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Northern sleet spits in his face as soon as he shoulders open the door.
Two days he’s spent trying to wheedle the Winterfell watch rotations out of the keep guard, to no avail. In the end, Podrick Payne proved an easy mark for his mission. Brienne’s newly bearded boy happily spilled the information he needed, adding that he needed a cover for the night on account of a bruised side. The injury wasn’t at present stopping him from hauling barrels of cider off a cart and into the kitchens. They both chose not to examine that.
At the hour of the eel, he’s located the arse end of the castle, where a walkway along the top of the inner wall hugs the contours of the keep close to the family solars, away from main entries and potential breach points. The cook fires, campgrounds, and great hall are a distant suggestion. His objective stands some fifty paces along the battlements, a brazier tucked against the keep behind her. Brienne’s features are swallowed by the dark when she turns towards the slamming door, but he can feel that frown of hers crawl towards him.
Since staggering into Winterfell, he’s been drawn to her side like the constant trickle of refugees to the soup kettles around the courtyard. But she always had some duty to attend to, excuses often addressed to whoever was standing right next to Jaime before he got only a nod and a heel turn.
So he’s cornered her in her commitments.
Once he steps into the brazier’s feeble glow and conceptual warmth, she shifts, keeping a blade’s reach between them.
“Where is Podrick?” she demands.
“The lad has a bruised rib. Maester recommended he not spend the night exposing it to the cold.” An embellishment on top of the squire’s lie. “I overheard, so I offered to take his watch tonight.” Three words into his response, she’d already turned her back to him, tugging off her gloves to feed the fire. Not so much as a grunt in response.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
She scoffs. “I have not.”
“You have. You are!” He’s followed her to the brazier, which is currently taking up the fullness of her attention. “Look at you!”
As she straightens, he advances, bent low to force his face into her avoidant gaze. She passes back, sidesteps him like an aggressive lunge. He pursues her weave on instinct, pivoting on a step across.
But his front foot finds a patch of ice, and his shoulder finds the crook of her arm, knocking them both into the crenel.
As they watch her gloves flutter down into the dark at the foot of the keep, he has ample time to reflect on his actions.
“Those were my nice gloves.” Her exasperated scowl has replaced the trained distance she’s maintained. He presses his advantage.
“Could’ve fooled me.” He adds another theatrical glance into the dark below.
Fist against his shoulder, she gives him a deliberate shove that warms him like an embrace.
“Yes, I’m sure you’re an expert on gloves, you insufferable snob,” she snaps back, righting herself.
“Good one. I’d applaud, but alas…”
She tosses him a reproving glare that can’t quite blot out the tug at the corner of her mouth. He’s missed her. He steps a bit closer.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s cold.”
“There is a fire.”
“Barely.”
This time she does grunt in response. More importantly, she does not move away. Together, they keep watch over the dark side of a castle, their shoulders barely brushing as the wind abates and the snow keeps falling. After weeks of constant momentum, the stillness – sharing her presence at its centre – lulls him.
In the hinterlands of the Rock, in the woods, there had been a cave behind a small waterfall. As a boy, he would disappear through the water to perch on a slick shelf of stone and bathe in the echoing roar. It bounced off the craggy slate walls, drowning out the sounds of the outside and every last one of his thoughts. The noise was the most perfect quiet he’d ever found. Outside there was birdsong, and countless cousins clocking his every move, and worries about Tyrion’s safety, and father’s expectations, and Cersei’s face when they were split up for their daily lessons. By the time he revisited his childhood sanctuary on a brief return from Crakehall, he had outgrown the cave.
Mania had driven him to slip out of King’s Landing almost a moon ago. Something had snapped after the Dragon Pit, and he’d ridden the momentum of that untethering. North was a purpose. He still had an oath to keep to Catelyn Stark’s family, and a promise to the protection of the realm. Oath, honour, purpose; ruminations kept him constant company as he ate up miles on the Kingsroad. When he was forced to rest, he amused himself by turning his racing mind to picturing Brienne’s flabbergasted face when he showed up at Winterfell, true to his word, albeit alone. An unexamined habit that inevitably made her his last thought at the end of each day, however long.
He’d been somewhere in the Neck, staring up at the granite outcrop sheltering him but seeing her as she’d come to him in his tent outside Riverrun. The memory of the blue of her eyes against the red canvas had rolled over a stone inside him to reveal a great calm. He loves her. Isn’t that a pain in the arse.
The snow is now descending plump and dry, quickly clinging to every surface. Brienne shifts to draw her cloak close. His ears pick up the soft whispers of snowflakes alighting on her fur collar. One has clung to her lashes.
“I’ve got a spare armpit for hand warming, if you need it.”
“Shut up.”
He won’t. “Just southern solidarity at the frozen arsehole of the world.”
“It’s not that bad.” Her breath hovers before them and he demonstratively wafts it away with his hand.
