Work Text:
The sun was creeping out of the eastern sea in altogether unwarranted cheerfulness. Brienne leant out of the spiral stairwell window for a few minutes, watching it rise.
Cold air buffeted her face – not quite as cold as it had been: the winter was starting to turn. Her father’s maester murmured things about dragons and the rebirth of magic in Valyria. Brienne hid from the whispers whenever she was able, as she did from any news that came out of King’s Landing. She could scarcely even think about dragons.
Her left hand crept to her lion-patterned sword hilt and she fought back the pain before it had chance to rise. Foolish maid, lost in dreams. She closed the window and hurried down the stairs.
They spat her out into the courtyard. A sea-front castle like Evenfall Hall lived by the tides as much as the sun. Though the hour was early, dock workers were audible unloading a new-come ship in the enclosed harbour below. A horse was squealing, loud and panicked. The sound was too reminiscent of battle. Brienne turned her back on it and pushed open the winter training hall’s heavy oaken door.
It was always empty at this time in a morning. Ser Hardred, the master-of-arms, would arrive later and train with her, but he never knew or at least never enquired how long she spent working in here alone before he arrived.
Golden sunbeams trickling through the high windows shone like Jaime Lannister’s dancing curls. A knight or man-at-arms trained for an hour every day: Ser Jaime had always trained for three. “How am I to live up to my reputation if I can’t kill anyone who attacks it?” he’d demanded of her once, during a particularly intense evening session when they might have killed each other from frustration if they’d been holding anything other than tourney swords. He’d kicked a tree root and then smiled at her, though, almost in the same sad way as he had on the one occasion when he’d held her, and she’d felt her heart shiver and known she would do anything for him.
Except for finding a way to save his life.
In that direction lay nothing but tears and pain. Brienne drew Oathkeeper from its scabbard, stared at the dancing red sheen in the black steel and tried to remember Jaime smiling at her or training with her or swearing at his self-perceived incompetence, but not that afternoon in his tower cell when her heart had seemed to shatter like frozen glass, and not any of the rumours that had crept to Tarth after she’d left him there, Daenerys’s prisoner, granted a temporary stay of execution only so that he could complete overdue work on the White Book.
She stood in front of the mirror, knees slightly bent in combat stance. Her reflection was left-handed. She moved the razor-sharp blade in repeated practice parries, high and strong to block a head-shot, low to divert a blow to the groin, left and right against imaginary opponents on her either side. The jewel-encrusted hilt grated against her calluses.
Her father had known as soon as he’d seen her that she’d left her heart behind on the mainland. He hadn’t pressed her for many details, for which she was thankful as she didn’t know whether she’d have been able to discuss it without bursting into tears. A Lannister loyalist, imprisoned for treason against the Targaryens, was someone Lord Selwyn considered his heir should forget as quickly as possible. “Was there anything dishonourable between you?” he’d asked, bushy fair eyebrows creased in his broad face. “Are kisses dishonourable?” she’d asked in return, and the conversation had gone no further.
Were kisses dishonourable, when shared between maiden ladies and condemned criminals? She closed her eyes and allowed herself to remember: a near-bare tower room, the taste of his mouth on hers as he held her, ink on his fingers smudging over his white clothing and her freckled skin. Had she been bolder she’d have given him her maidenhood then. Instead she’d allowed a grim-faced Tyrion draped in the Hand’s chain to pack her onto a ship for Tarth and out of the city before Jaime’s execution.
Eyes still shut, she mimed the anticlockwise parry to trap an opponent’s blade, three times and then another three until the motion felt right, then repeated the move clockwise to catch a blade held in a wiry left hand. How had he ended? Eaten by a dragon, broken on the wheel, beheaded? Maybe by the time she found out, the pain would have had a chance to fade.
“Your point’s too low again. Pick it up; you’re dismembering daffodils.”
For a moment she thought she was hallucinating. Then she opened her eyes and saw a ghost in the mirror, golden hair trailing to his mail-clad shoulders, and knew she had to be.
