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Chapter Text

Her soulmark is a sword. That isn’t such a surprise. The surprise is that she has one at all.

Hers appears when she’s eight years old. One of her soccer teammates spots it when she’s wearing a tank top at practice. It’s on her left shoulderblade, just out of reach.

Everyone’s soulmarks are different, though there’s a whole industry devoted to “experts” arguing back and forth about what it all means. Can you tell what kind of love it will be by the placement of the mark? If you get the mark early, does that mean you’ll meet your soulmate soon? If it’s black and white, does that mean your soulmate will die? There’s evidence supporting every argument, and there are exceptions to every assertion, and the whole thing is such a mess that most people don’t even care about soulmarks anymore – there’s also a whole industry devoted to removing them.

Brienne doesn’t go looking for guidance; she doesn’t want to know. She’s just happy it exists. She has to do some creative yoga with a handheld mirror to see it, and she does it often, just wanting to be reminded. The blade of the sword shimmers. It’s almost gold, and it sparkles in the light from her bathroom. It almost looks like firelight being cast over it. There’s a red gem in the center of the hilt. She stands in her bathroom mirror and holds the handheld one up, angling it just right so she can see the sword.

I have a soulmate. Me. Someone will love me.

By the time she’s a junior in high school, the soul mark is old news. She got hers earlier than most of her peers. Her closest friends, Robb and Sansa, both got theirs in their respective first years of high school. Their cousin Jon got his at twelve. His best friend Sam Tarly yelped aloud in chemistry three weeks ago when a symbol appeared on the inside of his wrist. Brienne’s has been around since she was eight. Most people probably don’t even remember she has one.

Her father had been kind when she was younger. He told her that she would grow into her looks. He said that every girl is awkward and ungainly at eight, and ten, and thirteen. He will probably one day tell her that every woman is awkward at thirty. He never made her feel like she didn’t deserve a soulmark, though she still remembers his surprise when she told him that she had one. Everyone she has mentioned it to since then has been less kind.

She and Robb barely knew each other when she got it. It was the first year she was on his rec soccer team. She punched him in the arm after he laughed at the idea that a girl and big as ugly as her could have a soulmate. His mother Catelyn was mortified, and she grounded him and scolded him fiercely in front of everyone – which just made Brienne feel worse – and then she invited Brienne and her dad out for ice cream to try and make amends. It could have been terrible, except Robb’s little sister Sansa was there too. Sansa was too polite and romantically minded to agree with Robb. She practically swooned over the idea that a boy could fall in love with Brienne at any moment, and she insisted that a young soulmark was lucky. She has always been the one who tempers the rest of her siblings, so Robb came around by the time they finished their cones, and his second apology was much more sincere than the one his mother had forced out of him.

You just have to have a thicker skin, her father told her after. Have more of a sense of humor. She probably doesn’t have much more of one at seventeen than she did when she was eight, but Robb has enough good humor for the both of them.

King’s Landing is a big enough school that it’s easy to avoid bumping into the people you don’t like, but Sansa’s made things harder by trying out for cheerleading. Robb was pained when she announced her intentions, not because of the sport itself, but because he was afraid for his younger sister.

“Throwing her to the lions,” he calls it.

“One lion,” Brienne reminds him. They’re watching Sansa’s tryouts from the tops of the bleachers in the gym, sharing a bag of soggy fries from the pizza place down the street. Cersei Lannister, head cheerleader, sits looking bored as Sansa perfectly performs a routine she choreographed herself. Robb and Brienne are irritated on her behalf. They and Jon spent hours helping Sansa practice. Cersei could at least pretend to watch the giddy sophomore.

“The brother’s worse,” Robb insists. Brienne scoffs. She finds her eyes on Cersei’s twin, where he lounges against the wall beside the locker room door, looking artfully bored as always, with his perfect jawline and his golden curls. His green eyes are too far away to see from the bleachers, but of course he has green eyes. He’s the larval stage of a romance novel cover model. He’s a football player, so of course Robb hates him, to say nothing of the fact that he pushes peoples’ buttons like he’s hoping for a passing grade in it. Jaime Lannister is gorgeous, like his sister, and he’s cruel like her too. But Brienne prefers his insults. They’re straightforward and not very clever. Yes, she’s ugly and coarse and broad-shouldered. What of it? They’re the kind of insults she’s used to hearing, and they have become background noise. It’s the cloying kindness from Cersei that makes her feel powerless.

“I’ll take the brother any day,” she says.

Sansa makes the team, because of course she makes the team, and suddenly Cersei Lannister is everywhere. She’s waiting to talk to Sansa in the morning when Brienne normally goes to Sansa’s locker. She’s driving Sansa home after school in her Audi. She’s showing up to the Stark house on weekends while Robb and Brienne and Jon are huddled around the TV in the living room. The boys get tense whenever Jaime’s present, but they ignore Cersei entirely when she’s alone. Brienne wishes she could; their indifference seems to piss her off, while Brienne’s fear only makes her sharper. “She senses blood in the water,” Jon says to her once. “You can’t let her get to you.” If only it was that easy.

It’s worse because Sansa doesn’t seem to notice. She’s always been a bit flighty and naive, Sansa. Catelyn says that being friends with Brienne – no-nonsense, rational, dutiful Brienne – has helped Sansa, but it hasn’t helped her that much. Sansa hears Cersei’s words, and she takes their flattery to be truth, and she blushes happily over compliments that aren’t earnestly meant. So when Cersei calls Brienne “so interesting. So unique” in that sweet way she has, Sansa beams at Brienne in agreement. Jaime, leaning against a wall nearby, laughs.

It’s not like they don’t try to protect Sansa. But she gets annoyed with Robb when he suggests that Cersei might not be a good choice of friend, and it doesn’t help that their little sister Arya insists that Cersei slapped one of the family dogs when it got too close to her. “Like a proper slap. Nymeria cried,” she says, but Sansa refuses to believe it, because Arya has a habit of making things up, and she and Arya have a tumultuous relationship at best. The baby brothers Bran and Rickon are more easily bought: they think the Lannisters are wonderful because Jaime threw a football around with them one time while he was waiting for his sister. Jon doesn’t like either of them, but his ability to pretend at neutrality is legendary.

“If Cersei’s the friend she wants, then Cersei’s the friend she should have,” he says staidly, to the boos and incredulous guffaws of the rest of them, except for Sansa, who cheers and moves seats so she’s beside Jon on the comfortable couch instead of on the floor with Robb. She sticks her tongue out at Robb and Brienne, after; her allegiance is easily bought.

