Chapter Text
- 1 -
JAIME
It felt like a lifetime ago,
That was the thought Jaime had as he paid for a third horse to finish the journey to Winterfell, the other two having succumbed to the howling winds and his brutal pace. He never would have imagined himself speeding away from King’s Landing--away from Cersei--with the intention of aiding those who rightfully hated him. With the intention of dying for those same people, not in some fated way like his sister had always believed, but in the middle of the fucking North, in the dead of Winter, scarcely able to feel the fingers of his one remaining hand when something long-dead tore open his stomach and spilled the meager contents of the hopeless mess of shit he’d become.
He thought of that often--that thing he’d seen in the Dragon Pit. All of the petty squabbles, all the claims over the throne, all his past allegiances… it all ceased to matter in that one moment, when Jaime realized there wasn’t going to be a throne to fight over. They would all join the Night King’s forces, an endless swarm of rank and file until he achieved whatever ends he intended.
It’d been a story once and nothing more. A warning growled by an old, greying wolf who’d had the audacity to judge him. Even before that, it was only a whisper on the walls of Castle Black, passed back and forth between the Watch as a tried-and-true way to make new “recruits” piss themselves.
But Jaime had seen it with his own eyes. He’d stared into the face of death and was met with icy resistance. He’d believed--he’d hoped--that Cersei had seen the same thing. That she’d understood the need to protect the realms, protect the living so the world their child was born into wasn’t quite as hopeless as before.
In the end, Cersei only understood what she wished to understand. Everything else was conveniently dismissed with a grace and elegance Jaime had once found utterly spellbinding. Her cunning had at one time been an admirable trait, when she’d put it toward a better future for their children. Now three of their children were dead, and the fourth…
He was uncertain when he’d stopped believing there even was a fourth. At some point during the long ride north, with only his scattered, miserable thoughts to accompany him. He’d thought of Cersei often at first, holding out some foolish belief that she could see reason. That she could be the woman he’d once loved. When he’d reached the reserves of what little hope he had for a hateful, spiteful lioness--and in turn, what little hope he had for himself--Jaime held out hope for their child.
A daughter. Huddling under thick furs, never able to get warm enough, Jaime had wished for another daughter. Sweet and beautiful and strong, like Myrcella. He thought of spiriting her away. Tyrion would help him, if they both survived. If he wasn’t executed on the spot. A laughable thought, but it gave him hope.
Until it hadn’t any longer.
There was no child. That truth seeped into Jaime’s bones like the bitter cold. It was something he could never escape, and something a part of him had always known. Cersei knew him better than anyone. She knew what he most desired. She’d used it to get her way, just as she always had. Without the evidence presented by Jon Snow and the Dragon Queen, he would have let himself believe it--kept trying until it was true.
But there wasn’t a child. There would never be anymore children. He was going to die in these frozen fucking lands with one hand uselessly clutching the lesser half of a perfect blade, its mate in the hands of one far better than he. In those moments, as he rode through the night, feeling as haggard and grey as that old wolf, Jaime wondered why he even bothered.
He was the Kingslayer. Oathbreaker. The man without honor. Few people would mourn him. No one would think upon him kindly--how could they? All he’d ever had was his loyalty to those he loved, to his family, and even that was tarnished like ruddy brass, no longer the gleaming gold he once believed it to be.
Fuck loyalty.
Every time he thought of those words, every time he saw her snarling face as she flung them at him, Jaime felt a little more certain in his actions. He cursed the North slightly less, cursed the Starks less still, cursed her least of all.
When he’d first met her, Brienne was a creature of loyalty, through and through. She would never have broken an oath, no matter the cost. She hadn’t experienced enough of the world to know what that cost might even be. Oh, she understood cruelty. He’d known that from the start, exploited it to best serve his own goals of returning to Cersei.
But along the way, that devotion of hers became a choice, not simply the default as governed by her own naivete. It was no longer blind, no longer so straightforward, and as she gained more clarity, Jaime had lost much of his. Before they’d met, he’d been certain in who he was and what he wanted. Everything he did served that purpose. Now the lines of what he should be--what he could be--were so blurred Jaime could hardly see them. They faded in and out with nightmares and dreams alike. His sword hand, rotting uselessly in the filth. Her sapphire eyes taking in his many burdens through the thick, billowing steam, looking at him as though he were simply a man, not the Kingslayer. The bottom of that pit rising up to meet him as he leapt, unarmed, between Brienne and a bear that had a taste for women in hideous pink dresses. The look on her face, the quiet dignity with which she’d taken a blade and armor of Lannister make, the firm resolve in her voice when she’d named that blade. Oathkeeper. For herself, he’d thought. For him, she’d said.