Jaime pushed the door shut and smiled at her... and she whirled round and levelled her sword at his chest. Her hands were shaking. “You – you’re –”
“Alive? I wouldn’t have been if I’d been standing a foot closer to you.” His gloved left hand prodded Oathkeeper’s tip. “That thing’s sharp. I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t wave it in my face.” He looked around at the wide hall almost big enough to hold a quintain, the mirrors, the windows high in the walls, the armoury door. “The harbourmaster said you’d be in here.”
She slowly lowered the sword point to the ground and, just as slowly, closed the gap between them and raised her left hand to touch his bearded cheek. Warm skin and bristly hair under her fingers, gold curls wafting over them: “How – you –”
His smile teased, though gently. “Lion got your tongue?” His golden hand covered hers where it lay on his face. “Her Grace was gracious enough to change her mind.”
In a moment she would wake and the world would be dark again but she couldn’t, wouldn’t, stop dreaming. “She must have had a reason.”
Jaime’s smile faded. He lifted her hand from his face and held it between both of his. Warmth on one side and chill gold on the other seemed to crush her. “The realm is far from stable: Daenerys needs a strong bannerman in the westerlands. With me attainted for regicide and Tyrion for patricide, and all the heirs in between unaccountably dead, her council unanimously advised her to pass over my cousin Janei in favour of my cousin Tyrek, who has the advantages of being both adult and male. Oh, and who has spent the past three years as a guest of one of Daenerys’s most fervent supporters.”
Really.” Political scheming had always made her itch. “A supporter who is now one of her closest advisors.”
“Actually, a supporter who was the very good friend of one of her closest advisors. Well, she agreed that she needed utter loyalty in Casterly Rock – and decided to go with a man whose loyalty would be to her and not to someone else. Finding an excuse to kick me out of the Kingsguard didn’t take long. It’s not like I’ve given her too few to choose from.”
Tarth felt like it was shaking under her feet. “Lion of the Rock. After everything.” He nodded. “I – why aren’t you out there? I mean to say – I –”
Sunlight tickled his smiling green eyes. “Not pleased to see me?”
“You could have written,” she muttered. “Don’t go into the sept. The Stranger’s altar’s covered in candles.”
He laughed. “Tell me you didn’t cry for me.”
“The sea is several inches higher.”
“Stop; you’re making me feel guilty.” He cupped her face in his warm left hand. She’d never known which of them was half an inch taller than the other, but now was certain it was her, and she felt acutely big and clumsy beside his lean elegance. “I knighted Peck and sent him haring off west with almost all the remaining Lannister-sworn men in King’s Landing to help my cousin Daven pull what’s left of my ancestral lands together. Coming here before I joined them seemed more important.”
Her voice had almost deserted her. She’d never been good with words. “Why?”
“To induce you to come back with me.” His smile was as gentle as his touch. She remembered a kiss that felt like gossamer and tasted of tears.
“Jaime...”
His thumb brushed her lips. “Purely from a practical perspective, I need to get married in short order and start producing lion cubs before anyone can mature any plans to replace me with Tyrek. I’d sooner marry you than any other woman – so I thought I’d come to ask you your opinion on the subject.”
She clutched his golden hand in hers. She could hardly breathe.
There was suddenly no trace of a smile in Jaime’s eyes. “I am less than the whole and decent man you deserve. Tell me to leave now and I will. But if you and Lord Selwyn could be induced to accept me, I will not give you cause to regret it. I’m under no illusions that I could wed you without both your agreement and his.”
Oathkeeper’s lion pommel felt like ice in her right hand. “I swore a very foolish vow once,” she whispered.
“More foolish than the one I swore to protect and serve a madman?”
“I swore I would only accept wifely chastisement from a man who could outfight me.”
For half a second his eyes darkened and she wished she hadn’t made him remember his maiming. But then the glorious twinkle crossed his face again. “We’re in the right place to investigate that. You have a sword.” His left hand fell from her face to his belt. “So do I.”
