ways that women suffer, even though I do care far more than you think.” Images of Queen Rhaella moved through his mind. “But I know this for sure – the Stranger was only torturing them both. There is not a world where lovers being close enough to touch, but not being able to, would ever do anything but drive them to the brink of insanity.”
The crease in her brow made it clear she was frustrated with her own discomfort. She may be noble, but she’s not above lashing out. As he predicted, she snapped.
“There are things worthy of sacrifice. Perhaps you can’t imagine loving someone without being able to… without being able to abstain from your pleasures, but – ”
Jaime reached the end of his own patience, suddenly wanting very much for this stubborn woman to understand that he may be guilty of all sorts of crimes, but not knowing how to love was not one of them. He took a daring step forward – not close enough to encroach on her personal space, but close enough that she would have stepped away if she wasn’t so surprised.
“Desire is more than a tussle in the sheets, wench.” He snorted at the way she averted her eyes. “It’s not even sexual. It is… it is an all-consuming need. There is not a part of life that can remain untouched when it exists.” The way she rolled her eyes pulled him even closer to her.
“She loved him,” he continued, all while imagining how Eurydice would have cried when she was led back into an empty life. “How would she have been able to live without him? How would she be able to gaze at a flower without remembering the ones he tucked into her hair? How would she be able to bite into a berry without remembering the way they stained his lips? How would she enjoy the warmth of the sun without remembering the warmth of him?”
Brienne bit her abnormally large lip too hard. Her blush burned through her skin like it was a fleeting wisp of paper. It hid nothing from him, and the sight spurred him on. He wanted to rip the redness from her and hold it in his hands, either to banish it or coax it further into his grasp. He pressed on.
“What use would the moonlight be to her, when she knew how it would glint off his face when they swam together at night?” He released a helpless laugh. The memory of him and Cersei jumping off the cliffs of Casterly Rock as children felt distant, when all he could think about was reaching into Brienne and shaking her. “What use are the beauties of the ocean water,” he stared into her, “Compared to the blue of a lover’s eyes?”
Brienne inhaled sharply, and her lips parted. She was so loud in all of her reactions; they rang in his ears.
“You say these things to provoke me,” she said, but she didn’t raise her voice above his whisper, and she kept her gaze fixed firmly behind him.
“Maybe,” His body had become pent up with energy, likely from irritation, but it discomforted him nonetheless. He automatically stepped away from her, relaxing as memories of Cersei flooded back into him. “It amuses me to see how little you know.” He forced levity, no doubt overwhelmed at the thought of being away from his sister.
Brienne scoffed, but she still swallowed as her eyes darted from side to side. Jaime tried not to wonder what emotions had been awakened inside of her – they would no doubt disgust him.
“Her breath should have been enough for him,” she finally plodded on heroically. “I don’t… you say you know her. Maybe you do. You definitely enjoy pretending you understand her desires. But that doesn’t change how he wanted her more than he wanted for her to be alive.”
“You’d be nobler,” Jaime said, not sure if he was asking or condemning. He was not disbelieving as much as he was resentful. “Brienne of Tarth. What passion could sway her from her duty? She is beyond the petty concerns of desire.”
Brienne almost growled, while her shoulders rose. She’s like a dog, or a bear, in her fury. He shook his head. A lioness, even.
“I don’t have the pretty words that you use to describe… love. Mock me all you want, but I know what’s like… to care deeply.”
“Ah yes, Renly Baratheon,” Jaime sounded bored, “A king who always inspired such passion.”
“Mock me all you want,” Her voice rose in anger. “But I know that love is more than physical concerns, or even being together. It’s enough to know that the one you love is alive. Living, in this world, for better or for worse.”
“Is that what you told yourself when Renly never bothered to look you in the face?”
“What did you tell yourself when your sister left you to marry another man?”
Brienne then gasped, stricken with her own insolence. If her honesty was a honed knife, Jaime enjoyed seeing her cut herself on it. He ignored her subsequent babbling and sharpened his own smile. “You could never understand the pure love that Cersei and I have for each other.”
“But she married the king,” Brienne said, incredulous. “If you two loved each other so… much, could you not have tried to run away to the East, instead of causing all this trouble in Westeros?” She was clearly not even trying to hurt him anymore, and Jaime found her genuine confusion much more infuriating. It reminded him of all the nights that he spent feeling the same. Cersei was always able to talk sense into his stubborn brain, but now she was far away, and the memory of her words weren’t strong enough to soothe him.
