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That night Brienne dreamed of fire ad blood and pain. She dreamed of the shadow of wings spread over King's Landing like a funeral shroud, dreamed of destruction beyond even that which the Night King had wrought. Dreamed of loss, of heartache, of abandonment.
But when she wakes, she wakes to warmth, to pleasure, to the soft brush of lips over her shoulder blade, traveling along the arc of an old scar. She had fallen asleep wrapped not only in blankets but in Jaime’s embrace, their bodies pressed together in slumber as they had been in passion. Now, Jaime’s breath heats the back of her neck and despite her warmth, goosebumps prickle her skin. He’s curled behind her, his hand on her thigh, fingers inching up toward…
Brienne’s breath catches.
“S’all right?” he whispers. For once it is not drink nor pain that slurs his words. Just the lazy pull of sleep. They’d coupled more than once last night. Let their bodies find a new way of moving together. Not on the battlefield but rather tangled in the heavy blankets of their bed. Brienne had learned more of pleasure, more of joy and more of surrender in those blissful hours than she’d ever dreamed she would.
Because it had been a surrender. She had no doubt of that. To let him be so close, to trust him with the most fragile, perhaps the only fragile part of her; her heart. To admit what she did not know and learn all that he instructed. To offer and trust him not to take as a tyrant would, but to give as a generous god might. And surely, though the gods were far too often cruel, they must have smiled upon those of Winterfell this past night. For the impossible to be true, for winter’s chill to be met in battle and beaten, for Jaime to live, and not only live, but to want her.
That last thing, that was what made her own surrender something sweet, sweeter than sleep, than honeyed mead, or even the childhood memory of a delicate glazed almond cake. Because her surrender had been met with his. Both of them laid down their weapons, those they held in their hands, those they made from their words, and most important, those that guarded their hearts. Jaime, for once, held nothing back from her. His honesty was his gift, and she met it with her own. They surrendered, not to each other, but together. Lay together, and knew each other completely.
In surrendering, she had won love. The knowledge still burns bright within her, now, as Jaime’s hand slides gently down her side, cupping her hip. His touch is gentle, but his hand is callused, marked by years of battle. She would have it no other way. She will never want another hand to touch her like this. None but his. Brienne had loved the tarnished golden warrior, wounded, broken, yet still nobler than he’d ever admit, for what felt like a lifetime now.
But Brienne had loved the way she longed to be a knight. Silently. Stubbornly. Never yielding and yet never truly dreaming it would come true. All she knew of love was its deep ache, its barbs stuck deep inside a tender place she hadn’t been able to cover with armor. All she had known of wanting was to never have. To build on such a dream would have been to attempt to make a castle with a cornerstone of smoke.
Love was a war and almost all who marched upon its field were doomed to perish by its sharp blades. The poets and minstrels had said as much. They had promised that unrequited love, that burden carried by the noblest of heroes, could forge a heart into a stronger, ceaseless thing, as a blacksmith hammers steel into a peerless blade. They had said love was worth dying for.
They had never said that love would make life worth living. They had never said that when one stood before their lover, naked, honest, silent, that their lover’s hands would tremble, that there would be tears in their eyes as if this moment, this touch, was all that they had longed for.
The poets had promised love would hurt.
They had never said it could heal.
Because that was all she knew, in this moment, as she nods permission, and Jaime’s hand travels up her thigh, his fingers tracing long slow patterns over skin that had never been touched like this. Every wound, every ache, melting at his touch. Her heart hammers hard against her ribs. It takes an eternity for his fingers to make a path, closer and closer, to her core. It takes only moments to know she will never feel like this for anyone else.
“You called out in your sleep,” he adds.
Her hips rock back against him, pressing against part of Jaime that she had always known of but never thought she’d become familiar with. He sighs at the pressure. She has learned already some of the maneuvers of passion. Her hand slides down between them, seeking him. His hand captures hers. “Easy. Slow." They are not commands, but soft requests, delivered with a kiss to her shoulder blades. "Let's try to take our time this morning, eh?" Now she feels his smile against her back. He is smaller than her, and yet, she feels safe like this, wrapped in his arms. "Let us go slow."
“Can we afford to?”
“Why not?” he kisses the side of her neck now, his teeth grazing so gently they only send a shudder of pleasure down to her toes. This too, this is surrender. To let him touch her while she remains still. To allow him to grant her pleasure and deny himself any.
For now.
Brienne fully intends to learn this dance, to ensure she can make him moan again, and again, until all images of his face twisted in rage, in pain, in self-hatred, vanish from her memory. Until she can only recall how he looks when he is blissfully happy.