Theon Greyjoy, who has been living in the Stark basement and seems to irritate everyone but Robb and Sansa and sometimes Catelyn, is serene about it.

“She’ll figure it out eventually,” he says one day, flipping through a magazine. “I’m not worried.”

Sansa would call Brienne and Robb and Jon her best friends, with an occasional allowance for Arya if they’re feeling nice, but she’s always been one of those girls who seems to make friends in every class she has. Pretty girls like Margaery Tyrell. Fierce, rebellious girls like Shae and Ros. She introduced Brienne to Renly Baratheon and his boyfriend, Margaery’s brother Loras, and they’re easily her closest friends aside from the Starks. They both take jousting classes and they spend half their weekends at fucking heroic fairs, where they dress up like people living during the Age of Heroes. Brienne has no idea how Sansa met them.

(she considered, briefly, before she realized why Renly and Loras spent so much time together, that Renly might be the other bearer of her soulmark, but his is a deer antler nestled in blue flowers, and he wears it proudly on his arm, and is very gay besides.)

Despite her eclectic collection of pals, Sansa has enough social grace to know not to mix groups if she doesn’t want disaster. So it’s irritating and a bit baffling that she doesn’t see the issue with insisting that Brienne attend her sleepover when Cersei Lannister is also going to be there.

“She likes you,” Sansa insists. “She says you’re interesting.”

Brienne sighs, and she doesn’t say that Cersei just likes to use her to sharpen the sword of her wit, like sparring except instead of blades she’s using her tongue, and instead of training to learn how to fight, she’s training to learn how to be a heinous pain in the ass to anyone who might be beneath her, socially.

But it’s Sansa, who is honored that Cersei wants to come to her sleepover, and she looks at Brienne with her big blue eyes and her pleading expression, and Brienne caves.

Luckily for Brienne, there’s one person invited to the sleepover who Cersei appears to bitterly loathe, so Brienne fades into the background more than she’s ever been able to in her life. Sansa chats with Shireen Baratheon and Jeyne Poole on the other side of the room, and Brienne remains pinned in place on the other, watching the verbal tennis between Cersei Lannister and Margaery Tyrell. Margaery is honey-voiced and sweeter than Cersei at her most fake, and she makes all her barbs sound like innocent flowers drifting down to carpet the ground she walks on. She’s prettier than Cersei in a delicate way, though Cersei has her beat for outright, in-your-face beauty, Brienne thinks. Not that she’s any great judge, but Cersei’s looks have never been her problem. Still, under Margaery’s critical eyes, not even Cersei’s beauty is safe, and the head cheerleader actually looks browbeaten for once. It’s a masterclass in the kind of petty fighting that Brienne has never had much time for, and she’s fascinated. She considers going downstairs to grab some popcorn.

While she’s brutal to Cersei, Margaery extends only kindness to Brienne, without any of the mocking that Brienne has come to expect from most people outside the Stark clan. She talks about Loras and Renly’s latest trip to a heroic fair, and she unironically suggests that Brienne should go with them and fight in one of the fake tournaments they do.

“You'd look amazing swinging a sword,” she says, admiring. “Lord knows you’re built for it. I’d love to watch you fight! I know you’re not interested in women – I asked Loras a while back – but I would be honored to play your lady love for an evening. I love getting dressed up in those pretty dresses, and it would be so romantic! Just imagine how fun it would be to switch up their ideas of courtly love. I could kiss you on the cheek and give you a handkerchief as a favor to wear in the melee. I could swoon dramatically every time you took a hit!”

She mimes swooning with the back of one hand pressed to her forehead, and then she winks happily at Brienne, who blushes and laughs and finds herself agreeing. Cersei continues to glower, because Margaery’s cheerful bisexuality is another thing that ups her social capital, while Cersei’s string of brief romances with football players have all been deemed cliché and uninteresting by most of the student body.

“It’s funny you say that about Brienne,” Sansa says. “Because of her soulmark.”

Cersei laughs aloud, harsher than usual, and everyone is taken aback for a moment before she recovers.

“Oh gosh, is it a whole picture of a knight?” she asks, pleasant mask back in place. “How big is it? I imagine that would be rather ungainly. Difficult to hide if you wanted to.”

“Can I show them?” Sansa asks. Brienne hesitates, but Sansa’s eyes are kind, and so she nods. She turns around, and Sansa pulls the back of her t-shirt down far enough that the sword will be visible. Brienne hears the other girls crowding around, and cold fingers reach out and touch it. Margaery, most likely. She’s the only one bold enough. The other girls sigh and coo over it. More cold fingers join the first, these ones with fingernails just sharp enough to scratch. Cersei. Brienne jerks away from the slight pain, and she covers the mark up again. When she turns back to face them, she catches the look on Cersei’s face before it flickers back into impassivity. For a moment, it’s disgusted. It’s bizarrely angry. Like just the idea of someone loving Brienne is abhorrent.

Margaery has fallen back on Sansa’s bed, clutching her hands to her chest.

“Now we simply must go to the heroic fair!” she proclaims. “Where else are you to meet your knight with his bejewelled longsword?”

She simpers while the other girls laugh, and Brienne looks away from Cersei’s loathing, and she laughs with them, because she knows that Margaery is not mocking her.

As the night goes on, she forgets Cersei’s reaction entirely.

“Are they seriously here again?” Robb asks, glaring over at the sidelines where the Lannister twins are holding court with a bunch of their friends. It’s too far away to hear their words, but you don’t need to. Their mocking is obvious.

“They have to be seen in public as often as possible if they’re going to have a shot at Cutest Couple,” Theon drawls, taking a swig of water and leaning back against the bench. He raises his eyebrows at Robb, who laughs. Brienne slumps next to him, trying to make herself small. She missed a shot early in the first half, and the Lannisters’ piercing laughter has followed her since.

“Maybe it’s like psychological warfare,” Sam suggests. He holds his assistant coach clipboard in front of him like he’s got anything to write down on it; despite Brienne’s earlier goof, King’s Landing is crushing it. “They want to try and make you lose so the football team looks better?”

“They’re just being assholes,” Jon says. He looks at Brienne, who’s still probably beet red and hideous from the mingling of exertion and embarrassment. “Don’t let them get to you.”

