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Some flowers blossom in winter. On the Fair Isle, the tiny plant had greener, smaller leaves, and more pointed. But it was the same climbing plant that plumply Jeyne Farman called the widows' honey, and when Jaime opened the frail bud in his hand, the petals hiding inside it, still ungrown, spread white, fascinated by the scarce light raining from the tree tops. A sweet baby girl, the flower had decided, and the white cloak smiled, bitterly, struggling to remember what Myrcella wore the last time he had seen her. Now the child had probably some Dornish stuff on, all silk and gold, and was as warm as the man who had fathered her was cold - and sick of marching in the snow in the company of a cunt, looking for... what?
War had turned the Riverlands into a wasteland, even there in the forest flanking the Blue Fork there was nothing left for him or Hyle Hunt to find, and carry back to Brienne, and to the dark-haired puppy she had adopted during her peregrinations. Some handfuls of berries weighed in Jaime's satchel, and he considered himself lucky enough to have stumbled in them.
Notwithstanding the thick fur glove, his hand was aching for the cold, and he could barely feel his cheeks. It was past time they came back to the hut. He whistled, twice, then paused, and whistled again. The signal worked, Hunt's answer coming soon to him, a long, whining sound, reinforced by a breeze that would have cut a lesser man's legs, for how chilling it was.
But this wasn't Jaime's first winter.
He snapped the blossom in his mouth and recognized its mellow taste before it exploded on his tongue, making him slightly dizzy. Then he felt it, in his blood, and in his old wretched bones, the wave of memories and renewed energy he was longing for. As if the years hadn't passed, a twelve-years-old Melara chuckled in front of him and Addam as Jeyne explained to them that the smallfolk kept carefully the secret about where the widows' honey grew, because its leaves were poison, but its blossoms were precious, life made petals In wintertime, women picked them up to strengthen their kids, and if a husband got too violent with both wife and children... They said the leaves were even sweeter than the flowers, but Jaime had no use for them.
Gingerly, he spoiled the blessed plant of any blossom, tossing them all into the smallest of his pouches, but for one. He forced it open. White, again. Another pretty girl. He imagined her freckled, and grinned, as he tossed the blossom in his mouth. How it tasted sweet. He had almost forgotten how it could be, sticky, sugary, and reinvigorating. Blue eyes shone in Jaime's mind, and the scar below them looked less ugly than usual. She would like the blossoms' taste. She would smile – maybe.
The snow hid anything and made the sounds soft, and all the same. Jaime turned, to find out that a frozen bush moved in the wind with the careless lightness the Marcher showed whilst walking at Brienne's side.
“Here, ol' man,” Hyle Hunt said, appearing from behind a rotting pine, his greyish cloak all white with frost.
Ol' man my arse. Jaime glared at the Marcher but swallowed down a couple of insults as he saw the man carried a small treasure: two rabbits, small, and surely bony under their thick candid fur, but they would make a nice diversion of their meager diet, based basically on the remains of the salted mutton and the cheese that the Lannister knight had brought with him from Pennytree. “Well done,” he said, at last, swallowing his Lannister pride.
Hyle Hunt shrugged. “A stroke of luck.” He looked tired. “I couldn't find any decent track for miles. No deers, no stags, no boars.”
“Wolves?”
“Nay. This wood is dead, empty as a gambler's pockets.”
Jaime scratched his unkempt beard. “I contended some berries to a crow. And won,” he hurried to add, disliking the smirk made by the cunt, half hidden by a thick woolen scarf that had belonged to one of Stoneheart's pawns. “Then I found something else.” It took some time for Jaime to unlace the satchel, one-handed, and pick one blossom, the less round and pulpy. “Try it.”
Hyle's smirk widened, but his voice grew hesitant. “Is that safe?”
“Your loss,” Jaime replied, forcing the petals to disclose. They were bloody red, inside. “A boy,” he murmured, and his mouth grew watery. The blossom didn't disappoint, it was deliciously sweet, and Jaime felt ten years younger. His legs got rapidly stronger, eager to dig a path in the snowy carpet, and his lips almost unconsciously curved in a smile, a song on them. Not that he was high enough to start singing in the middle of the fucking Riverlands, with Stoneheart still alive and seeking revenge for the lovely ambush they'd set on her to free the wench's squire and ser Whatshisname.
Hyle Hunt struggled to keep his older companion's pace. “What was that? Is it good? May I try it?”
