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“Ser Jaime?”
Her voice has a warmer tone than usual, and he immediately turns towards Brienne as Tyrion leaves the room sending him a knowing look. He was the last one to leave, after Davos Seaworth, the wildling and Pod, but she had lingered behind, that small smile never quite leaving her face as Pod sang before.
He thinks that he’s proud of having put it there more than he’s ever been of anything he’s done in a hell of a long time.
He’s about to call her lady Brienne, but then he remembers himself.
“Ser Brienne,” he grins, not even bothering to hide it. “Can I do anything for you?”
“More than you already have?” She raises an eyebrow, coming closer to him, and she shakes his head slightly.
“Given that I think you saved my life this morning,” — not for the first time, he thinks —, “I think you might have done something for me, too. But all things considered, maybe we should just forgo the owed debts list? It’s gotten rather long. And anyhow, I did that because you more than earned it, not because there was anything to repay.”
She nods slightly, smiling again, her lips curling upwards, as if now that she’s done it for the first time in the gods know how long she can’t quite stop regardless of how close they are to their most likely death. “Very well,” she says. “I just — I think, all things considered… we might die soon.”
“That’s true, too.”
“And — I don’t think I want to go to my death without having… told you a few things.”
“I’m all ears. Ser.”
She grins again, once, a lovely one that’s gone a moment later, even if the ghost of it lingers on her full, pink lips. Her eyes have turned extremely serious, though.
“When I was in Renly’s camp,” she says, her voice dropping lower. “There was a group of… knights who started courting me.” She exhales. “I thought they were… well. Respecting me, I guess. For the first time in my life, not counting when Renly danced with me without batting en eyelid. Then it turned out that it actually was a bet.”
“A what?” He asks, that feeling of contentment he’s been brewing since he saw her smile as she raised to her feet turning into what he knows is righteous rage.
“They bet on which one of them would get to take my maidenhead,” she says, her eyes still meeting his even if it’s obvious that this conversation is hard for her. “I found out. And — well. It did little to convince me that people would actually, well, take me seriously.”
“Brienne, whoever these arses were —”
“I know,” she says, “I know now. But — in case you did not know what it means to me that you would be the one to take me seriously and give me everything I always wanted, I want you to know that it meant the world to me.”
He swallows, feeling like his heart has just grown ten sizes and he doesn’t know how he holds that stare without vomiting the words he had clumsily hidden from her back in the morning. He was going to tell Brienne he came all the way here for her but then it just didn’t want to come out because of course it would die on his tongue because he’s never done this properly before and certainly not with a woman who was waiting for him to make fun of her.
“Brienne,” he says, “then maybe you should know that — it’s not just that I never had a chance to do it for anyone else. Because I haven’t. Nor that people wouldn’t want… the kingslayer to knight them, so it just never came up. Don’t you think that it didn’t mean the world to me, too, that I could knight someone who actually deserved it? The same way as it would mean the world to me if you would let me —”
“There is — something else I needed to tell you,” she interrupts, suddenly.
“All right,” he says, taken aback.
“I didn’t tell you this morning because you took me by surprise. As usual,” she half-smiles. “And — never mind. But I told Lady Sansa that I would have fought with you and I meant all of it. Of course I would have you. I would always have you.”
His left hand has reached out and grasped her wrist before he has thought about it, suddenly needing to touch her, and for a moment he expects her to take it back but she doesn’t, and actually — she takes a deep breath, and then her hand moves slightly back —
Her fingers grasp his. Very tentatively, but they do. She looks back up at him.
“I — I think there’s something else you should know. Before we — well. Most likely die.”
“Tell me,” he says, moving closer, squeezing her fingers slightly, his heartbeat speeding up as she doesn’t move them away.
“I suppose you might not want to discuss your sister.”
Wait, what the — Cersei? Why would she care? What does Cersei have to do with it? Even when he’s given her up for good and with no regrets, does it mean that she will always have to be brought up —
“What does she have to do with all of this?”
“At Joffrey’s wedding,” she says. “She — talked to me. She thanked me for returning you safely, even if I guess that it might have had a double meaning, all things considered. I told her that I owed you as you rescued more than once, then she assumed that my… loyalty was flickering. As in, that I somehow seemed to never serve for the same person. I told her I didn’t serve you. It wasn’t — what it was. And it seemed like cheapening what happened on the way to King’s Landing, and I could not quite stand for it.” She breathes again. “Then she told me flat-out that I loved you.”
What the —
“I — I didn’t know what to answer, so I excused myself. I didn’t even try to presume such a thing, also because — well. People do not — love me. Or well, they don’t love me back, I guess. I couldn’t.”
He wants to ask her, but do you, because if she said yes then he would find the guts to tell her what he couldn’t this morning, but she’s obviously not done talking and he’s not going to interrupt her.
“However.” She takes another deep breath, and he has a feeling that what just went down in between the two of them might actually have emboldened her, and gods but he loves seeing her like this, her eyes soft and unguarded and her mouth still half-smiling, and if only he could take a step forward and close the distance between them he would, he would, but — she’s not done yet and he won’t be the one walking all over her, especially when it’s obvious that she wants to tell him. “When Lady Catelyn took me into her service, I told her that she had a different courage to her. A woman’s. A type of courage I hadn’t known I ever could have. And that I thought wasn’t for the likes of me.” Her fingers suddenly thread with his, and she’s not smiling anymore but she looks determined to tell him. “I did think about what your sister said. I — she’s a lot of things, but in that case? Maybe she had understood it before I did.”