“She had no choice.” Jaime muttered, “Our father’s expectations felt impossible to escape. And besides, she… she wanted to be Queen.” It was hard to know which of the two women he was more angry with – Cersei for her choice, or Brienne for making him admit it.
“She wanted to be Queen… more than she wanted to be with you?” Brienne asked, more tentative with him than she’d ever been before.
“Why shouldn’t my sister be Queen?” Jaime hissed, while trying to ignore the pounding of his heart. It’s not true, Cersei needs me more than anything. “Why shouldn’t she have all the respect and adoration and attention that she deserves? Besides, why should the two of us have to run away to love each other openly? The Targaryens did what they wanted, and we deserve to have everything they did, if not more!”
He hated Brienne’s eyes. They burned through him, so presumptuous in the way they thought they could see his thoughts. The wench understood both everything about him and nothing. She knew enough to take him apart into all the pieces he was built out of, but she’d never be able to put him back together.
“Your love is just a chance to stare endlessly at your own reflection – ” she muttered.
“Don’t speak on how I love!” Jaime shouted while clenching a fist to his chest, over his heart. “I have lived in darkness, I have begged and waited for scraps and I have satisfied myself with nothing. I have feasted for years with nothing but a memory. What do you know about longing – ”
But even Jaime knew that wasn’t true. He hadn’t known Brienne for long, and most days he wished he could just run her through with a sword and be done with it, but it was clear she knew nothing but burying her desires. You avert your eyes, the second you see something you want. You don’t let yourself want. Is that better than me, who goes on wanting and wanting and wanting?
He imagined Eurydice, wasting away to her second death, without food or drink, waiting desperately for just one single look, one single touch from her husband. Was she a fool, for loving so much? What if Orpheus hadn’t turned back to look at her – what would have happened to her then?
Suddenly, Jaime felt so tired. He realized that he’d entered a sparring match to defend a story of love that he didn’t even understand.
Yet Brienne was not satisfied with conceding. “You only know how to live and love selfishly, with no thought of tomorrow! The Targeyens set everything on fire, and now you’d burn the world for your sister, even if there would be nothing left for you!”
Jaime could taste the ashes of her description in his mouth. “Burning…” He tried to grasp at his thoughts, but they eluded his fingers and slipped into memories he didn’t want to witness. Aerys. Fire. “No, Cersei is the opposite of that. She is…she is not that… she is not like fire, not at all…”
Brienne spread her arms, incredulous. “What do you see around you, if not a world on fire?”
Her words poured a chill through his body, and he couldn’t bear the implications of what she was saying. “You understand nothing,” he spat, before pushing past her.
**
The conversation was, as most conversations are, forgotten. Over the days and weeks of their travel, the two of them exchanged much more angry words, over much more significant topics. In King’s Landing, after Jaime became all too aware of how he had wasted his entire life loving a woman that existed only in his imagination, he was quick to disregard the stories of love that had lied to him as much as the stories of knightly honor had. All of this made it surprising when the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice was the first thing that came to his mind the moment he was thrown at the feet of what used to be Catelyn Stark.
When he first looked up at the creature he was told was Lady Stoneheart, he started laughing and struggled to stop. As the surrounding figures of the Brotherhood without Banners – once revered but now mostly composed of sellswords and thieves and cutthroats who all thought they served some greater purpose – grew increasingly angry with his response, he managed to gasp, “I always knew that when Death came for me, it would be with the face of a Stark!”
It was hard to tell what snarling would look like on such a disfigured face, but it was the best way to describe how Lady Stoneheart’s expression twisted and recoiled.
“My lady,” Brienne’s voice quivered despite its attempt at confidence. “You promised you would free my innocent companions in return for bringing Jaime Lannister here.”
Lady Stoneheart waved her hand dismissively, and two figures, with their hands and legs bound in rope, were pushed out of the crowd and onto the dirt. It was easy to disregard the rather forgettable man, but it took him a few moments to recognize the young boy as Tyrion’s former squire. My brother would be overjoyed to know that I’m dying for the little boy who saved him. This must be what justice is, Jaime thought and laughed even harder.