He drew his sword. Golden steel, bright as the sun, shone in the dawn-light. Valyrian. Brienne traced the etchings on the blade with one finger, flames and lions and claws all as one, and wondered just how thoroughly lost she was.
She pulled some shred of self-possession together. “Brightroar was lost two hundred years ago, and was a greatsword besides. How did you acquire another Valyrian sword?”
“Tyrion retrieved Brightroar from the ruins of Valyria, along with my uncle Gerion’s bones. He had it made into a shortsword, for himself, and this longsword. I think he intended to keep it till he had a son – but he handed it to me instead in a fit of generosity.”
“That was... nicely done of him.”
“Fuddle-wittedly done. One day Sansa speaks of detailed designs for the castle he intends to build on the lands the queen granted him; the next day she speaks of annulment. I believe she wants a marriage to the Queen’s Hand, and is prepared to settle for being Tyrion Lannister’s wife as well, so long as she convinces herself of her ability to make him behave.” He re-sheathed his sword for long enough to peel off his travelling cloak and toss it onto a bench. The cloak’s hem was embroidered with lions, though his surcoat was plain brown wool. “Lend me a shield?”
The armoury door stood open a few feet away. Brienne ducked just inside it and retrieved her own shield from the rack as well as a lighter one with a grip she considered would fit Jaime’s golden fingers.
“We need to lock the door –” she began as she re-entered the hall, but she saw he was already slotting the bar into place.
“I’ve no desire to kill any innocent bystanders today.” He took the spare shield from her and strapped it to his arm. “Ready?”
She drew Oathkeeper in reply. Its blade caressed his in quick salute and, dark and light, the swords swept apart and met again in sparks and steelsong.
They’d fought together so often – but this time their dance was subtly different. More than training, less than all-out killing attack: she watched his silhouette more than his expression, for she couldn’t afford to look at his face and decide whether she wanted to win or lose.
Slow and fast by turns they circled each other, each searching with eye and blade for a clear opening. He’d learnt something of her caution over the years, but his probing thrusts were whip-fast. She parried one, evaded a second, caught the next on her shield.
Combat rhythm snared her and she attacked as he recovered. He switched direction as he moved and she slashed at empty air. She pivoted and brought up Oathkeeper’s blade just in time to parry his whistling downwards strike.
Backwards and forwards and around the yard they chased each other, sawdust grinding and billowing under their feet, till they were both sweat-soaked and gasping. At one moment Brienne thought she had him off-guard and lunged at his open chest, but somehow her blow landed on his shield instead: his blade whipped towards her back but she just recovered in time.
You only ever truly know the men you fight.
“You came here, with no fanfare or warning, not even a note by raven to tell me you were alive,” she gasped between blows. “Dark wool instead of Lannister crimson.” Another thrust. She came closer to him this time; this strike rent the suspicious surcoat.
“Why would I hide?” he snapped.
“I don’t know. I just know that you are.”
“Have I cause to fear the past? The past is gone, and dead.” His sword danced to left, to right, till her arm ached trying to keep up with it, but she gritted her teeth and fought. I am hitting him. Every attack pierces his walls, no matter whether or not it lands.
“Gone, ser, along with your white cloak, and as dead as Aerys Targaryen.” She drove half-into him and almost knocked him off-balance. She came away with one of his golden curls on the end of her blade.
Jaime’s laugh was bitter. “You were right to weep for me at the Stranger’s altar. The White Lion is dead too.” His shield clattered hers and it was her turn to come close to falling.
“So tell me what lies beneath that façade!” Oathkeeper’s point flew high and she scraped his cheek. Red blood dripped into his golden beard.
“You can do better than that, wench,” he laughed.
“It’s Brienne!” She drove harder at him, at head and legs, and in triumph or despair she saw his blade start to drop. “I told you before, Kingslayer –”
“My name,” he hissed, “is Jaime.”