“Tomorrow, maybe,” Jaime answered, without resentment. A honeyed note lingered on his palate, and life felt easier. Even the hopelessly homely man who swooned after Brienne looked less like a cunt than usual. “But most of the flowers are for the wench and the boy.”
Hyle made a face. It was the first time Jaime had called her wench before the hedge knight. Probably he should be more careful with words. “For the lady, I mean,” Jaime explained, and he thought of her in a silk bodice masterfully patched up - and his smile went to the seven heavens and came back, and this fucking snowy world and its darkening sky and its caves and its sea depths weren't enough to contain it. “She may be able to venture in the forest on the morrow, with the help of these blossoms, you know.”
“Thanks the Gods,” the scarred man following Jaime uttered, “Can't wait to leave this fucking place.”
About that, Jaime couldn't but agree. It was past time to get the wench out of the Riverlands, and to a good Maester.
The hut stank, and the smoke coming from the improvised fireplace where Hyle immediately crouched by and started preparing his rabbits made Jaime's eyes burn. But it was the only roof still standing in the ghost hamlet, and Jaime, too, stank. The wench's scent wasn't far better, either. Her clothes smelled heavily of dried blood. And the most of that blood was hers, damn it.
As he leaned on the wench, asleep, Jaime felt all his inadequacy. How could a few blossoms give her back all the blood she had lost – and she had lost it for such a stupid cut on the upper thigh... a lesser wound! It was maddening. If only she had complained about it. Growled. Asked for help. His help.
But Brienne of Tarth was too stubborn to change and put herself before the others, for once.
All of a sudden, Jaime needed some air.
“Here, lad,” he addressed Pod, handing the wench's squire the satchel containing the widows' honey. “Give the lady two of these blossoms, as she wakes up. I'm coming back soon, anyway,” The boy had large, frightened eyes, as dark as chestnut, striped with red. A maiden's no fucking leaf. She should have thought twice before falling inanely to the ground, Jaime guessed, angrily. “Soon,” he insisted, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder. He could sense Podrick's collarbone under the ragged woolen jacket the squire wore. “These little buds will help her, you'll see.”
The lad babbled a thanks. He didn't look convinced, though.
“Let's hope it,” the Marcher growled, still intent on skinning the two poor rabbits by the fire. “I've never seen such a thing like a miracle plant, though.”
“Right,” Jaime replied, wondering why the hell he had been willing to risk his life to rescue a bitch that came from a place named Horn Hill. “You've never seen it, for the widows' honey grows only in winter, whilst you... how old are you?”
“Twenty-two, ser.”
“I would have said seventeen, since Brienne's nineteen and a head taller than you.” Jaime wrapped himself in the furred cloak, without giving the younger man the time for replying, “How many winters did you pass through? None, that's why you know nothing, ser, and should shut the fuck up, for a change.”
Hyle didn't stand up, wisely.
He glared up at the Lannister knight, as the latter passed by the fireplace, glimpsing quickly at the two beautiful swords Jaime had ensured to his belt – for no one would have laid hand on Oathkeeper, but him, till the wench rested, and got her strengths back. “Brienne's very tall. Unique as a girl,” the Marcher said, finally, in a low voice, his face turning back to the flames so that Jaime couldn't see more of his ugly face. “She trusted you, ser, so I can't but trust you.”
It was poorly said, but still something. “Take care of her and the boy, till my return,” Jaime replied, feeling guilty as he opened the front door, allowing a slice of winter to intrude in.
Cold, the evening was running after the kingsguard, his claws already grasping to the remnants of what used to be a big squared building, made of river stones, where Jaime had stopped by. Whoever had set the hamlet to the torch had put a lot of effort into destroying that particular place, and the Lannister man wondered why. It looked more like an opulent farm than a fortified tower. It made scarce sense.
He walked on a collapsed wall, noticed a glint, and went on one knee. Half-buried under a cracked stone, he found an oval medallion, shining like fire opal at the end of a red ribbon. It wasn't opal, of course, nor anything precious – just earthenware, but nicely painted in ochre and white. He cleaned it on his glove, and considered bringing it to the wench, but quickly gave up to the idea. It was a foolish one. Even if they had managed to escape Stoneheart, Brienne was melancholic enough even without the help of a little triumph of painted roses that had belonged to some unknown girl, whose house had been burned down.