You disgust me, Kingslayer. Lady Stoneheart spoke, with words that could barely be called words, even though Jaime managed to understand them. And you will finally be punished. Her series of croaks and creaks should have been frightening, but Jaime could only feel regret that he would never again hear the sound of Lady Catelyn’s disdain, worth much more when pulsing with life and reason. He felt this creature would have saddened her – not that Catelyn Stark would have believed that he of all people could genuinely care for her plight.
More proof that the dead should stay dead, Jaime thought. What would a second life of Eurydice have been like, if she could still feel the snake’s poison that first killed her running through her veins?
“Please my Lady,” Brienne cried, “I told you before, Jaime Lannister is not the man he was! He does not deserve to die!”
Oh wench, Jaime wanted to shake his head. Do you still think you can win every battle you fight? You can’t have your justice and save me as well. On some level, Jaime was angry, though not because she had chosen to sacrifice him. That he understood, but he was tired of all these secrets between them; he was tired of her only seeing him as someone to be saved. Maybe if she had been willing to lower her defenses, she would have told him what her damn plan was before they walked into this mess, so he could have convinced her out of doing something foolish.
Brienne valiantly called for a trial by sword, but Lady Stoneheart had waited too long to hold the Kingslayer in her hands to offer the slightest opportunity for him to slip away. Her men called for his head, and they would not bother with the facade of justice that the kings and lords of Westeros played with. They even had a priest of the red god, who was clearly much less merciful than the Seven were supposed to be.
Only life can pay for life, Lady Stoneheart croaked. He must pay.
Brienne shook her head, looking back at Jaime in anguish. You have to let me go, Brienne. He tried to tell her with his eyes. If you had just told me what was going to happen, I would have come here alone.
If you had told me, we could have said goodbye.
Maybe she had no wish to say goodbye to him. Maybe she was certain she wouldn’t have to. He was not sure which was worse. It might have been kinder to spend his last words easing her worries, but he had never lived his life so benevolently.
“I have one request,” Jaime called.
You dare make demands of me? Lady Stoneheart growled. Have you no shame?
“Just one,” he swallowed, trying to find the humor in his own request, but only landing on regret. “I wish to die at the hands of the Maid of Tarth.”
Brienne’s gasp was small – practically unheard in the roar of laughter, but he knew her. He knew that her large body could emit the tiniest, softest, gentlest sounds.
“I see no Maid here,” someone hollered. “Now that the Kingslayer has been through with her.”
“Make no mistake, she is a Maid,” he said, while trying not to be resentful. “We have not touched each other beyond friendship, but we have traveled long and far, and I wish for only her to send me on the final journey.”
Stoneheart relented, likely in some malicious attempt to punish Brienne as much as Jaime. He himself didn’t know why he asked for what he did, but he knew it was not out of malice. Perhaps he was asking his wench for pity. Perhaps he was hoping that she’d hate him so much for making her do this, she’d forget about him afterwards. Perhaps he wanted to know how much she would struggle with the task.
Perhaps he was asking to somehow be bound to her in death, as he never would be in life. He was never really healthy about these kinds of things, after all. Yet she did not complain, and he hoped that she understood.
She stood in front of him with her sword, looming, large as ever, but her eyes were melting into unshed tears.
“It’s okay wench, it’s okay sweetling,” Jaime said, impossibly soft despite all the jeering calls for his blood. “It could only be you. It has to be you to send me away.” Her lips trembled. They were torn, aggressively abused with her teeth. He would never feel them against his own.
Send me back my lady, to whatever shadowy shore we all came from.
He took in her wondrous eyes, knowing that they would be the last thing he saw in this world.
“Send me back,” Eurydice would have called out to her husband as he walked on. “Send me back to the Stranger. You have to let me go, so you can live.”
Brienne swung her sword.
The only sound heard was the thud of a head, and then a body, against the ground. Jaime thought briefly it was his own, and that he’d risen from his corpse as a ghost. Then he opened his eyes, and the same bleak world met his gaze. In it, Catelyn Stark lay dead, for a second time.
I’m alive. He thought with confusion as men began to roar.
I’m alive. He thought a second time, the horror growing.
I’m alive. He thought a third time, as the crowd descended into a senseless chaos. That was when the anger came flooding in.