He had a great many days and nights to think of Brienne of Tarth. It was her eyes he’d always thought of before. He’d been able to ignore everything else, but her eyes were impossible to forget. He’d seen so much in them during their journey. Too much. Jaime believed he knew her better than most ever would, and yet it had taken him an embarrassingly long time to come to terms with a simple fact:
He wasn’t riding north for Cersei, or for a child that would never be. He wasn’t even riding north for the realms. He was riding north because Brienne of Tarth believed he was a good enough man to do so. Because she wanted him to be that. He’d seen it when she spoke with him last--the disappointment there, as she’d realized he was everything he’d always said he was.
He was riding north because if he was going to die in this land the gods had forsaken--if they’d ever overseen it to begin with--then he would die keeping at least one oath. The unspoken one that passed between them, when she’d implored him to be better. Jaime had no concept of what better even was any longer, but he knew where it was.
It was in Winterfell, of all bloody places. At her side. Pretending to be half the knight she’d always been.
The last leg of Jaime’s journey brought a certain clarity, and as the stone walls of Winterfell loomed in the distance, he knew what he must do before the end. If nothing else, he’d make her understand that she’d kept more oaths than she even acknowledged, and in doing so had inspired him to do the same.
The gates were open, riders going to and from. His hood was pulled up, the wool scratching his wind-burnt face. He dismounted in the courtyard, every muscle aching from the weeks of riding. His heart pounded in his chest, and for a moment he had the foolish idea that she might be there. Standing behind him in the outer bailey, somehow expecting his arrival. If anyone could manage such a feat of belief in him, it would be Brienne.
It wasn’t his wench standing there, though, tall and commanding in proper armor that finally fit her uncompromising form. It was a ghost from the past, a person who should by all rights not exist any longer. Who didn’t, perhaps, because the all-knowing stare that pierced Jaime’s soul was that of a long-blind wolf.
The things I do for love.
The words sprang into his mind unbidden, the image of young Brandon Stark climbing into that window, bearing witness to a secret Jaime had never wished to keep in the first place. His gaze held the too-focused eyes of the boy who was a boy no longer. He was frozen, unable to move, to speak, to think past anything but his own demise.
His deserved demise.
“She expects you,” he said in a distant voice that could be claimed by no man. “No one else does, but she always has.”
He could not even begin to comprehend those words, could not comprehend any of it beyond the palpable relief he felt when Bran Stark turned in his chair and left him to stand there in the courtyard, at an utter loss.
“Jaime.”
A familiar voice brought him back to the present, and he looked up to see Tyrion on the battlements, his brows lifted in surprise. Surprise and something akin to joy, he thought. Jaime felt it swell in his own heart; a spark of summer’s warmth to drive back the cold.
“I hope you’re about to tell me the Lannister army waits just outside the castle walls.”
“I’m afraid not,” he said, tugging the frozen reins out of his useless gold hand.
“Ah. Well. One disgraced knight should do just as well, then.”
There was a slight twitch at Jaime’s lips, a crinkle at the corners of his eyes. Tyrion’s expression sobered, though. Something that unsettled Jaime even from this distance. He watched as his brother made his way to the nearest set of stairs, coming to stand before him. There was no familiar embrace, no clap on the arm. Weariness had taken them both, and it seemed likely that none of this would matter soon.
“I suspect our Queen will wish to see you,” he said, and Jaime followed his gaze to a pair of Unsullied armed with spears.
He wasn’t in chains yet. He supposed that was all he could ask for. There was one more thing he wished, though. If he was to be executed in front of a Targaryen, he needed to see the one person who knew the truth of his storied history with the Mad King. The one person who would make any of this worth a damn.
“Hoping our dear sister has followed you across these great distances as you would have followed her?” Tyrion remarked.
Jaime openly scoffed, his gaze still moving about the courtyard, the training grounds, the battlements. She was nowhere to be seen. He would know it if she were.
“I’m too old to hope for impossible things.”
Again his brother’s brows lifted. “That is certainly a first.” The Unsullied advanced, but Tyrion held up a hand. “Ser Jaime will accompany us of his own volition, I’m sure. He has come this far.”
Jaime gave a single nod, drawing in a breath through his nose. Idly he wondered if he’d just agreed to die, beheaded before the last remaining children of Ned Stark. Perhaps it was a fitting end.
