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Her eyes were closed.
The snow was falling thickly around them now, slowly blanketing the red splashes of blood. Jaime shivered, noticing for the first time how cold it had become, aware for the first time of the snow on his shoulders. His beard was heavy and brittle with ice and the hand that clutched Brienne’s limp one was practically numb, its skin pale and waxy.
He had seen what happened to men who forwent gloves out here in the frozen wastes beyond the Wall, they came back with their hands black and oozing. You could tell a hopeless case because they sent them straight to the blacksmith without even bothering with the maester. The screams would echo around the yard and make his chest constrict with panic. Then Brienne would have to carefully make up some excuse for them to move to another part of Castle Black, somewhere the screams couldn’t reach him.
His remaining hand wasn’t black yet, nor red and swollen, it didn’t look anything like the hands of the men they bought in but it was white with cold, painfully so. Really he should draw it back inside his furs, put his glove back on if he could find it.
But that would mean letting go of her hand and Jaime couldn’t do that.
There was a smudge of blood on her cheek and almost absently he wiped it off, using the mostly clean fabric wound about his stump. Her shirt was covered in it but there was little he could do about that. His eyes were watering from the biting cold wind but it wasn’t tears. He couldn’t even remember the last time he truly cried, he wasn’t sure if he could anymore.
Cersei had died when the Dragon Queen took King’s Landing and when the messenger had stood in front of him, face taut with worry and told him, he’d felt nothing. Nothing. He’d told himself it was because Cersei had been dead to him for years, by then she was nothing more than a memory of a time he thought he’d had love. But surely, surely the death of little Tommen at her side, his last remaining son, should have moved him, brought tears to his eyes.
Sometimes in the dead of night, he would think about the boy’s solemn green eyes and it would make his chest ache a little. But he never cried.
In contrast Tyrion’s death had made him angry, the hatred of his lying wretch of a brother battling with the knowledge that there would now never be a reconciliation between them. For weeks he’d sought out battles, picked fights with people absurdly more skilled that he was. Until Brienne had quietly asked him, while bathing his latest wounds, if he meant to die and leave her alone here.
He’d stopped after that.
The moon emerged from behind the knot of clouds that had obscured it and lit the snow-filled clearing. Brienne’s pale blonde hair almost seemed to glow in the new light, her armour gleaming. If he picked up her sword and folded her ice stiffened hands over it she’d almost look the picture of a knight, died gloriously in battle.
If there was such a thing as glorious death. There seemed to be so much of it lately, none of it he would describe in those terms.
The dead were coming back now they were saying, vengeful shades of their former selves. They killed, their eyes burning an unnatural bright blue. They had been burning the corpses at Castle Black, building big bonfires that lit the courtyard. The stench had been unbearable; he could remember Brienne covering her mouth, as if she wanted to retch, when the Night’s Watch men had thrown on the first corpses. Her eyes had been so full of horror and pain as the bodies had reluctantly kindled and the flames had burnt high. That night she’d stood hesitantly at the foot of his bed, shaking in the cold until he’d reached out and caught her broad wrist with his hand, drawn her under the furs to lay beside him. He’d pretended not to hear when she’d cried , small practically silent little sobs. One of the corpses had been that of her squire, a boy she had only known for a few months and yet she cried more piteously for him than Jaime could bring himself to for his own son. She cried, uncomforted and as good as alone while he put his back to her and pretended not to hear her pain.
He had told himself it was not his fault the boy died, that he hadn’t asked her to doggedly follow him to this wretched place, her loyalty had been undesired on his part. And if he hadn’t precisely tried to send her away, it didn’t mean he was to blame…he hadn’t forced her to be by his side, even if he took comfort from it.
Even after she’d lost the boy and things became more dangerous by the day, when he knew he should have forced her to go South even if he could not go himself, nothing had passed his lips. The blood that had been spilt here would have been his fault even if she hadn’t been saving him.
They were saying, back at Castle Black, that the dead remembered those who had wronged them.
Jaime tightened his hold on her cold limp hand, though his fingers were so numb he could no longer feel her. The light covering of snow was turning into a thick blanket, it made him wonder vaguely how long he’d been here, knelt beside her. Made him wonder how long it would normally take.
There was the slightest noise and he looked down at her, knowing what he’d find.
Her eyes were so blue.