Oh she didn’t dare. But she had dared. Because of that daring, Brienne was slashing through piles of men, slicing with growls, elbowing people in the stomach before delivering killing blows. No matter how hard she fought, they kept swarming her. In their initial moment of shock, she’d managed to cut the ropes binding her two companions, and they seemed to offer a little help. The man held his own relatively well, while Brienne’s body shielded the boy, who crouched behind her back and made efforts to stab at the knees of people who tried to catch Brienne on an unguarded side – which, right now, was all her sides.
A sword arced over his head; Jaime rolled away and avoided decapitation with only the brush of a second.
Now that he had resigned himself to die at Brienne’s hands, he could hardly succumb to some average hedge knight who had no better options than following a vindictive walking corpse. It was like agreeing to be buried in a field of white lilies before realizing that you were all the way in the fucking north and would die in the miserable cold snow.
Look, Brienne. He managed to knee someone in the stomach and grab their sword while they were winded, before hacking away at the men around him. You didn’t kill me, and now I’ll likely die at the hands of some common bastard. I hope you regret it for the rest of your life.
Jaime grabbed a man before he had the chance to plunge a sword into the wench’s belly.
The rest of your long, long, long fucking life, if I have anything to say about it.
**
Somehow, they survived. Jaime was too furious to dwell on the particulars of the miracle. Maybe it was the result of his and Brienne’s undogged determination in the face of all the cuts and bruises they’d accumulated on their bodies, but it was more likely that the remaining members of the Brotherhood lost motivation after finding themselves without a leader. Revenge and anger usually motivated people as far as their passions were stirred; in the absence of any goading speeches or instigating words, it was likely hard for most of them to remember why they had spent so much time following a being who was barely even real, even if she was once a Stark.
Whatever the reason, they managed to steal a couple of horses and rode hard enough to make the Brotherhood feel like they were more trouble than they were worth. Except for Pod, who Brienne had been careful to shield, they’d all suffered wounds that would likely risk infection in the coming days, but that was a problem for later.
It was good that Jaime was spending these early hours after the battle on a horse, because keeping his hands on the reins prevented him from going off and strangling someone. At some point, the forgettable man – Hunt or something – pulled up his horse and attempted a conversation with Jaime about his intentions going forward, but Jaime fixed him with a glare so fierce that the man shuffled off. Brienne was equally inaccessible, though for more honorable reasons; she clearly struggled with guilt for being the reason her lady died a second time. Occasionally, she sobbed, then shook her entire body as if to rise above the pain.
Brienne never stopped trying to rise above.
You can’t have it all, you stupid girl. You can’t have your honor and have me.
I can’t have you.
Jaime cursed randomly, as he’d been wont to do over the past few hours, but everytime, poor little Podrick Payne still jolted at the sound, in his place behind Brienne on her horse.
It was Brienne who picked a secluded spot near a river to make camp for the night. She did not bother to call out any orders or directions. Everyone fell into line as soon as she guided her horse into a slow walk, but of course she hardly noticed the instinctive loyalty she inspired.
They would be vulnerable to attack from any stragglers from the Brotherhood, but it was enough to hope that for tonight at least, those men would be too busy fighting each other for some sort of dominance over a group that was already as good as disbanded. Let them satisfy themselves with their own little game of thrones, Jaime snorted, while they still think it matters.
After dismounting, Brienne selected a spot facing the rushing water, unsheathed Oathkeeper, and dropped the sword to the ground, before falling to her knees in front of it. There she sat with a bowed head in silence. Hunt hovered around her for some time, but Brienne was immovable in her self-imposed vigil; he finally took a hint and went to scavenge for some food with the boy. Before leaving, Hunt eyed him with some distrust, but Jaime paid him no heed and instead focused on running drills with his new sword to relieve some of the energy coursing through his veins. The stolen weapon was cheaply made and unlikely to last long, but the moon rose in the sky and beat down against them; its light made the steel look even more searing and dangerous, and glint in Jaime’s eyes probably didn’t help either.
It was only when they were gone that Jaime sighed, tossed aside the sword, and approached Brienne.
“I have wronged you, Ser,” she said when she sensed his presence behind her. When looking at her formidable back, it was easy to imagine her as stoic, but the softness in her voice easily revealed all the tenderness aching inside of her. “You have every right to take this sword you gave me and punish me in return.”
After all this time, this is what I am to you? Someone to trade debts with?
“I know you are angry,” she continued. A faint tremor ran through her words.
She’s still doing it. This girl believes that I’m good, but she won’t speak to me without all her armor and shields.