Jaime got back to the small path leading to the hut and stopped before a young oak to bury the small medallion deeply down in the snow. He even said a prayer, freezing in the impending darkness, for it felt like the right thing to do – and he even prayed freely, without thinking back to Lancel and Cersei, but for a fleeting moment. It was as if they belonged to some other man's past, of late. He just wished them... nothing. He didn't need to think about them, nor see them again, that was it, whilst about Tyrion... Tyrion was a different matter. Jaime still didn't know what he would have said, or done, to his brother. He wanted to meet him, though, and wanted him to be safe, till then.
Uncertain, he toyed with the red cotton ribbon. He had kept it. The wench needed something to fix that damn limp hair of hers, and he would invent something about how and when he had found it. Besides, it came easy to any Lannister to make the reality lovelier - or deadlier - than it was.
Suddenly, the air around him grew absurdly cold. Nothing abnormal, since the sun has gone, Jaime told himself, but hurried towards the shelter, nonetheless.
The moon wasn't still at its high, and the ground was slick, half-frozen. He slipped, and fell, face down on the ground, like a drunken King, his stump getting a bad blowback as he put both his hand and his mother-of-pearls nailed shit forward not to break his nose. Brienne would have helped him get back on his feet, if she were there - but she wasn't there.
Jaime was alone, and he was sick of being alone, in the dark, in the cold.
With two round amber eyes staring at him.
“What the...”, He accommodated his arse on a pile of filthy snow, his legs crossed, the cold forgotten for a while. The creature trembling before him was as small as a kitten, and resembled in all a kitten, even if a hideous, skin-and-bone one, but her fur was night-black with unmistakable snowy stripes. “Aren't you too south, little thing? Does your mother know you're hanging out there to scare the hell out of miserable anointed knights?”, Jaime asked, and darted his eyes around, nervously, for Mommy Shadowcat might be too close to them for his taste. He saw nothing but ruins, though, and trees behind them, and trees and bushes, all dressed in ice, and again trees. He rolled his eyes, bored, and chilled to his bones. “Fine.” He got up, cursing the snow and the Northern long-faced scum who had certainly invented it as he wiped it away from his breeches and cloak, “Good luck, honey. Sorry, but I'm not Tommen. I do prefer horses to cats.” The tiny creature didn't move. It was as if it was made of dragonglass, still and smooth and perfect and doomed. “And you're quite an ugly cat, by the way. Skinnier than the wench's squire. I bet you don't remember the last time you put something under your fangs.”
Jaime made a step towards the hut, two steps. Then changed his mind. “This is nuts,” he murmured, as he turned on his heels, then squatted by the fake kitten. “You'd eat me and her, if you could.” The tiny Northern beast held his gaze and didn't deny it. At least, she was honest. “Stop it, kitty-cat. The wench has already two pets, one skinny and one ugly, I'm not taking you with me.” Jaime stretched his right arm to try the animal, and the stupid ragged thing hissed and tried to scratch him, finding out that gold couldn't bleed. If the breeze hadn't frozen Jaime's cheeks he would have laughed, and hard, at that. “Come on, girl, it's too fucking cold to argue.” He cornered the small wild creature against a wooden fencing that had surprisingly survived plunder and destruction, managing to grab her by the scruff, and the beast relaxed as if it were really a kitten. He even managed to put her in one of the inner pockets of the doublet he wore under the white cloak, and believed to hear a purr or some other pleased noise. Even damn baby shadowscats enjoyed being warm. “Be good with butter-hearted Brienne, and she will impede the cunt to skin and cook you, fine?”, Jaime said, merry, then he ate the distance between him and the hut where the wench had probably already awakened, without him being present - how insensitive of her.
Brienne was still asleep, her head resting on the crook of her good arm, the one that had never been broken. “Any trace of fever, Pod?”, the white cloak wondered, as soon as the squire returned him the satchel filled with the rare blossoms.
The lad for whom she had begged Jaime to fight and probably die kept studying his boots. “N-n-n-..”
Impatient, the Lannister knight seated on her bed, and put his hand on the wench's forehead, to check it all by himself, awakening her.
“Well done, ol' man,” the Marcher commented, sarcastic, from the high of the fucking three-legged stool the man had mistaken for a throne.
“Hyle, please,” she said and got seated on the pile of rags, stretching the longest legs ever displaced on a wench under the thick woolen cloak they had used as a blanket for her. Her face became soon a mix of puzzlement and bashfulness. “My breeches? What have you done with them?”