“There is work to be done.”
“There is always work.”
Normally, such a discussion between them would begin an argument or at least some sparring. They have bickered with words far longer than they have used their lips for other things. This time, though, Brienne simply rolls, swifter than perhaps Jaime expected, and pins him beneath her on the bed. She straddles him, her hands on his chest, and looks down at him disapprovingly.
Or tries to.
Because he is smiling at her. Not in a way that is false, nor one that suggests he’s found his own private joke. But a warm, kind smile, just for her.
And she feels one to match his on her own face.
“Bend down so I can kiss you,” he whispers. His eyes never leave hers. She is naked, something that only registers because of the chill air on her back. But with him looking at her in such a way, she feels cloaked in beauty. She is beautiful to him. Brienne knows that now. She, who had never been lovely to look at, had become someone lovely to him. Just as sunlight could coax a blossom from the simplest of weeds, Jaime's touch made her blossom. "Please," he adds. His voice is hoarse but so familiar. It is one she has heard so often in dreams that she can scarcely believe she is awake now. How strange to have had dreams of darkness and wake to bliss when for so long it had been the opposite.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t reach you from here.” He strains against her arms to prove it.
“No. Why do you want to kiss me?”
Jaime lets out a frustrated growl. His foot hooks over her knee, and this time, it’s him who rolls her, back to the edge of the bed. He’s on top of her now, or rather, again, and she can’t help but flush with pleasure and embarrassment recalling the night before.
He simply bends down to capture her lips. Kisses softly. Sweetly. Just like the poets said a kiss could be. “BEcause,” he whispers, “you have a beautiful smile.”
Her fingers twist in his hair, keeping him close, so she can kiss him a second time. So she can taste those words, which are sweeter than anything, more perfect than any poem.
To him, she’s beautiful. It is scarcely something she can believe and yet it feels more true than life itself. “Do you mean that?”
One of his eyebrows arch. He inclines his head. “Permit me to demonstrate, if I may?”
“You may.”
She’s smiling again. She can’t help it. Nor can she help the soft sighs, nor the louder moans, he coaxes from her. Every touch sends her to new heights, every kiss burns brighter.
When they collapse in a tangle of blankets, she is happy and she is warm. “Now,” Jaime whispers, from where he’s collapsed against her, his head pillowed on her chest. “What did you dream of?”
It is hard to tell him. But harder still to lie. So she does so, in halting sentence. Of her dreams of dragonsfire and of the sea waters. Of rubble crushing her dreams, of all that had once been good and beautiful laid to ruin. She mentions no names, tells him no more details than a storyteller might.
But he knows. He touches her cheek then. “You fear I will leave you?”
“I know you must.”
Because there is work yet to be done. Because there is no longer a Night King, but there is darkness yet in the world.
“You will not come with me?”
“I do not assume you will ask.” Brienne sighs. She dares them, to bend, and press a kiss to his forehead. His hair is sweat-matted, but smells sweet. His eyes light up at her touch. Even in this state, he retains a bit of the nobility he has so long possessed. As if the sunlight he once wore as armor has never forgotten him. As if he will forever be lit from within by a beauty unmatched by any other.
“You know me well.” He matches her sigh. His hand finds hers under the blankets. Their fingers tangled together, then rest, still. “I will come back to you.”
“I do not ask that of you.”
“Then allow me to offer it.”
Brienne looks deep into his eyes. Forces herself to forget the flames she had seen in the dreams, the fear in her heart. Forces herself to trust instead, this moment, their palms pressed together, their hearts thudding in harmony.
“Come back to me,” she whispers. “Come back to me.” It is surrender, deeper, more painful, more true, than any she had ever offered.
“I will,” he says. “You have my word.”
The moment stretches between them, until he rests his head once more on her breast. Until he smiles and says, “but for now, tell me, Brienne, something lighter. A story.”
“You’re asking me for a bedtime story?”
“Hardly so.” Jaime snorts. His breath is warm against her skin and she shivers pleasantly. “It’s morning. Not a bedtime story at all.”
“I am not known for tales.”
“Nor am I.”
Though he did play a part in a fair number of them. She decides not to speak of that. Not now. Not when she knows all too well the fate of too many heroes in stories. Not when she knows what he will face when he leaves this bed. “I thought of a cake I once had, when you kissed me this morning.”
He smiles again. That smile she is coming to realize is just for hers, a treasure she will never need to share with anyone else. A gift, earned by surrender and kept safe by trust. “Tell me of this cake, if it is so lofty it compares to my kiss.”