“I wish Sansa’d stop hanging out with them,” Brienne sighs, and Jon smiles.

“Me too,” he admits.

In the several weeks following the sleepover, Cersei has been everywhere. And she’s perfected this almost elegant attack, a two-pronged thing with her brother.

“It’s so good to see you trying something new with your hair,” she says sweetly, the day Brienne shows up with a haircut she’s actually a little happy with. “Doesn’t Sansa’s little friend look nice, Jaime?”

She pulls him by the arm to get him to look up from his phone. He gives himself a second to take it in, looking Brienne up and down critically.

“Not really,” he says with a slow-spreading grin. Brienne doesn’t react; she never reacts. She just turns and walks away. This new thing Cersei’s doing is boring. It’s pathetic. It hurts, but only because she lets it. Only because they apparently hate her so much, and she doesn’t understand why. So she’s ugly. Why does it bother the Lannisters so much? Can’t they just be content with their own beauty?

“They’ll drop it eventually,” Jon says.

“I’ll make them drop it if they don’t,” Robb swears.

“Cersei is just really insecure,” Sansa explains in a whisper that says even she doesn’t really believe it.

Brienne just keeps her head down, and she keeps showing up to soccer practice and kicking ass in games. She goes to some heroic fairs with Renly and Loras and Margaery, and she starts learning how to swordfight from an actual expert in ancient battle strategy who Renly introduces her to. She runs soccer drills with Arya and Bran and Rickon. She’s kind to her father, and to his ever-changing roster of girlfriends, and to her second family: The Starks. She keeps getting good grades, and she keeps ignoring anything that anyone else says about her. That’s all she can do. She’s never going to be pretty, but she’s not going to let them make her unkind.

She has a soulmark. She will be loved. She will fall in love. She just has to be patient.

Things have finally begun to calm down on the harassment front when Brienne has the misfortune of being partnered with Jaime Lannister on a project. It’s Westerosi history, which is one of the few classes Jaime and Cersei aren’t in together. It’s consequently the only class in which he’s mildly tolerable, because he likes the subject and occasionally says things that aren’t just bored, unserious jokes. Their teacher actually likes him. His grade isn’t great, but he always gets high marks for enthusiasm.

Mr. Selmy probably thinks he’s doing them both a favor when he partners them. They’re two of his most engaged students, he says with pride, and they’ve both shown an interest in art during the Age of Heroes, so that’s what they’re assigned. Jaime turns around in his seat on the other side of the room to grin at her, savage and sharklike. Brienne just sighs and looks away.

AOH weaponry as an artform, she writes, and she drowns out the rest of the class as she begins to structure her paper.

After class, as Brienne is packing up, Jaime slides into the seat in front of her. He does so with the casual, slithering grace with which he does everything, and he crosses his arms over the chair, resting his chin on top of them as he looks at her. She stares at him, waiting. It occurs to her suddenly that she’s never had a conversation with him that wasn’t prompted by his sister. Not in years, anyway. Maybe when they were in elementary school. She was on his tee-ball team at one point. He was nice, then. But most kids were probably nice when they were six. She remembers showing him how to swing the bat. She was probably six inches taller than him at the time. Now it’s less than half an inch.

“What’s the plan?” he asks. She feels a sense of equilibrium being restored. Yes, this makes sense. She’ll be doing most of the work, if not all of it, but he probably needs a good grade in this class, so he wants to make sure she’s on top of it. If she didn’t also want a good grade, she might make him actually contribute. But she likes Selmy’s class, and she likes the topic she decided on, and fighting with Jaime Lannister isn’t worth it.

“I’ve written down an idea,” she says, not looking at him. “Art in armor from the Age of Heroes. The decorations, ornamentation. Things the people of Westeros did to mark their armor. A lot of the houses included their iconography in their weapons and armor, and some of it was pretty detailed.”

“I like it,” Jaime says. She chances a look at him, and he seems sincere enough.

“I’ve got a couple of sources already that we can use,” she continues warily. She points at the top one in her notebook with her pen. “There’s an exhibition of weaponry through the ages in the city. I’ve heard it’s supposed to be good, and the museum has a decent collection of swords and armor even outside the exhibition. Selmy likes initiative on things like that, and I would have probably gone to check it out anyway, so I’ll do that this weekend and take pictures we can use in our report. He’ll like that we have original pictures. Plus.” She moves her pen down to her second note. She can feel his eyes on her, and she wishes he’d look away. “I know an armorer.”

“You know an armorer?” He asks incredulously.

“His name’s Goodwin. Renly Baratheon introduced us a few weeks back.” Brienne very carefully doesn’t mention that Goodwin is crafting her a set of replica armor for a heroic fair, and also that he’s been teaching her to fight like a proper warrior. She’s not ashamed of it, but she’s not giving Jaime Lannister ammo he doesn’t need. “He knows everything. He has a doctorate.”

“In making armor?”

“Ancient battle strategy and arms.”

“Huh. All right. So what can he do for us, then? Make us armor?”

“No. I mean, he’s…” she hesitates, almost telling him. He sounds almost excited about the armor. Maybe he won’t laugh. But that’s a hell of an assumption. “He’s capable of it, but no. But, I can get an interview. Selmy’s not looking for anything outrageous. We can get away with an overview of weapons and armor and a few paragraphs about symbolism. Quotations from a real expert are above and beyond as it is.”

She finally looks up at him, waiting, and he’s looking at her with open amusement, already half laughing. She sighs again, and his expression stutters slightly.

“No, no,” he says quickly. “This is amazing, don’t get me wrong. You’re very thorough.”

“But?” she asks, one eyebrow up.

“But what?”

“But I’m very boring? Or geeky? Or a freak for thinking this is interesting? Or was it one of the old staples? Like that I’m ugly, and mannish, and my freckles are annoying, and my teeth are too big? Or my shoulders? Or my very flat chest?”

She waits, feeling cold inside, like Catelyn Stark every time she has to face down their horrible neighbor Old Man Frey. Deadly calm, and she looks Jaime Lannister in his stupidly pretty green eyes, and she sits up straight. I’m bigger than him, she thinks. I’m going to get an A on this project, and I’m very good at soccer, and my grades are better than his, and I even have more friends. All he has are his looks and his sister, and I’m fine without either of those things. Jaime Lannister can’t scare me.

He looks astonished now, and he blinks at her, staring into her eyes. He licks his lips and looks away.