“The lady Brienne's breeches, my good washerwoman?”, Jaime asked to the scarred bitch by the fire. The man grumbled something to his address that even a Dornish would find gross.
“They've perfectly dried up,” Jaime translated, as soon as Pod brought the wench's poor garment, displaying it with care on the end of the bunk bed.
At its sight, Brienne turned crimson, her neck and face all nicely splotched, but for the mauled cheek. “How long have I... Is it already dark?” She took a deep breath, and her nostrils widened, the smell of the rabbit stew reaching her, and not only her. The kitten meowed from under Jaime's thick doublet, but the Payne lad's stomach growled, quite loud, hiding it. “Don't tell me we've lost a full day of ride because of me.”
“Ride?” Jaime sneered. One horse had died in the skirmish, the others of exhaustion a couple of days later.
She recalled it and blushed even more fiercely. “Sorry, ser. I can be such a dumb, sometimes,” she said, hunching her shoulders.
He was struck by the memory of the wench's chin trembling hard when she had confessed to him, a couple of miles after having left Pennytree, that she had no clue of where Sansa Stark was. He smiled, an uncertain one. Brienne still believed he had followed her because of a fucking Stark. As if a Lannister couldn't recognize a lie. “Even more often than sometimes,” he teased her, then nodded to her leg. “How are you doing?”
“I'm well. I can walk without slowing you,” Brienne rushed to reply. “Seriously. It was... nothing.”
“Mmmh,” hummed Jaime, doubtful, struggling to keep the cub still hidden. The small wretched thing liked the wench's voice and had started tugging onto his chest, looking for a way out. “That nothing knocked you down for a good amount of hours, yet. The lad, here, was dying of worry.”
She drifted her glance on the quiet squire. “Pod,” she murmured, so fondly that pincers of jealousy clenched Jaime's stomach.
“I was worried, too,” said the cunt from his corner, unsolicited.
She gazed at the Marcher, looking uncomfortable in her skin. “It was... a woman's thing.” Jaime's hand, relieved, pressed onto the wild kitten to prevent her from sneaking out. A wench hadn't her moon blood when too ill or weak. “Nothing some sleep couldn't fix,” she concluded, then she set her eyes back on Jaime. Why? Was his turn to say that he had almost lost it for the worry? He wasn't a smelly Reacher with no sense of decency, though, and had no intention to make himself ludicrous. “I won't slow you down,” she implored him.
Jaime blinked. Tried a smirk. Failed miserably. Her eyes were so big, her shirt crumpled, her hair all disheveled. “For the Sevens' sake, Brienne,” he muttered, out of frustration, two of his precious five fingers half-chewed by an ungrateful pup, “you look like a Giant stepped on you and you tell us everything's fine? It takes a fool to remain sane with a fool like you.” Said that, he got rid of the sharply-toothed beast, placing her in the wench's lap, ungracefully.
“Good heavens,” Podrick let out, forgetting any stutter, at the small shadow cat's sight whilst Brienne, for all thanks, gasped.
So much for the pretty scene that Jaime had been forming in his head on the way back to the stinking hut.
Only the hedge knight maintained a decorum, for he was too busy in stoking the flames to notice the poor, scared kitten. She trembled in the wench's arms with her long tail held down between her legs as if the wench was the worst of nightmares, and even if Jaime was prone to argue with the skinny Northern guest about it, he sought a truce, reaching out to brush her pretty little face, where the triangular ears met the furry cheeks. “She's not that bad,” he murmured, soothing, and Brienne misunderstood.
“Is that a she?”, the wench uttered, wrapping the pup in an awkward embrace, that made Jaime drift his eyes away.
“I guess so,” Jaime replied, standing up. “But I was talking to her, not to you.” He washed his hand in the battered helm they had recycled as a basin, but his cloak was still damp after his fall in the snow, so he took Hyle's rag from a peg on the wall, ignoring the Marcher's protests, and dried his hand with it, before tossing the greyish worn cloak to the squire. “Keep it well open, like a screen,” he told the lad.
“I do not peep, Pod,” lamented the hedge knight, arrogantly loud, when the smart boy complied, giving his back to his lady and using the worn cloak to shield her.
Brienne raised her eyes from the black pup, interrogatively.