Jaime can sound so courtly sometimes. It’s left her tongue-tied more than once. She’s aware her own words are heavy like her footsteps, clumsy like her smile. He is sunlight, she thinks again. Sunlight and courage and the ring of bright steel against steel.
And he is, she dares to think, he is hers. For now. For this moment.
“The cake?” he asks, leaning up to then press another kiss against her shoulder. His tongue flicks along a scar from a ruffian’s knife. He’d promised to kiss every one of her scars, last night, when he had been…
When he had become the very north star of her life, when he had been inside her and when nothing else, not the world around them, not what lay ahead or what their pasts held, when nothing mattered except him. Except them, together. Moving as one.
She had thought there would be no greater thrill than fighting at his side.
For once, she had been relieved to be proven wrong.
“It had… rose petals,” she finally says, when she catches her breath. “The cake.”
”Mm. Candied ones?”
“Yes. And sugared almonds.” The treat, rare and wonderful, lingered long in her memory. Brienne knows this morning will be the same. Joys are rare in Westeros, and like all rare things, should be treasured.
“Ah,” he nods. His lips have found another scar and he leaves a trail of kisses over the toughened skin.
“It’s silly, perhaps,” she admits. “You must have had countless cakes like that. Back…” she swallows. Not wanting to say the words. Back at Kings Landing… Back…
“Though it may surprise you, I’ve never acquired a taste for sweets.”
She laughs then, because when he lifts his head to smile at her with the words, he looks so young and so happy. “I would scarce believe you could surprise me now.” What could be more a startling sight than the memory of their first kiss?
“Then I shall see it done,” Jaime replies. “Now, once more, I beseech you for the tale of this cake, renown throughout the land.”
She tells him of it. He shares a story of his favorite bowl of stew. They trade stories and kisses, whispering and touching beneath the heavy blankets. Neither of them speak of the future, surrendering instead to the joy found in the present moments and the bonds forged across the past.
He leaves. He leaves with only that promise between them. He leaves and when he departs she keeps her head high and her gaze far ahead. There is a sunrise, she knows, but it is behind them now. That, she thinks, as she hears the hoofbeats drum the frozen ground, taking the man who now carries her heart far from her, is fitting. For he is her sunlight, and without him, there will never be a dawn again.
There will be life, of course, as there is life even in the long nights of winter. There will be work to do and battles to fight. But there will be no surrender into the comfort of his embrace, no whispers shared between kisses. She wants no one but him and he is gone, so she lives from sunset to sunset, never hoping for another bright moment such as that night had brought her.
Never crying, never speaking of him at all. To speak of it would dull its glimmer in her memory. To cry would be to waste tears over a night she had never thought she would have.
All of her nights now, are full of restless sleep, of dreams of fire and the shadow of wings. Of broken towers and shattered hearts. She sleeps but does not find rest, guards Sansa but does not hope. He is gone and every moment is an agony unmeasurable.
The poets, she knows now, were right. Love is pain. Surrender had been foolish. Weak. Pointless.
She curses herself, her heart, the wine, the bed. She does not curse him. She could not bear it if he was to die and the last thing she said of him to the winds of the world was in anger.
She waits.
And she does not dream of joy nor feel the sunlight on her smile.
But one day, the heroes return. Broken, exhausted, few in number. She scans the crowd. Hoping and yet holding back. Never believing his promise and yet swearing by it. Trusting him and fearing for him.
The sunlight returns, glimmering on tarnished armor. He is alive. He has returned. Now, when he sees her, when he smiles, it is the smile of a man free from the ghosts of the past. It is the smile of a man who has allowed himself to love and to live again.
She does not run to him, she is a knight after all, and must be an honorable one. There are more wounded to attend to, more politics to be discussed by those with minds more suited for such matters than her. There is a great deal of discussion, matters of thrones and of nobility that she understands little of.
After all, Brienne only has eyes for Jaime.
It thrills her to realize it is the same for him. That he can not stop seeking her out with only a gaze from across the room. That he has lived and he has returned to her. When their eyes meet, his lips curl into a soft smile. There is still pain in his expression, matched by the bruises on his cheek, but there is hope in that smile.
A hope she shares. A hope and a promise honored.
They meet in an empty hall, cold and silent as so much of Winterfell still is. But when he reaches for her, he is warm. And when their lips meet, the sigh is as loud as a thousand harps’ song. “You’re here,” she says.
“So I am.”
The kiss deepens. They are both warriors, after all. Both of them used to commands, to the pull of passion, to the way to move against another body. Her gloved fingers scrabble for purchase over the armor on his back. She wants him close, closer than their clothes allow. Closer than she will ever want anyone else.