Oathkeeper went into an uncontrolled spiral as he tangled the blade in his. The priceless sword went clattering across the hall floor. She pulled up short as he levelled his sword at her face. “Yield,” he ordered.
She took half a step backwards, dropped her shield, ducked and came up with her boot dirk in her left hand, as she had so many times before. But he just hefted his shield – the shield he held on his right arm, unlike any other man, in exactly the right place to block a left-handed dagger-blow.
“I – I yield.” She let the knife slip from her hand and stared deep into his green eyes. Bright as emeralds, like the eyes of a cat... and Jaime dropped both sword and shield and pulled her tight into his arms.
“Sweet good gods, I missed you,” he whispered hoarsely into her ear. She could only cling to him, shaking. To lose is to win...
Last time they’d held each other, he’d kissed her, locked into a high tower prison with only the White Book to bear them mute witness. This time she kissed him. He pressed her head against his and responded, full of all the fire of their earlier swordplay. Which of them backed the other into the wall by the armoury doorway, she wasn’t quite sure.
“I would have you know,” Jaime whispered into her ear, “that I came here with entirely honourable intentions. Relieving you of your maidenhead in your father’s training yard is slightly less than honourable.”
“Not all of you appears to share that opinion.” Combat’s afterglow had made her bold, but now, crushed against him with the first blood-rush fading, her heart began to tingle. “Are you really sure?” she whispered. “I’m far from a womanly woman –”
The sunlight smile broke across his face again. “Oh, my very dearest dear.” He kissed her once more, deeper this time, and with more purpose.
Somehow they struggled out of chainmail, underpadding, boots and breeches, and sank together to the sawdust-strewn floor. She stroked his cheek, still half unable to believe he was real: he kissed her hand, then her lips, and wound his good left hand into her hair. His manhood was pressing into her abdomen.
“Tell me there isn’t another way in here,” he whispered into her mouth.
“There isn’t.”
“Good.” He propped himself up on his right elbow and with his left hand gently brushed the damp gap between her legs. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying out.
“Please, if this is a dream, don’t let me wake,” she gasped.
“It isn’t.” He cupped her face with his good hand. She smelt her own scent on him. “Are you sure of me? An aging lion, short one paw –”
“Shut up and kiss me again.”
“As my lady desires.”
His lips brushed hers and as he slid his tongue inside her mouth she felt his manhood slide inside her too. The pain was fleeting, nothing beside a battle-wound, and meaningless compared to the hot fire burning in her belly.
His first thrusts were gentle, but as she felt their rhythm and started moving with him, they deepened, until she felt like he was impaling her, and she almost begged him to stop because the sensation was too great to bear. He slid his good hand between them and touched her outer lips: the flame within her blazed bright as the rising sun and she cried out as her pleasure peaked. Shaking with reaction, she felt him drive harder into her, and a few moments later he gasped her name against her neck and she felt his release.
He collapsed on top of her, trembling, and she held him against her and inhaled the sweat in his curls. Her thighs were aching, sticky with her blood and his seed, and her hair was caked with sawdust. She’d never felt better. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel this good.
Jaime’s shuddering gasps turned to near-hysterical laughter. “Lord Selwyn’s going to throw me into the harbour,” he managed.
“I’ll dive in and fish you out.” She stroked his cheek and drank in the tender glow in his eyes. The beard even makes him look like a lion. “I –”
The door handle rattled. Jaime’s head jerked towards it. Somehow the consternation on his face sent Brienne from panic to giggles. “Clothes,” she whispered. He sat up and grabbed their padded undertunics.
“My lady?” called Ser Hardred through the door. “Are you all right?”
She bit her knuckle to stop herself laughing out loud. “Just a moment.”
Jaime was struggling into his smalls and breeches. Predictably, the hurry was making him fumble. “I tell you, I will be very lucky to survive the day,” he hissed.
She shook sawdust out of her hair and kissed him as she passed him his mail shirt. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
*
Posterity does not record Lord Selwyn’s reaction.