“I'm going to check your wound,” Jaime began explaining, “and if, and only if, it looks good, I'll start taking into account the possibility of you leaving this bed.” Her lips parted, but the energy that the widows' honey had given Jaime was fading, and he just wanted to swallow down whatever concoction the bitch was making and sleep, and spare no time in chatters. So he brought one finger to her lips. They were cracked for the cold, and still softer than the cub's fur. “You know the rules, my lady,” he said, “When we left Pennytree and Sansa Stark magically turned into Pod, and you asked my help to rescue him and ser Cook, you promised you would have respected all three of them. So, what's the first rule?”
“I shall trust you, whatever you say,” she answered, as he freed, with a bit of unwelcome reluctance, her lips.
“Exactly,” he sat next to her, an encouraging smile on his face. “The second?”
“I shall trust you, whatever you do.” The fake-lion cub glanced up at Jaime, mildly skeptical, before closing her amber eyes. Quite a smart puppy, that one.
“The last and more important one?”
Brienne swallowed, bringing one hand to the remnants of her right cheek. “No masks. No tricks...”
“And no lies. Ever more.” Jaime finished, looking her in the eye. “Tell me again you're fine.” She kept quiet, the only sound in the hut being the cracking of the fire and the soft purr of the pup in the wench's lap. “See? It's quite easy.” He smiled again. “It won't take more than a few instants, anyway, my lady.” With a glimpse, Jaime checked whether the cunt's cloak kept open worked well as a screen, then uncovered Brienne's thigh, gingerly. The bandages looked clean. He unwrapped them, as fast as his golden hand allowed it. The wound was still a bit red, and the Marcher had been too nervous to stitch it properly, but it didn't look, or smell bad. “This may hurt,” Jaime warned her, before pressing his fingers on the flesh just above the cut. The skin wasn't hot, and Brienne jerked as he expected her to, and went very pale, paler than he expected her to, stopping caressing the pup – and yet, she made no words. “Does it hurt?”, he asked, concerned,
“It does,” she answered, mechanically, looking on the verge of fainting.
Jaime hastily retreated his hand. “It's a good sign, Brienne,” he reassured her, hurrying in slipping his right arm around the wench's waist. “Corrupted flesh loses sensibility.”
“So I'm no rotting,” the maid said in a strained murmur, her freckled hands never letting the baby Shadowcat, as Jaime gently forced her to lay down on the rags.
“Nay, your wound is healing,” Jaime explained in a clear voice, to the wench's benefit and not only hers. “You're weak because you're a starving thickhead who lost a lot of blood.” He finally found the right satchel and picked one widow's honey blossom. “This will help. Open it, then toss it in your mouth.”
Brienne frowned at him.
“Then I'm going to open it in your place,” Jaime said - and did it. The petals were glossy white. “Your firstborn will be a girl, my lady,” he announced, satisfied. “White is for girls, red for boys, so we do say in the Westerlands.”
“What?”, she looked stunned, and way too pasty for his taste.
Before the wench might drift away, Jaime smeared the immature flower on her lips, till she disclosed them in a sigh. “Good. Now chew it for a little while, before swallowing it.”
She groaned as the bud bloomed in her mouth. “It tastes sweet,” she said, her eyes brightening again, in pleasure and amazement.
He prevented her from doing something stupid like moving by putting a hand on her shoulder. “Wait. You need at least another one of it.” Jaime picked a second blossom, a plump one, and grinned, as he disclosed it. “White. Have you ever thought about the names you'll give to your two first baby girls, my lady?”
She accepted the blossom, her fingers lightly trembling as they accidentally brushed against his golden hand, and chewed it, very slowly. “Alysanne and Aryanne,” she said, in the end.
Even in the scarce light, Jaime could see her regain color and rejoiced. “Lovely. The names you chose, I mean.” With his heart thudding with more virulence than usual, he forced his attention back to the wench's wound, for it was past time he dressed it again, and covered her again before she got a cold. “Don't move, till I'm done with this,” he warned her. Jaime's left hand didn't fuck it up, for once, and he finished trafficking with the wench's bandages quite soon. “Did it hurt?”