“I’m sorry,” she says dryly. “Did I take all your material? You should ask your sister for some new insults. Hers are always cleverer, anyway.”

He laughs, disbelieving. It’s shaky, almost. She has surprised him.

“All right,” he says. “You’ve made your point.” He holds out his hand, as if to shake, and she stares at him.

“What?”

“I propose a truce.”

“A truce?”

“A truce. No more insults while we're partners on this thing.”

“Bit of a one-sided truce, seeing as how I don’t insult you.”

“Well, then, don’t start. No calling me stupid, or anything.”

“I have never called you stupid.”

“Not to my face.”

“I’ve called you plenty of things without having to resort to attacks on your intelligence,” Brienne says primly. Jaime laughs again. He still looks vaguely surprised.

“I’d love to hear them,” he says. The bell rings, announcing lunch. They’re alone in the room. Even Selmy is gone. Brienne gathers her things, and Jaime waits for her. “Well, go on.”

“I’m not going to insult you.”

“Shake, then. Truce.”

She sighs, not really believing in it, but she shifts the weight of her books so she can shake his hand.

“If you insult me, am I allowed to punch you?” she asks.

“You’ve always been allowed to punch me. I’m surprised you haven’t. But yes, I’ll write that into the official bylines, or whatever you call the rules of a truce.”

Brienne rolls her eyes and heads into the hall, and Jaime follows her, walking by her side.

“Just,” he says. “I want to get a good grade on his paper. I need one, actually.” He’s embarrassed, she realizes. She looks away from him, because she doesn’t like how earnest he looks.

“We’ll get a good grade,” she says. “And I won’t call you stupid, if it means that much.”

“And I won’t say any of those terrible things I’ve said before,” he says brightly. “And when it’s over, I want to hear those insults you’ve called me behind my back. But Tyrion’s off-limits even when we’re not in truce. I’m fair game, though. I love it when…”

“Tyrion?” Brienne asks, stopping to look at him. “Why would I say anything bad about Tyrion?”

He pauses. He smiles again, but it’s not the usual mocking smirk. It’s strange. Blinding. Like it’s sincere. Like he’s breathless.

“Right,” he says, and he looks down at his feet, almost bashful. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

“I like your brother,” she continues, flabbergasted. “I would never…whatever you’ve heard I’ve said, or whatever makes you think I’ve said something, it’s not true.”

“No, I haven’t heard anything,” Jaime says quickly. “I was just…making sure. I want you to insult me, but I don’t like opening him up to that. People can be cruel.”

She favors him with a deeply ironic look that makes him laugh. It’s loud enough to draw the attention of a few stragglers who haven’t made it to the cafeteria yet. There are some double takes and pitying glances. They think he’s making fun of her, of course. She flushes and keeps walking, and he yet again keeps pace. She wants to shoo him off like an unwanted stray dog, but that would make it worse.

“People can be cruel,” she mutters, and he laughs again.

“I’m sorry. I should have remembered who I’m talking to. You might have a lot in common, you and Tyrion. Height difference aside.”

Brienne sighs loudly again.

“Is this just a ploy to make me let my guard down so you can do something terrible?” she asks. “Because I want this grade too, and I’m not going to let you tank it just so you and your sister can make another attempt to put me down.”

“No,” Jaime insists, trying for sincere. “I shook on it. I meant it.”

“And your word means so much?”

“Well, it’s not nothing.”

Jaime Lannister is notorious for beating up the old captain of the football team. Luring him into the locker room and absolutely kicking the shit out of him. Hospitalizing him. He was only a freshman, and Aerys a senior. Three years later, and people still call him Kingslayer because of it. There’s no way he won that fight without playing dirty. She considers mentioning this, but she doesn’t.

“So when are we going?”

She hears his question, but it doesn’t register for a moment. When it does, she stops walking again. At this rate, they’ll never make it to lunch.

“Going where?” she asks.

“To the museum. And to talk to your armorer friend.”

“You want to come?”

They’re both as confused as the other, and Jaime tilts his head slightly back to regard her.

“Did you not think I would? What was I meant to be doing on this project, then?”

“I don’t know, I figured you could pull a few quotes from whatever they have in the library. Or write up a portion, and I’d add my stuff to it.” He looks vaguely upset, and actually weirdly hurt, and Brienne has always been too weak for her own good, so she hastens to add, “of course you can come, if you want. I just didn’t think you would.” That doesn’t seem to help, so she blurts, “you hate me,” as if to remind him of something he should already know.

Jaime actually jerks in surprise at that, and his eyes widen.

“I don’t hate you,” he says. Concedes, “Cersei hates you. I’m just mean to you. But I can see how you might have gotten that impression.”

She hopes that the stare she levels in his direction adequately conveys just how unimpressed she is by that distinction.

He sticks his hand out again, grinning a little.

“Another truce?” she asks.

“A promise.”

She takes his hand with another irritated sigh.

“A promise to…?”

“To never hate you,” he says, very seriously, and he affects a strange, almost courtly bow, and he raises the back of her hand to his lips, and he locks eyes with her when he kisses it.

“Where’ve you been?” Robb asks when she finally sits down at their table.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” she admits, and she can feel from the heat of her face that she’s still blushing. At this point, she’s not sure she’ll ever stop.

Chapter Text

Jaime picks Brienne up for the trip to the museum in an Audi that’s not his sister’s. Cersei's always the one who drives them to school, but of course Jaime has an expensive car of his own that he hardly even uses. Fucking Lannisters.

Brienne’s already in a mood after Cersei called her a great lumbering beast last night at the Stark house. They’d bumped into each other in the hallway, and the words had come right out, harsher and meaner than she usually is. She’d hissed it quietly so Brienne was the only one who heard. At school, before lunch, the idea of doing this with Jaime hadn’t seemed quite so insane, but now it does, with Cersei’s voice still ringing in her ears. There may be this truce that Jaime claims they have, but Brienne knows too much to actually believe it’s going to hold, and she’s half-convinced that he’s going to drive her all the way to the museum just for some elaborate prank with his sister.

It’s worse because he stands outside her house looking extremely good, like some kind of romcom bastard, and her father spies on him out the living room window and looks like he’s about to cry from joy.

“Don’t get too excited, dad. He’s a Lannister,” she says on her way to the door, and Selwyn’s face falls just a little. “It’s for a school project.”