Has she just told him —
“I couldn’t go to my death without having told you,” she keeps on, “not when you just — gave me the greatest gift anyone ever could. And if you don’t feel the same I won’t hold it against you, but after that, I couldn’t let that go unsaid. I hope —”
He’s bursting with the need to kiss her so much he feels like it’ll kill him long before the White Walkers might, and so he gives her fingers a strong, firm squeeze and that makes her stop talking.
“My sister,” he said, “could be observant, sometimes,” he admits. “Except that she never was much when it came to me.”
“… What?”
He shakes his head. “She always assumed I wanted what she did because she — thought we were the same person. I never thought to question that. Not until — well. We happened to meet, I suppose.”
“Jaime —”
“Oh, now it’s not ser anymore? Good,” he grins, and her mouth falls shut again. “I was saying. She might have guessed when it came to you. But she certainly could not guess what I was about to tell you this morning and then I was too craven to.”
“You — were about to tell me what?”
He takes a step closer. “That I came here for you.”
Her eyes go almost as wide as they did as when he knighted her. “What?”
“I came for you. I thought you understood when I recycled your speech,” he grins, “but when she said she planned to betray you it just sealed it. She wasn’t the person I thought she was. She wasn’t… the person I desperately wanted her to be while I refused to accept she wasn’t. I didn’t tell them this morning, but she did threaten to have me killed, when I left.”
Brienne’s mouth falls open, her eyes suddenly going a colder shade of blue or so it seems in the firelight, and her grip is downright painful now.
“She did what,” she says, and the fact that she sounds outraged at hearing it makes his stomach flip over in the good sense, and has anyone ever felt outrage at the concept of someone wanting him dead?
(Most likely not. Only her. The same way she’d be the only person to risk her honor and reputation to save his life when no one would think either worth shit.)
“It’s all right,” he says. “Well, it’s not, but — it drove the point home. And — Brienne, I might have been very slow on the uptake, but then again it’s not a mystery that in between the three of us Lannister siblings, I never was the smartest.”
“Jaime, don’t —”
“Let me finish,” he says. “I might be. And I might not be the best person when it comes to… figure out why I do a lot of the things I do. But I don’t jump into bear pits one-handed and gift people priceless Valyrian steel swords and tell them to keep them when they try to give it back for fun. I don’t feel like dying inside so very slowly when I watch them always leave and the one thing I want is to follow them. I don’t remember all the reasons why I once wanted to be like Arthur Dayne just by looking at them for nothing, and not anyone actually makes me feel like I could be a semblance of it. Gods, you have no idea of how I felt that time you fucking did call me ser after that bath. Maybe she figured you out. But she hasn’t figured me out, or she’d have known that I’ve felt the same all along. And that was what I wanted to tell you this morning, but — I didn’t quite manage. I thought the closest I would come to it was going to be — giving you the least you deserved. Because honestly, I’ve never met a single person more deserving of that title than you. But since you actually had the guts to do it first, I can — tell you for true.”
Her lips part, just slowly.
“I came all the way here,” he says, moving closer, “because I love you. And you should never have let it gone unsaid. I’m — I’m yours, if you’ll have me, and not just on the battlefield.”
It takes him one moment to realize that he was an idiot for not telling her sooner, since the moment it leaves his lips he feels so unburdened, it’s almost as much as when he told her about Aerys.
But then it sinks in, and he wonders, will she think I was japing, please no, but it turns out it’s wrong because not only she smiles again, but it’s so blinding and bright, it almost makes that grin she had on her face before pale in comparison, and suddenly she tugs him closer and oh, oh, maybe since she did realize he meant it before then she’s not even considering he might now and gods, he just wishes he had done it before and not now when it’s mere hours before battle rages if they’re lucky —
“Of course I’ll have you,” she breathes, her eyes brimming with tears all over again, but the good kind of. “There is no one else I would want as much,” she admits, quietly, her other hand reaching out to cup his cheek, and the moment she does he leans forward and she leans down at the same time and she’s kissing him, her lips meeting his, and he knows he’s smiling as hard as she is as it happens, and then he’s not anymore because he needs to kiss her proper — she obviously has no experience but her lips press against his with intent, not demanding but like she knows what she wants, and he immediately parts his own for her and maybe she’s green at this but she learns fast.
By the time she’s moaning into his mouth, they’ve fallen back on one of the chairs, his knees around her thighs, her hand in his hair and his grasping her neck, and maybe they don’t have much time left but he’s going to make the most of it and from what he can feel so will she, and —
Maybe they figured it out late and sure as hell it took him entirely too much time to realize to whom he actually wanted to give his heart (which, all things considered, maybe knew the truth long before his mind did), but he knows he picked right this time, and whether they die or they survive he knows he won’t ever choose wrong again.
For now, he’ll see that when they march out she won’t be thinking that she’s going to die without knowing how it feels to be kissed proper the way she deserves to, and he’ll get to fight with her and for her the way he thinks he’s wanted to since the moment they crossed swords together that first time even if he had no idea himself.
For now, he thinks it’s more than he could have ever asked for.
He has a feeling that she’s thinking the exact same thing, and if part of him hopes they survive this night just so he can ask her later —
There’s nothing so harmful in it now, is it?
End.