“No.” A lock of flaxen limp hair fell on Brienne's scarred cheek, as she wrapped the sleeping black cub in some rags to keep her warm, and laid the bundle on one side of the bunk bed, before accepting the Lannister man's help to get seated on its edge. “Thank you, ser,” she whispered, and, still holding Jaime's forearm, she shot him a glance from under her whitish eyelashes that made him shiver, without a reason, why. Her legs were again bare, smooth, and pale, and spotted of pink and covered with almost invisible hairs and goose prickles, and yet, Jaime was the only one shivering in the room. It felt awkward. “Alysanne and Aryanne... they were my sisters,” she said, so low that he doubted the murmur could pass beyond the screen still held by loyal Pod.
“Two sisters,” Jaime muttered, like a perfect idiot. He had always thought of the wench like an only child, but, of course, that was dumb, he knew no one who was his parent's only child. Even Addam Marbrand was a third son, the only of his siblings surviving past infancy. And yet, the Lannister knight struggled to figure out the existence of other women like Brienne. “Did they have big blue eyes?”
She left his arm and widened her eyes, before drifting them to the sleeping pup. “I was too young when they...” Her hand stopped mid-air before reaching the baby shadowcat's head, and there was something painful in the twist her wrist made, as she remembered being naked from the thighs down and leaning onto the bed to get her breeches back. “I wish I could remember their faces as I remember Gal's. Gal... Galladon was my brother. He drowned when I was four.”
Jaime kept silent as she, grimacing, dressed up, realizing that a knight would have averted his eyes only when she was done, and stared at him. That damn tangled lock of hers still danced between them.
“We've finished, Pod,” Jaime said, as if in a trance. “Get rid of that rag, and get a comb for your lady. She needs it.”
The squire turned to smile, shyly, to the wench, before obeying.
“You act weirdly, today,” Brienne murmured, referring, surprisingly, to him, Jaime. Jaime wasn't weird. He was beautiful, maimed, sometimes reckless, but not weird.
“Tonight,” the Lannister man corrected her. “And the only strange thing I can see here is your hair,” he rebuked, then, before turning in the lad's direction. “You'll find an ivory comb in the bag hung next to the door. And, whilst you're at it, take a good look, there should be also a ribbon, in there.”
Whoever had lived in the hut was too poor to own a table.
The hedge knight didn't seem eager to give up his place near the flames, so Jaime had contented himself with sitting on a worm-eaten chest, to leave Pod his place on the bed, next to the wench and her new furred pet. He glimpsed up at her, unseen. The golden bowl in her hands stole a ray of red from the ribbon waved in her one-sided braid as she took a long, slow sip of the stew. Jaime looked back at the bowl in his lap, already cleaned up, and glared at it as hard as Hyle had glared at the baby Shadowcat when he had found out there was another small, but very hungry, creature to feed. The Lannister man would gladly exchange all the garnets uselessly adorning the dish with a trail of juicy roasted pork ribs.
At his left, the Marcher made out a satisfied noise. “It was good, wasn't it?”
Jaime scoffed, but agreed, handing him the empty bowl.
Hyle took immediately the golden dish, without complaining. He was better as a bowls rescuer and a cook than as a washerwoman. The wench's breeches were still dark with large stains of an unmistakable color. “You told me to spare the soap, ol' man,” the Marcher bitch felt compelled to say, annoyingly following Jaime's gaze till her.
“Any scrap of soap is...”
“...hard to replace in war, I know,” Hyle said, finishing Jaime's sentence. “Still, I would have made an exception, in this case.”
The Lannister man opened his mouth, to find out he had nothing to say. He should have allowed the hedge knight to use a bit of soap, after all. The contrast with the rags the next Evenstar wore and the gold in her hands made Jaime wild.
He jerked on his feet. “The first watch's mine,” he said, eager for some fresh air.
“And the second, and the third as well, since lions like to get their butts frozen, it seems,” Hyle replied, a mocking smile curving his lips. “Mine prefer keeping sitting by the fire, finally back in good company. ”
It was such an easy call.
Jaime's ghost hand itched as he got close to the Marcher, towering on the shorter man when the latter finally stopped smiling and stood up. “I wouldn't expect anything better from a...”
“Jaime!”, the wench broke in, her voice so near.
Jaime turned, and she was there, standing on one leg a few inches from him, with Pod doing his best to support her - but the best a skinny lad could do wasn't enough. Cursing, the Lannister knight took the squire's place at her side. Fuck, if she was heavy. “Have you gone crazy, wench?”, he panted, as soon as he had made her sit again.
“Crazy? Me?”, she replied, scowling at him, “When we all barely survived the only night we spent in the cold, without a shelter, and you want to get outside.”