It’s funny, she thinks, that she feels the need to let her father down gently. She doesn’t feel any twinges of regret. She doesn’t wish that things were different. She doesn’t even like Jaime Lannister as a person. Sure, he’s attractive, but if that’s his only redeeming quality, then he’s there for her to look at any time she wants. Like the unapproachable beauty of an A-list actor. All she needs is for him to be tolerably nice to her for a single day.

She just hates to see her father get his hopes up. Like maybe one day his daughter won’t be the same awkward, mannish girl she’s always been. She’s come to terms with herself, but she’s afraid he’ll never stop hoping she’ll one day fit.

She expects the ride into the city to be quiet and uncomfortable. She hopes Jaime will just put music on and let the awkward silence happen, because she’d rather be subjected to whatever his music tastes might be than whatever he considers smalltalk.  

He does put on music, but it’s quiet and eclectic and hits all over the map, from movie and video game soundtracks to current pop hits to sad indie folk. She only barely notices it under the stream of constant chatter. He barely glances at the GPS, taking haphazard turns and laughing when he misses where he was supposed to go. Nothing fazes him. He’s a Lannister, she’d said to her father, like it was an explanation for everything he is, and maybe that’s exactly right. Lannisters apparently don’t have driving anxiety, or economic anxiety, or social anxiety.

He asks her ten thousand questions about medieval arms and armor, most of which she doesn’t know the answer to, so he demands that she write the questions down to remember for when they talk to Goodwin. He manages to get her to say a few things about the heroic fairs that she’s been going to, and he laughs at her when she talks about the inaccuracies in most of the replica armor and weapons.

“Who would’ve thought,” he teases. “The geekiest place in the world still isn’t geeky enough for Brienne Tarth. You should open your own. Totally realistic. Mock fights result in frequent amputations. Failure is met by dragon fire. Half the audience dies of the plague. You’d have the survivors howling for more.”

His teasing doesn’t break the truce, she decides. It makes her think of Margaery Tyrell’s more gentle jests than his sister’s fake kindnesses.

The exhibition at the museum covers weaponry from ancient Westeros to modern day, so logically they should speed through the ancient era and get right to heroic, but they’re both apparently in the mood to linger.

Jaime Lannister is possibly the worst person in the world to go to a museum with. He makes her read the plaques aloud to him, like he can’t be bothered to read them himself, and he interrupts her frequently when the plaque is too boring.

“What the hell is that?” he has a habit of asking loudly, laughingly, dragging Brienne by the arm to get closer to some strange, squat statue with a rudimentary helm. He practically trips over himself in his haste to look at a spear that was designed to look like an octopus tentacle. It looks a bit like the strange sea monster soulmark on Sansa’s hip, so Brienne takes a second to snap a picture and suddenly realizes Jaime is all the way across the room, shouting at her to “get over here! Look at this!”

He’s delighted with everything in a way that reminds Brienne of childhood, when her father took her and his girlfriend at the time to the ruins of Vaes Dothrak, and Brienne ran around playing at Dothraki Horselords with some Dornish children. It feels like that again, like Jaime Lannister isn’t someone who has casually bullied her off and on through her school years. Like he’s just an enthusiastic stranger she’s met on a trip. A temporary friend. She stops worrying about Cersei and pranks. She stops thinking that Jaime’s waiting for something, some opportunity to pounce and ruin her day. He just…seems to be having a good time.

He’s the worst person in the world to go to a museum with, but she’s having more fun than she would have had alone. He disappears at one point after they’ve gotten to Modern Weaponry (“oh look, another gun,” he’d deadpanned just before vanishing, with a bored flick of the wrist, pissing off a rough-looking man who was standing with his nose pressed up against the glass) and then finds her at the end of the exhibition with a gigantic gift shop bag, from which he pulls a replica sword. It has lions carved on the blade, and he tosses it to her easily. It’s heavier than she expected from a replica. It actually looks like a really good one.

“How much did this cost?” she asks him. He shrugs and pulls out a matching one, dropping into a fighting stance. She laughs loudly, more out of surprise at the seriousness of his face than anything else, and he pretends to be scandalized.

“Brienne Tarth. We are in a museum,” he mock-gasps, and she swings her sword dramatically, slowly, to point it in his direction.  

It doesn’t take long before they’re kicked out, but Brienne can’t find it in her to be humiliated, because Jaime acts like they’re the victims and puts on his best snotty rich kid voice, throwing around his father’s name. He demands free passes for his “lady friend” for next weekend. When he procures them, and they wind up standing on the street with their replica swords and the gigantic bag of other goodies that Jaime bought, he presents her the passes with a sweeping bow that makes her think she might not be the only one who would enjoy a good heroic fair. She accepts them, because she thinks they’re supposed to be an apology for getting her kicked out, though she doesn’t really need one. She had fun today. She didn’t expect to.

Unfortunately, they’ve spent longer here than she realized, and Goodwin will be closing up before they can get to his place. When she points it out, Jaime shrugs again.

“You doing anything tomorrow?” he asks.

She spends the night doing homework, though she’s tempted to head over to the Stark house and talk to Sansa about the day she had. It was so weird and pleasant and fun, but she’s afraid that Sansa will read too much into it. She’ll take Brienne’s disbelief at actually enjoying a Lannister’s company as some kind of proof that she was right about Cersei. Or maybe she’ll think Brienne is interested in Jaime, and she’ll be sweet about it, though her eyes will be sad, and she’ll feel some deep internal pity.

No, as exciting as it would be to actually have girl talk with Sansa for once, she’s much better off avoiding the Stark house until tomorrow afternoon for Arya’s nameday party. Then the whole thing will be over, and Sansa won’t give her any reason to overthink everything she says to Jaime tomorrow during their meeting with Goodwin.

Her father is smug when Jaime shows up the next morning earlier than he was meant to. Brienne isn’t quite ready, and by the time she gets downstairs, Jaime’s standing in the kitchen holding two iced coffees, and he offers one to her with a smile. Brienne doesn’t even really like coffee, but she drinks it, because it was nice of him to bring it, and she’s too polite to turn it down. Selwyn blessedly doesn’t try to give Jaime any kind of deeply humiliating shovel talk; Jaime shows up wearing his football jacket, and Selwyn played, so the conversation is mostly about that. Brienne still gets them out of the house as soon as possible, just in case.

“Your dad isn’t what I expected,” Jaime says when they get into the car.

“If Tyrion’s off-limits, so’s my dad,” she says as she buckles in. He shoots her an injured look.

“Not in a bad way. I liked him. I expected some college professor type.”