“Find our Queen,” Tyrion said, his voice a grave command. “She will wish to summon her council.”
- 2 -
BRIENNE
Brienne had returned North from the meeting at the Dragon Pit to find out a great many things about Sansa Stark.
One being, she was much smarter than what she let on to those around her. Or at least had let on. Now her expressions were shrewder, harder, and less than pleased with the information she had brought with her over the meeting.
She was also deadlier, especially with her sister by her side, and there was something Brienne admired in both the beautiful and cold Stark women. It was not oaths and honor, but a continued will to fight and defend and survive. They were home, and she was glad that she had some small part in helping them return to it. Her oath, to Catelyn, to Jaime, could have been considered fulfilled, but she would not dare forsake either girl now.
They could not be everywhere and now, for some strange reason, Sansa brought her into her council more often than not.
And then the Dragon Queen arrived, along with the King of the North… No, no longer a king. The Warden of the North. Brienne was sure that fighting would break out before the dead arrived with all the tension thick in the air. Sure that someone else’s blood would mix with the stains of Lord Baelish’s on the stone floor of the Great Hall.
But it didn’t. It was an uneasy truce, as everyone began preparing for the dead to arrive. She was given over to training men who had never held a sword, and Sansa then gave her command of one arm of the soldiers from the Vale. It was an honor she would never forget, and one she intended on living up to.
Thankfully, her squire -- a funny thing since she wasn’t actually a knight -- had improved enough that he could help with the training. Each day on the field, she oversaw all of it, but her eyes often strayed to the horizon, hoping that the Lannister army would arrive, would honor the agreement made at the Dragon Pit.
Fuck loyalty.
The shock on his face when she had said it, had swung him around, had been near surprising to her, but she had plowed on. This was above everything they knew. The dead were rising and coming to kill them all, and if he couldn’t see that, couldn’t put down the pettiness of his sister to defend everyone’s life, then he wasn’t the man she thought he was.
Each day that passed made her chest ache. Perhaps he wasn’t that man after all, that she’d seen fleeting glimpses of someone who had died long ago inside him.
The page that called on her to come to the Great Hall drew her from this day’s mind wandering. She didn’t think to ask the cause until she had made it through the gate and heard the rumblings.
The Kingslayer.
Jaime was here? But where was the army that should be at his back? She felt her heart leap into her throat, and increased her pace. It slowed when she got to the doors, and she walked in, guided to her place at the tables amongst the other lords and ladies of the alliance that had been struck here.
He was standing on top of Lord Baelish’s bloodstain, and she did her best to school her face, to not let the worry etch her visibly that soon his own blood would be there to join it.
He was proud, so fucking proud, and so sure of himself. He wouldn’t even recant on the things he did before them. He wouldn’t tell the Dragon Queen the truth about her father, or how he had saved all those people. He came all this way, to fight for the living, but he was going to die right here on the cold stone floor for his fucking pride.
But then he turned to her… This goes beyond loyalty.
He had heard her. He had listened. And Brienne couldn’t let the good deeds of this man go unaffirmed. He had lost his hand because of her, jumped in front of a bear for her, armed and armored her to fulfill an oath that he could not.
So she jumped in front of the dragon and the wolves to protect him. Recounted his honor, swore her trust in him was unwavering, and answered each question Sansa posed her boldly and unfalteringly. Her hand itched at her side as she waited, because she knew in that moment, if anyone had come for his head she would have pulled Oathkeeper from its scabbard to defend him.
But no one came, and with Sansa’s support -- along with something curious in her Lady’s gaze when she regarded her -- the others fell in line and let him live.
She returned to her seat as he was given his life to fight with them. Her heart was pounding in her ears as he took his sword from the Unsullied man who pressed it into his chest, and she wanted to escape this room as the relief that was through her was overwhelming.
Everyone was dismissed, and she saw Sansa summon her with just a slight tilt of her jaw. She spared one last glance at Jaime as she hurried to catch up to her. Their eyes caught, and she had to look away.
- 3 -
JAIME
On some level, Jaime was aware that if he groveled--if he confessed his many sins, recanted them before the council, and bent the knee--he would very likely be spared. But a lion did not throw himself at the feet of wolves, nor even a dragon. If he was going to die, he would do so with his name intact; with the convictions he held to and the very poignant reminder that he’d made mistakes, yes, but they’d all been in service of his family.