“You don’t understand anything,” he growled. “You did almost lead me to hell, but it was not Stoneheart or the death that she promised.”
Brienne turned her head, perhaps wanting a glimpse of his face while feeling unable to look him in the eye. He was so tired of never seeing her face.
“You risked yourself,” he shook his head. “Over and over.”
Brienne squeezed her eyes shut. “It was the right thing to do. Killing my lady… it will haunt me for all my days, but even then, I know it was the right thing to do.”
Jaime laughed without humor. “You only did it because it was the right thing to do?”
“Stop confusing me, Jaime,” she sighed, “If you’re angry with me, be angry, but don’t make me… don’t make me guess what’s happening inside your head.”
It was the first time she had said his name with such ease, as if she’d said it a thousand times before. It didn’t settle the ache inside his chest, but instead made it grow impossibly larger. His feet moved on their own volition until he stood beside her.
She shrunk on herself as he moved closer, but she persisted in her speech. “I don’t know… I don’t know why you wanted to die only at my hands. You probably wanted to punish me but…” she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Eurydice would have told her love, Let me go. I can’t live a life without you, so please stop trying to be brave.
Jaime rubbed his face as he dropped to his knees. “I live for many worthless things wench.” A throne that will likely become the death of my son, a family name that people rightfully spit on, a brother who wants me dead, and a sister whose love was never real. “You are the only worthy person I have ever…” Cared for. “... held unto. It would be a solace to know my death belongs to you.” In the way my life never could. “But instead you risked your life.”
“When I left Tarth, I only wanted… I only wanted to do good,” she pressed a hand to her eyes. “It seems like I can’t do that, but if I can protect innocent people and… the ones who matter to me… that’s my choice. I would have hanged instead of bringing you to Stoneheart, if it weren’t for Hyle and Pod’s sake.”
He grabbed her cheeks with each of his two hands. “You stupid girl. You stupid, nonsensical, pig-headed, stubborn wench.” She took his fury with more patience than a septon, who would likely trade his faith if a sword was placed on his neck. Brienne was not so easily swayed.
“Your life would have been enough for me,” she whispered. “Your breath would have been enough for me.”
How dare she be so worthy.
“You think this life has been kind to me?” Jaime hissed, “You think this world is worth a fig to me without you in it? Every miserable breath I’ve ever taken has caused grief and pain. More for me or for others, I can’t tell. If it weren’t for you, I would have let myself waste away after losing my hand and been done with it.”
“Your sister.” Brienne shook her head. “Your brother, your son, your daughter. Your men, who you command. The Stark girls, who depend on your oath. You have too much to live for. I only reminded you of it.”
“You’re a fool if you think that,” he said.
Brienne raised a hand, as if to touch his fingers that rested on her face, but she pulled it away again, too frightened to take the step.
Tell me what you want. He wished to yell. Demand what you want. If you want me, grab me.
Her eyes were wide, and her gaze held him with more gentleness than anyone else’s hands ever had.
“You chase death, is that it?” He demanded, with anguish. Why should the Stranger have you?
When she dropped her eyes and didn’t respond, Jaime rested his head against hers. “Don’t condemn me to a half life. Don’t be selfless. I’d rather die and forget you than spend the rest of my life haunted by the thought that you don’t exist.” He ran his finger along the unharmed skin of her scarred cheek. It was stained with sweat, which mingled with the dirt that had hung there for days, along with the pus from her gored wound. Her skin was burning; a fever was descending upon her, and it was likely that only adrenaline had been holding all the sicknesses at bay until now. The memory of her washing his body after they’d bathed in the Harrenhal tub entered his mind. She’d run her fingers, rough and calloused, through his golden hair. The pressure they left on his scalp ached through his body, even after all this time. He did not have the same gentle touch, but he vowed to care for her just as diligently.
“Jaime…” Brienne sighed, and tilted her forehead so it rested on his shoulder. Maybe she was already succumbing to the exhaustion and illness waiting for her. If that was the case, he would need to find a Maester to look over her soon. They had not come so far for her to leave him now.
He gazed at this woman, who was sinking into his arms. They were bound together even though they’d never said such words; bound together even though they’d never had a conversation without some sort of misunderstanding.
“Come, my lady,” he whispered, “There is still some road left, before we must face the Stranger. We will walk it together this time.”