“My dad is a college professor,” Brienne says.

“Well look at you: the Tarth family. Subverting everyone’s expectations.”

He laughs while he says it. It’s hard to say if it’s a cruel laugh. It’s hard to say if it’s an insult. She treats it like it was one and lapses into an uncomfortable silence. Jaime doesn’t seem to notice; of course he doesn’t. What expectations is she subverting, anyway? Femininity? Sexuality? And in what universe could someone like Jaime Lannister mean anything but cruelty when he brings that up to her?

Jaime treats going to the armorer like a kid at a build-a-bear. He darts around Goodwin’s workshop exclaiming over everything, and again Brienne has the feeling that Jaime Lannister might be a secret geek, at least when it comes to the heroic era. Goodwin is a taciturn man, but he seems taken with Jaime’s enthusiasm, so Brienne lets Jaime handle most of the questions while she dutifully writes down the answers. She wishes she’d thought to record this. Maybe it could have been extra credit to hand it in to Selmy. He would have loved to see Jaime’s raw enthusiasm for the subject.

Once Goodwin has answered their basic questions about changes to armor through the Age of Heroes, he leads them through to his workshop so he can show them the process of how he makes the armor. It really has nothing to do with their project, but neither Brienne nor Jaime care. Brienne does record this, capturing Jaime’s wide-eyed wonder every time he turns around to make sure Brienne is watching.

“Are you seeing this?” he keeps asking.

Finally, Goodwin takes them to his drafting table.

“And now, Ser Brienne,” he says with a grin, and Brienne feels her stomach sink even as she feels it clench in excitement. She hadn’t wanted Jaime to know, but she’s excited to see the sketches. She puts her phone away, and she hands her notebook to Jaime, as if she thinks he’ll be adequately distracted by reading through her notes. He isn’t.

“What is it?” he asks, following her up to the table like an obedient puppy. Goodwin peels back the top page of the sketchbook and reveals a rendering of her. It’s well done, though maybe a little flattering. He has made her too-strong features look noble instead of just bold. Her stance is powerful, strong. She doesn’t recognize herself in her own face, because the woman Goodwin has drawn is not afraid of people like Cersei and Jaime Lannister. She holds a sword with enviable ease, as if she was born to wield it, like Margaery joked.

The armor Goodwin has designed is beautiful. It does not try to accentuate femininity that she does not have. It doesn’t try to bury her in mail, either. It’s sleek and light and perfect, and Brienne feels like she wants to cry.

“It’s wonderful,” she tells Goodwin.

“It’s not entirely finished yet. I’ll need your input on a few design choices. Color tint, ornamentation, any carvings you want. But this is definitely the style for you.”

“Blue,” Jaime says suddenly. Brienne had somehow forgotten he was there. She and Goodwin both look at him. He gestures back to the drawing. “The tint. I think dark blue would look nice.”

Goodwin smiles a little, and he lifts one shoulder.

“You’ve got a good eye,” he says, and Jaime winks at Brienne when he sees her still looking at him.

Before they can leave, Goodwin suggests sparring, with the implication that Brienne could show Jaime a few of the tricks that she’s been learning. Brienne really should have specified on the phone when she said that she was bringing “a friend” along. She should have said that he’s a reluctant, temporary friend who’s actually a terrible bully and that she doesn’t want to give him anything he can use to make his torment of her easier once they’re finished with this truce.

She agrees to it because Jaime looks so enthusiastic at the prospect, and because she knows that she’s strong enough to beat him. If nothing else, maybe it’ll be cathartic. She changes into a pair of sweats that Goodwin lends her, and Jaime changes into his practice clothes from his trunk. They’re rumpled and disgusting and clearly haven’t been washed in weeks, but he doesn’t seem to notice. And I’m the beast? she thinks incredulously.

“We’ve got to film this,” Jaime insists, and she volunteers, setting up her phone before he can hand over his. There’s no way in hell she’s letting him have the video. She’ll attach it to the email with the rest of their project to Mr. Selmy, but that’s it. She can just imagine what horrible things Cersei would say if she saw Brienne red-faced and sweating as she hacked away at Jaime. Great lumbering beast. She can imagine the two of them laughing together over the video, and it makes her stomach sink further.

By the time she has picked up a wooden practice sword and joined Jaime in the middle of the practice area, she’s angry with him. This future, hypothetical Jaime. It’s easy to imagine him mocking her. He’s done it so often in the past. And he may very well be having fun now, but that doesn’t mean he won’t use this day to make fun of her in the future.

Jaime has a silly helmet on and some torso padding, but Brienne only bothers with the arm guards. Goodwin watches with his arms folded over his chest. Jaime bounces eagerly on the balls of his feet. At school, he’s always at rest, looking lazy as he stretches out on benches or leans against walls or sighs into whatever furniture is around for him to flop onto. She’s only ever seen him giddy like this when she happens to see him at football practice, or whenever he’s been in her gym class. School is boring to him, but he excels at physical activity. She would do well to remember that, she knows. There’s nothing more embarrassing than underestimating an opponent.

Goodwin gives the signal, and Brienne and Jaime begin. He’s hesitant at first, feeling her out as they circle each other, but an almost manic brightness possesses him once he realizes that she can take whatever he gives her. He begins to fight back more, meeting each of her strikes with one of his own.

“You’re good at this,” he tells her, and he sounds sincere again.

“I know,” she says, and he laughs. Glittery. Almost fond. She forgets why she was angry with him.

Goodwin calls out encouragement and the occasional correction, and Jaime incorporates his advice just as well as Brienne does. They’re evenly matched: Brienne is stronger, but Jaime is faster. He has a grace that surprises her the first few times he ducks out of her way, but she adjusts.

They’re both sweating by the time she manages to get him to yield. He threw off his helmet at one point after she dented it with the force of one of her swings, and his golden curls look matted and ugly for once, though the glow of battle only enhances the rest of his face. She sweeps her leg under his, and he falls, and she drops to her knees beside him. One knee, she plants on his chest, and she angles her blade under his chin. She’d planned on straddling him to keep him down, but then thought of he and Cersei laughing over the video again, and she’d been too embarrassed to do it, though it would have been more efficient.

“Yield,” she says, and he laughs, letting his head rest back against the ground.

“Fine,” he says blithely. “You’ve beaten me. I yield.”