“I saw your island a while back. Looked nice.” He catches her move in the corner of his eye, her face openly inquisitive. “Only from afar,” he admits, regretful he cannot offer her more. News from the islands off the Stormlands dried up even before Greyjoy flounced into Blackwater Bay. “I sailed past on my way to… Dorne.” He falters. Pauses to brush some of the accumulating snow off his shoulders. His gold hand clatters ineffectually against his borrowed pauldron. He grits out a curse. At his oversight.
Her hand has come up to carefully smooth away the sludge. “I am very sorry, Jaime.” She means it. Of course she does.
“She, uh, she– she knew.” he blunders on, uncovering more memories gone putrid. “She said she’d known for years. And that she was glad.” He’s flailing to find the end of this conversation. “I’ve yet to make out what she had to be glad about.” There it is.
Brienne braces her bare hands on the crenel’s snowy ledge, folding forward at the waist to lean into his space and seek out his eyes. “Jaime–”
He interrupts with a nod at the gash at her elbow “Where did that come from?” he asks, too loud. “I meant to ask at Riverrun.” Brienne blinks at the change of topic. He’s not here to talk about himself. He’s seen too much of himself. “Tell me about you. It.”
She scrutinises him for several breaths, clearly deliberating whether she’ll let him get away with it. The ambient glow of the snowy castle pools in her eyes. He is so very fucked.
She relents.
“Alright.” Her hands disappear back inside her cloak, and she pulls her pelted shoulders up to her ears. “Not much to tell, I’m sure, but what do you want to know?”
Jaime laughs. “Yes, a very uneventful year or two, I’m sure.” She sneers at his mockery of her measured tone, and that, too, is a delight. “Start with young Podrick in the morning sun outside the Gate of the Gods and end with today’s morning meal?”
“Jaime.”
“Brienne. It’s been a while. Humour me. And make sure you get around to that gash. And the dent in your left shoulder lames.”
So she does. At first, she spools off the facts of her movements like she’s reporting on the morning drills. It takes some prodding to shake loose the details of burnt rabbit and Podrick’s proclivity for absentminded singing that Brienne says did more damage to her spirit than road rations. The hours, the northmen who universally hate him, and the rotting army approaching beyond the dark all fall away as the susurration of settling snow shrinks the night down to her quiet, steady voice. She tells him what she’s accomplished since they’ve parted, each triumph more staggering then the last, however much she leans on her own reservations. Her failure to convince the Blackfish, how she nearly missed the chance to reach Sansa when she went to slay a king (“the operative word here is nearly, Brienne.”), how Arya slipped away to Braavos while she faced Sandor Clegane.
“I wish I could have seen that.”
Brienne grimaces. “It was an artless fight. I lost a tooth and was pissing blood for days after.”
“Ah, but what about the other guy?” he teases.
“I threw him off a gorge. After ripping off his ear–” She hesitates. “With my teeth.”
“You did that?!?” She shrugs a little at his incandescent glee. “I’ve seen him skulking around, the overall deterioration didn’t rattle me considering everything he is. But YOU did that?”
“It’s really not that much of a spectacle.”
“I cannot believe you didn’t lead with this when you popped up like a spring daisy in Riverrun. ‘Ser Jaime, I further mutilated one of the meanest fuckers in the Seven Kingdoms, oh and here’s your silly little sword.’” She grips the pommel, rolls her eyes, and turns back to run her eyes along the walls and roofs of Winterfell. She must know how much of its fate came down to her stubborn tenacity. “Brienne, you are exceptional.” Her face is obscured behind the fur collar on her northern cloak, her head bent to breathe onto her hands. He adds another log to the brazier. “How long are your watch rotations, anyways?”
She turns to him, eyebrow quirked. “Didn’t check the full scope of the duties you volunteered for?” she asks from behind clasped hands. He shrugs laconically. “About two more candle marks,” she replies confidently. “Judging by the snow settling.”
“And I don’t suppose you’d be amenable to being relieved of your post early?” he asks, jutting his chin at her clenching hands. “On account of preserving your very skilled hands from frostbite?”
Her response is an eloquent scoff.
“Alright,” he pulls off his own glove between his teeth and thrusts it at her.
“Jaime, no.”
“I’ll not be responsible for costing House Stark the dexterity of their first sword hand.”
“I have two hands–”
“Sure, rub it in–”
“I just mean my left isn’t even my sword hand!”
“I can empathise.”
“Jaime!” Her annoyed flush is putting the brazier to shame.
“Take the damn glove, Brienne.”
“Fine!” she snatches it from his hand and shrugs it on. “Happy?”
“Nearly. My left is cold now.”
“That’s what I sai– what are you doing?”
“Protecting your sword hand.” Which is one way to look at holding hands. “And mine. Fuck, your hands are cold.”
He steps closer to lace their fingers together. The billows of her breath stutter in the air. His thumb is drawing tentative circles on the back of her hand. She squeezes back.
Everything is quiet.