There was a moment, though. A brief moment when Jaime faltered. Those words spoken from the mouth of Bran Stark made him certain he was going to meet his end moments later. He would not be permitted to leave this room. His blood would join the curious stain on the stone floor beneath him.
The fear that lanced through him wasn’t for his own waste of a life, though.
When he’d entered the Great Hall, brought forth by his brother, the room had been largely empty save the Dragon Queen who peered through him as though she could set him alight with her eyes alone. Her Unsullied captain--the one he’d noticed was nearly always by her side--had disarmed him with little ceremony, and slowly the council began to filter in. He’d expected Lady Sansa. Jon Snow might have been Warden of the North, but Winterfell was hers as much as it had been Catelyn Stark’s.
What he hadn’t expected was Brienne. A foolish thing, since she’d sworn an oath to Lady Sansa. Her place was at the she-wolf’s side, and he doubted it had anything to do with him. If he’d seen her hurry to her seat, if he’d felt her regard more heavily upon him than any other, that was a mere trick of his imagination.
As he stood trial, as those words left Bran Stark, he could not fear for himself, but for her. Would she try to defend him, if they moved to end his life? No. Of course not. Brienne’s oaths might have incorporated far more shades of grey than they once did, but she’d sworn to serve Lady Sansa, and serve she would. Whatever existed between them, whatever ridiculous notions he might have had on the long ride north, it was not worth treason.
Tyrion’s defense of him was not a surprise, though the tenderness in his brother’s voice as he attempted to reason with Daenerys Targaryen was something Jaime would not soon forget. It was obvious the Queen’s Hand had fallen out of her good graces, however, and with Lady Sansa’s input, it seemed his fate was decided.
Jaime drew in a steadying breath, his chin inclining slightly as he looked the Mad King’s daughter in the eyes. Tyrion saw something in her. Something worth following. Jaime saw only a means to an end. Winter was bloody well here, after all, and if they survived it, war would soon follow. Perhaps he’d had a part to play in both, but he would not beg. Would not make apologies for his many, many sins.
The hard, sudden scrape of a chair pulled his attention away from the council, and Jaime’s heart practically slammed against his ribcage as he saw Brienne move to the center of the chamber. Standing in front of him, shielding him, armed with nothing that would truly be of any use in this particular room. His lips were parted, his eyes on her for a perilously long moment before he looked down, the roar of a bear echoing in his mind.
There was something poetic about it, but Jaime hardly deserved poetry from this woman, of all people. She certainly gave it, though. Her speech was not especially eloquent. It was not laced with the pretty words of a politician. She spoke as a knight--direct and bound by a truth she felt needed to be spoken. So direct, in fact, that Jaime practically staggered from the efficient recounting of everything they’d been through together. And there was no reality in which Jaime Lannister should sway on his feet like some blushing maid, but that was the strange state he found himself in, his gaze seeking out the roaring lion that made up Oathkeeper’s pommel.
It was her confident, prideful assertion that nearly broke him, though. When Lady Sansa asked if she would fight beside him, he’d expected… he had no idea what he expected. Something diplomatic, perhaps. I’ll do what I must. But that wasn’t Brienne. He couldn’t even hear those words being spoken in her voice. Instead, she made yet another oath. To him.
Jaime was unsure how long he stared at her. It was, for a very long moment, quite impossible to tear his gaze away. That she was so willing to openly defend him before her lady was something he could not fully process. That he’d ever found her to be anything less than awe-inspiring was even more difficult to comprehend.
When he finally managed to pry his gaze away from her, he was being judged by a woman who had every reason not to trust him… but every reason to believe in the woman who served her. The grim, unceremonious acceptance that followed was solely because of Brienne’s intervention. She’d been his salvation yet again.
His sword was returned to him, the council dispersed, and Jaime’s eyes sought her out again. The temptation to follow, to demand to know why she would confront her lady over the fate of an honorless fool, was stronger than Jaime could bear. Weeks he’d spent alone with his thoughts, imagining what he might say to her, what she might say to him. He’d told himself countless times that he simply didn’t matter that much. His arrival at Winterfell would only herald the sad addition of just one more person to add to the Night King’s army. But it was difficult for even Jaime to believe he didn’t matter, especially when their eyes met, held before she hurried after Lady Sansa.
He didn’t follow. Couldn’t seem to get his legs to work properly, nor his brain to think of anything remotely appropriate to say. He could also feel that piercing regard on him once more, and when he looked, he saw the unfocused eyes of Bran Stark.