He’s looking at her again the way he did in school the other day, when she’d listed the taunts he usually hit her with. Surprised, like she had some hidden depth he hadn’t known was there. She likes the look on him. He’s already very pretty to begin with, but he’s hard edges and a toothy smile. This surprised expression is different. It’s almost soft. 

She scrambles back off him the moment she has the thought. Jaime Lannister is not soft. Jaime Lannister is a jerk and a bully, and he’s only being nice to her because it means he gets to swing a sword around and get an A on a paper he needs to do well on. And maybe he’s just one of those people who likes to have a good time, and he’d rather be nice to her so she’s friendly and he doesn’t have to spend the whole day in dour silence. That doesn’t change who he is at his core.

“That was very well done, Brienne,” Goodwin says, clasping her on the shoulder. “And you, young man. You’re a quick study. If you ever want to stop by with Brienne again, you’d be more than welcome. I haven’t seen anyone else come so close to beating her.”

Jaime grins at her from where he still lies on his back, catching his breath. She forces herself to smile back. He looks good like that: lazy and happy and proud of himself.

“I’m going to hit the showers,” she says.

She picks up a few cheap practice swords on Catelyn Stark’s dime – a promise kept for Arya’s nameday party today. Jaime picks up a gaudy-looking helmet that costs more than her suit of fake armor. If he notices that she’s quieter on the way home, he doesn’t mention it. He probably doesn’t even notice; how could he, when he talks enough for the both of them. He talks about the fight and about the armor and about Goodwin’s praise of him. He demands that she send him the video, and she says she will and doesn’t bother to remind him that she doesn’t have his number. Hopefully he’ll forget that he asked.

Finally, as if realizing that he’s talked nonstop for most of the ride, he sort of awkwardly clears his throat and asks, “so how long have you been going to see Goodwin?”

She thinks it over while she watches out the window.

“A couple of weekends,” she says.

“Only that long? You’re really very good. You must be a natural. Maybe it’s your shoulders. You’ve got the shoulders for it. That wasn’t...that wasn’t an insult. The truce still holds. It’s just true.”

He looks at her almost uncertainly after he says it, and she wants to remind him that the unkind stuff he says about her is always true. It’s just also unkind. She doesn’t say it, though, and she’s disgusted with herself. Like just because he puts half an effort into not being a total asshole, she decides he’s trying and deserves some kindness for it, like a reward.

“It does feel natural to me,” she says. She thinks about her soulmark on her shoulder blade. Ever since she saw it, she’s loved swords and weapons. It was an image that was burned into her skin and represented her true love, and so she wanted to know whatever she could about it. “I’ve always liked swords. Heroic age weapons. Knights, and…well, it’s always been important to me. Things were simpler back then, maybe. Things like honor and chivalry mattered. I don’t know.”

He smirks a little, and he looks like he’s about to mention something, probably about her soulmark. She has no doubt that Cersei described it to him.

But then he seems to think better of it. He glances at her again.

“Who knew you were such a romantic,” he says finally. She rolls her eyes at him and looks back out the window.

“Shut up, Lannister,” she mutters.

When they finally pull up to the Stark house, she takes a calming, bracing breath. She is going to gracefully exit the car. She is going to gently remind him to type up some notes about the weapons and armor from the later heroic years, as they discussed, so they can write the paper together tomorrow during their free period. It doesn’t have to be awkward. She can just say goodbye and leave like a normal person, without trying to make this whole experience into something it was never going to be. Sure, it was a fun, strange few days, but come tomorrow he’s still going to be Jaime Lannister, and he’s still going to call her names.

There are cars lining the street for Arya’s party, but Jaime manages to park in a recently vacated spot right out front.

“Thank you for the ride,” she says, already reaching for the door handle. “Can you pop the trunk?”

He looks at her oddly, then jolts into action.

“The swords, right,” he says. He pops the trunk and then, to Brienne’s horror, turns off the car and jumps out. “Here, let me carry them.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I can…”

“Chivalrous. I’m being chivalrous,” he corrects, darting to the trunk and grabbing the swords before she can.

So apparently the truce is going to hold for a little while longer. Jaime carries the swords above his head and preens happily when about a dozen twelve year olds scream for joy to see them. Brienne helps Catelyn wrangle the kids into some padding while Jaime shows them how to swing. Catelyn keeps sending little questioning glances at Brienne, which Brienne pointedly ignores. She hopes Jaime leaves soon.

Robb and Jon and Theon all come out from the house and find Jaime charming Arya and all her friends, and obviously that can’t stand, so they disappear for a while in Ned’s truck and then come back with a rented bouncy castle. Catelyn and Sansa help them set it up properly, both scolding the boys for not running it by them first, and then it’s sort of a war between Jaime and Brienne and the Stark-adjacent boys over who can lure more children to their activity. She didn’t sign up for this battle and wants no part of it, but Jaime plays dirty. He keeps making her show the kids how to fight, exclaiming stuff like “you’re better at it than me, you show them”, and he says very kind things about her to the children that nonetheless make her hackles rise, like there’s got to be some trick. Some trap.

Then Arya whacks him on the shin with the practice sword, hard enough to make his eyes water, and Brienne expects him to get angry or leave or shout at the nameday girl in front of everyone, but he doesn’t. He laughs instead, and he ends the war between Swords and Bouncy Castle by picking Arya up, shouting “incoming” and flinging her over the shortest battlement like a trebuchet, sending her screeching and bouncing and giggling away.

This game has promise to both the older and the younger kids, and so Brienne soon finds herself helping Jaime fling some children around. Robb and Theon join them, because the game is the kind of chaotic that the two of them love best, but Jon retreats to help Ned with grilling (a task that is quickly becoming overwhelming with the bottomless stomachs of Arya’s friends).

The game comes to a quick and slightly violent end when Bran takes a bad bounce and twists his ankle, and Jaime feels so guilty for it that he insists on carrying the boy around on his shoulders afterward. He gets a lot of giggles and admiring glances from some of Arya’s friends, and the mothers all coo over him like he’s adorable as he crouches down so Bran can pick out which burger he wants from the stack of them. He’s never very far from Brienne, like he needs to remind everyone he came with her and isn’t just crashing, and he’s constantly talking to her or shouting for her attention, and she can’t help but notice the looks and the confusion. Her? They all seem to say. He’s with her?