“Soon,” he promises her, seeing the passion in her eyes. “But first, I have something for you.”
Brienne tilts her head. She is not a woman to be pleased by trifles. He knows her well enough to know she needs no jewelry, no adornment beyond the title she now carries. “Show me.”
He reaches into a small pouch and pulls out an object wrapped in beeswax paper. While she watches, he unwraps the tiny gift, revealing…
“Why, you…” The cake remains in his hand. Unmarred, though perhaps a small bit squished from its journey. The rose petals are still bright, the almonds glisten with glaze like frost.
“Have I then surprised you?”
“You may have,” she admits. The smile on her face makes it hard to speak. Because he has remembered. Because he has kept his word. Because, perhaps, her surrender that night should not have been cursed, but blessed. Because, perhaps, he loves her truly, as the sunlight loves the ground beneath it. One is light and fire and the other sturdy and plain. But from the soil, the sunlight coaxes all things to grow. And from his words, he coaxes hope from her once more. “Though I have nothing for you.”
“Have you no bed?” he retorts.
“Ah, no,” she teases. “We needed firewood.”
“Then we shall have to make do with whatever furs we can scrounge. Surely those are not scarce here.”
“And what would you ask of me once you have the furs?”
“Ask? Nothing.” He transfers the cake to her hand, so that his own is free to lift a rose petal to her lips. She tastes it, shyly at first, before allowing the soft pleasure to melt in her mouth. “Instead, I shall offer everything. If you’ll have me.”
It is surrender once more, she knows. The sort of surrender that will be forever. The sort that will forge them as one blade. And she knows too, that it is a surrender hard won. “I will have you, Jaime Lannister.”
He swipes a little of the icing off her cake and presses it to her lips. She tastes it, then his fingertip, swirling her tongue over the callus. Color rises on his cheek. “I go by Jaime Hill now.”
The bastard’s name from his homeland. It pains her and yet, gladdens her that his past is a closed book now. “I see.”
“Unless you might be persuaded to offer me a better one?” he asks. Once more she sees a flash of boyish charm, a winning smile.
Once more, she surrenders, only to find he has done the same. He kisses her, softly, softer than a rose petal, and sweetly, sweeter than any glazed cake. He kisses her and it is once more as the poets say. That heroes return to their home and that love will find a way. That some promises are made to be kept, and some dark dreams may fade with dawn.
She kisses him again. Her touch is neither sweet nor soft, but hungry. Hopeful. Earnest. It is the kiss of a woman who has a great deal she wishes to learn and only one teacher she shall trust. Her clumsy newness she offers as a gift to him, and it is one he treasures, his hand running through her short hair, his breath catching in his throat. Again, she feels beautiful, not despite her size, her warrior's shape, but because of it. He has returned to her, and she is lovely in his eyes.
“Say something, Brienne,” he begs, and his words are as pleading as a white flag on a battlefield. “I love you. If you will have me, say the word and I am yours.”
“Yes,” she whispers once, there in the hallway. She will whisper it again that night, and again, and again. Each time, a promise from one to the other. Each one, an oath honored. Each one, a small surrender and a sweetness found only in the arms of the other. Each moment perfect, and every one of them a tiny jewel in a life they forge together. United in their surrender, united in their love.
And someday, when the poets tell their tales of love, of sweet hope and bitter sacrifice, of warriors forged in battle who found love in peacetime, they will tell the tale of Ser Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Tarth, her husband, kind, noble, and the sunlight of her life. Their love, the poets will say, was the sweetest of all the blessings found in that new era.
When Jaime, now old and silver-haired, though still her golden knight, her flawless lover, hears the poems, he will scoff. "Never fond of sweets."
"But you are fond of me," his wife will say, her arm around his waist, holding her close to him. There are small gems in her ears now, but only because their daughter had given them to her, for they matched her eyes, she'd said, and her armor has been traded for a simpler sort of surcoat, more befitting a knight in her twilight years. But her smile, that still shines as bright as anything, as bright as the sunlight above them.
She is beautiful to him, she knows, and he is hers. Her early doubts faded over the years, and so did his nightmares, the talons of the past that held on to him. They found solace in each other, and from there, they grew, both of them blossoming in the sunlight of a new life.
Because every morning, they wake together at dawn. They greet the day and all its challenges, together, as they have promised they will be until the end. And there have been challenges, some which have become poems and others which have brought them pain. Peace is not easy, not even for heroes. But love, that they have learned, that comes easy to them. It fills the gaps between their broken parts, heals their wounded spirits. It is the tie that binds them, and it is the song that guides them ever forward.
Surrender, that they know now, was just the beginning of their story together.