“Lions do not fear winter.”
She opened her hands in mid-air and closed them, in distress. “If you're a lion then I'm the evening star...”
Jaime grinned. “Sure, a freckled star, with crooked teeth.”
“... and I'll fall on you as soon as you get outside...”
Jaime laughed. “A freckled falling star, this is going better and better.”
“...or provoke again Hyle or...”
Jaime stopped laughing. “Hyle, Hyle, Hyle. Have you seen Hyle, please help me rescue Hyle, why don't you try to be nicer to Hyle... What's Hyle to you, Brienne? For I don't think you're so desperately stupid to accept the courtship of such a...”
She pressed a hand onto his mouth, aghast. Then retired it, slowly, looking at him as if he were a stranger and not Jaime. Just Jaime. "It can't be." She murmured and smiled. “Now I see why.” Her smile widened, soft. Glorious. She was glowing. "The cub. The ribbon. The blossoms." Whatever the wench was babbling about, it made no sense. "Gifts. You brought me three gifts.” A giggle escaped her swollen, unexplored lips. A damn girlish giggle. “Not one, not two, but three lovely gifts."
Jaime's throat went painfully thin. "So what?"
She shook her head, her hand messing with her braid, as she left herself crumbling back on the bed. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
The Shadowcat cub climbed on her breast and started loafing on the woolen-stained tunic, and she giggled, again. Short, merry fits of laughs and titters, totally silly, welcomed by the wild cat with loud purring and trilling. She looked almost a... Any attempt of a description dried in Jaime's mind and mouth, and the turmoil of the heart battering against his temples almost made him fail to register the squire's amazed “oh” and the cunt's stifled sigh, in the background. He sought support, sitting on the bed, his fingers fretting inside the damn satchel, and finally closing onto a blossom.
It was a lovely one, translucent in the echo of the light set by the distant flames. “May I have it, Jaime?”, she asked from the bed, hushed, her face lightening up with expectation. “For you picked them for me, didn't you?”
He had picked them for her. He had done worse, way more foolish things for her. Like facing a bear, or abandoning his army in the middle of nothing. Why was it so hard to admit he was hellish glad to see how she enjoyed that stupid flower-to-be? It was her eyes. It always came back to those fucking eyes of hers, ripping him in two imperfect halves at any glance. “Disclose it, though, before eating it, to see which color it brings up,” was all Jaime's wits conjured to make him say, in the end.
She nodded, smiling, a bit more shyly than before. “I hope it's white, again.“
“Ruby red,” he whispered, watching the love of his life fighting not to allow the impudent pet to take the blossom in his paws.
“Crimson, then. A sweet boy who will hunt his sisters in the yard,” she said, and braced herself onto an elbow, managing to stand up with her torso all by herself notwithstanding the wound on her thigh and the black-furred nuisance storming the bed in a fret of games and trilling. Her eyes were at a level with Jaime's now. “In due time,” she flushed, but looked calm, as if she was getting ready for a fight. “We have promises to keep, before.”
Jaime felt naked. And absurdly high. He swallowed, then nodded. It was happening, then – and so fast. Not in the way he had pictured it, it was clumsier, but it was good, nonetheless. Sweet. Like a frail corolla of red petals trembling in a maiden's breath. He swallowed, harder than before. “Am I allowed to...?”
Brienne hesitated, bringing a meowling shield to her breast with her free hand, then tossed the blossom in her mouth, her eyes soon turning a more languishing hue of blue, bright with desire. But probably he was just imagining it, for in the end she just pulled out her hand, offering it to him. “Of course, ser Jaime.”
“Oh. Right,” he almost stuttered while taking her fingers in his left hand, awkwardly as fuck. It wasn't decisively going as he had pictured it, but the smile she made as Jaime put a kiss on her knuckles to seal their silent vow, lingering there for a brief, endless instant... all the gold in Casterly Rock wasn't enough to give up to it. “In due time,” he repeated, soft, more to himself than to her, grinning as his mind ran to the berries the wench hadn't still seen, well hidden in his other satchel.
They had all the world's time ahead of them, a white cloak to change into a different, more colorful one, and some stuff to do, together. And in the meanwhile, no fucking winter would impede Jaime Lannister to shower his lady with gifts, since she enjoyed them so much.
His grin became a laugh - a golden, life-thirsty, unstoppable one. For there were no men happy like him. Only him.
