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Jaime looks at her these days as though his gaze were a touch, a grip - as though he is seizing her by the shoulders, as though he dueling her, his face unsmiling, his expression too raw. Brienne cannot bare it. It is almost… indecent.
She has become something special to him. She is not blind; she has been loved before, and she understands the feeling of it, the weight as it settles on her broad shoulders. She is a paragon of virtue under his eyes, all the things he wishes he had been, all the right choices that he didn’t make. A symbol.
But not a woman.
She does not wish for that - for Jaime Lannister to look upon her with hunger and desire. She has achieved all that she has ever longed for. She is a knight, she is a warrior respected by other warriors. She has honored her oaths and fulfilled her vows and will die defending the realm. She could want nothing more than this; had never dared to believe she could have this much.
She leans backwards, slightly to the right. The steel of her pauldron clinks audibly against the answering plate behind her, and she feels Jaime counterbalance forward so that they are both tipped slightly towards one another, motionless. She can feel his breathing, faster than usual. She wonders if he is afraid.
“You are the truest friend I have ever known,” she says. She had expected the words to wedge in her throat like a block of ice, to nestle down deep inside her where they had slumbered in peace for these last five years. But they flowed from her lips like cool water, and feel like perhaps the truest thing she has ever said - she, who is no liar. She wonders if it is the weight of death that makes everything she is feeling seem richer and more textured than ordinary life.
She feels Jaime shift uneasily on his feet behind her, and she does not turn to see him but she senses his wince just as truly as she’d sense the tip of a spear piercing her armor. She thinks immediately that she should not be hurt - her feelings are her own, and there is no dishonor in what she has expressed - but the pain comes anyway, blistering over her like Drogon’s plumes of fire.
“It shouldn’t matter to me,” Jaime says, and his voice is strange, almost croaking. “Not here, not now, at the end of everything…” he trails off, and she hears him swallow. Draw a breath. “But I can’t help imagining another life.”
Brienne turns despite herself, sees Jaime’s aching, open face looking out over the wall, looking down onto the armies of death come to cloak them all in ice and ash.
“I’ve spent my life protecting Cersei, adoring Cersei. Protecting our children. Protecting my brother,” he continues, moving so that his left hand brushes hers but does not take hers in his grip, “and I don’t regret that. I can’t. But lately I’ve found myself wondering. What if it hadn’t been that way? What if I had had a wife and a family of my own? Not some simpering court maiden, but a partner. Somebody I truly respected. Somebody I truly loved. I thought I was made for Cersei; we were designed together and could not be apart; she was the only person I could ever truly love. That was what she had always told me and that, though I knew much else was lies, that I never doubted.” Jaime stops, closes his eyes. He does not look so handsome these days; he is haggard, tired, as though he is in constant pain. Brienne raises one hand, intending to put it on his shoulder in a gesture of friendly support, but finds herself touching his face, her hand against his cheek. His beard bristles her, warm and wiry. He presses his jaw into the heel of her palm. “I was wrong,” he says. “I wasn’t born for her. Cersei was not my destiny. She was only a choice that I made very early on and never thought to unmake. My love for her, my terror at the thought of losing her, was at its greatest no greater than my love for you now.”
He looks up at her then, and in some distant corner of Brienne’s mind she wonders if love confessions are supposed to be this sad. She brushes her fingertips against his nose, his lips, feeling oddly detached from herself, as though she were floating in a snowy mist. “Ser Jaime,” she says, and can think of nothing else.
“It is a foolish thing to imagine,” Jaime replies as though agreeing with something she had said, “I know that. I am just glad to be here with you at the end. Whatever the remainder of my life may be - minutes or years - I wish to spend it at your side, Ser Brienne.” He pauses, raising his left hand to cover the her right, flattening her calloused palm against his mouth. “If you’ll have me.”
It is a riot of feeling within Brienne; she feels herself trembling like the maid she has never been, like a simpering court girl. She commands herself sternly to cease such nonsense, peels her hand from his bearded lips and folds her fingers down as though she is carrying something secret. Pivots outward to watch the wall. “You are always welcome with me, Ser Jaime,” she manages, with some effort and with some hoarseness. “You - I - you must know that I -” she breaks off, clenching her teeth together, frowning. Even her lips are quivering.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jaime grin; it is the first grin from him she has seen in years and the warmth of it flushes her like a beam of sunlight through the steady grey of winter. He is golden again for a moment - beautiful and shining like a jewel - and then he steps forward and kisses her once, lightly, on the mouth. “The army of the dead are nearly upon us,” he says, soft and low in a voice meant to be spoken into the lush linens of royal beds, and for a moment she sees what he sees - their children, strong and kind and fiercely loyal; the Lord and Lady of Lannister, swords in both their hands - and she feels an echo of longing and loss that makes her throat ache. “Go and defend me, my brave knight,” he says to her.
She closes her eyes. “I will.”