When it’s finally starting to get dark, and the party disperses, he insists that he and Brienne need to go into the bouncy castle so he can rest his back. She wants to ask him a million questions. Why are you still here? That’s number one. But she crawls through the entrance with him, kicks some abandoned practice swords out of the way, and lies on her back beside him. It’s not quite dark enough yet for stars, but the deepening blue is pretty, and Brienne knows she could stay here and watch it fade completely, if she was alone.

“This has been fun,” Jaime says, and she glances over and sees that he’s already looking at her. He smiles, but it’s not his usual smile. It’s not charming or cruel or sharp. It’s small, almost uncertain, and it turns his statement into a question.

“Yeah,” she says uncomfortably. “Thank you for helping.”

That seems safe enough to say, though her one million questions still build up inside her.

“We never had nameday parties growing up,” he says. “Well, not after I was like…I don’t know…”

“Eight,” Brienne says. He glances at her with surprise. She feels her face flushing. “I remember your eighth nameday. You and Cersei invited everyone in our grade. My father thought it was a particular invitation, so he insisted I go, even though I told him I didn’t want to.”

Silence for a little while. Brienne can hear loud Stark conversation drifting across the yard from the kitchen window, and it helps her feel less afraid.

“Were we awful?” Jaime asks quietly, sounding like he might already know. In truth, they had been entirely indifferent. A little scornful, but their father had been nearby, so it wasn’t like they could do anything.

“Only a little. I didn’t really know anyone. That was the worst part. Robb was my only friend, and he didn’t go. So I was just…standing there. Looking awkward, probably. I didn’t bring a swimsuit, so everyone else was in the pool. Not me. I got lost looking for the bathroom, and your aunt was in the kitchen.”

“Genna?”

“I think so. She…I didn’t need to tell her anything. She just looked at me and knew. She kept asking me to help her with things. Cooking and plating food. Keeping me busy so I wouldn’t have to go back out there. She was very nice.”

“She is,” Jaime agrees. There’s something wistful to it. “She was the reason we even had that party. My father hasn’t ever been interested, but I remember she said that she thought we deserved something nice.” He laughs a little, scornful. “I don’t know where she got that idea. We were little monsters from the start.” He glances at her. His look is teasing, like he’s pretending to expect her to argue.

“You were probably less monstrous then,” she says. He laughs.

“Not really,” he says. He puts his arms behind his head and looks up at the sky, away from her. “Why don’t you ever retaliate?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone else does. Your precious Stark boy has a sharp tongue, and a quick head. After the way his mother cursed me out for dropping Bran, I’m not surprised. Every time I say something to him, I’m guaranteed at least three hilarious put-downs in return.”

“Are you just a masochist? You want people to fight you?”

“No, not really. I just expect it. But you never do. You never even react.”

“I used to react,” Brienne says. She catches his eye with a bit of a pointed look and says, “people are cruel.” It makes him look away, and she’s gratified to see guilt there. “I’ve never been much to look at, and it’s not like I even blend in, so I’m an easy target. I used to get angry. I thought if people were afraid of me, they'd leave me alone. But they didn’t. And it didn’t hurt any less. And then I heard someone say “words are wind”, and I decided that if I just didn’t react, they’d stop. I wouldn’t cry or flinch or yell at them. They’d see only blankness, and maybe that would bore them. That doesn’t work either, it turns out. The blankness just hides the hurt better, but it feels nicer. Less destructive.”

Jaime sighs heavily, and she sees that his eyes are closed. She thinks he’s going to make a comment about being bored by her monologue, the most she’s ever said to him, and she’s already annoyed about it, but then he just says, “I really am sorry, you know.”

She doesn’t believe him. She can’t believe him, because she has carefully maintained a distance between the outward package of Jaime Lannister and what remains at the heart of him. If he’s sorry, he’s better than she thought he was, and she can’t have that.

Then again, a man can be sorry and still be cruel. That he knows its hurtful might make him even crueler.

“Maybe I’ll start insulting you, then,” she says. Light, to take the edge away from her thoughts. “Make up for lost time.”

“Maybe you should. Everyone else does.”

“Calling you an asshole when you’re acting like an asshole isn’t an insult. It’s just…”

“Kingslayer,” Jaime says, deadpan. When Brienne lapses into silence, he looks at her. His smile is back to being sharp, but in the dim light she can see a wariness in his eyes. This is important to him, she realizes. Her reaction to this is important.

“I’ve never called you that,” she says quietly. “It’s too…dramatic.”

“My brother always tells me to never forget who I am, because no one else will forget it either. For a while after the Aerys thing, I was like you said. Angry. I’d fight anyone who said the name. I couldn’t tell them everything, couldn’t tell them why I...but I could defend myself. Tyrion stopped me. So now I just…laugh it off. Kingslayer. All those jokes about me and Cersei. My grades. It’s easier to laugh it off.” He’s looking at her, and he’s waiting. She looks back. They are comfortably far apart in the castle, but suddenly she could stand to be farther. “Aren’t you going to ask?”

“Would you tell me if I did?”

He pauses to think about it, looking especially beautiful. It makes her chest hurt, just a little, to remember who he is, and who she is, and how this moment shouldn’t be happening.

“Yes,” he finally says. “I’d tell you.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

There it is again, that surprised smile. She likes it on him. The grin of exceeded expectations. How many people ask him for the truth about Aerys without ever considering if he wants to say?

“Yes,” he says, and he props himself up on his side to face her. She stifles a groan and then joins him, propping her head in her hand.

“Why’d you beat up Aerys, Jaime?”

He breathes out slowly, and his mocking smile drops. He looks at her for so long that she gets uncomfortable, but it’s dim enough that this moment feels liminal, suspended, apart from the normal rules.

“Aerys was a senior when we were freshman,” he says. “Captain of the team. The King, they called him. He wasn’t even that good. And he was mean. The whole team was afraid of him. And not just them. His sister Rhaella was a junior. She and her friend Elia Martell were cheerleaders. Freshmen aren’t usually offered spots on the varsity team, but I was, because my father wouldn’t accept anything less, and because I was good enough to make the exception.” She rolls her eyes, and he laughs. “The other boys were unimpressed with me. But Rhaella and Elia were…kind.”

It’s strange to imagine Jaime nervous in a social situation. The young freshman surrounded by seniors, unsure how to act.

“Elia used to babysit Tyrion when we were younger,” he says. “She was very gentle. Easily frightened, and sick a lot, but she was unyielding about a lot of things. When she found out that Aerys was abusing his sister, she confronted him. So then he hurt her, too. I found her in the weight room. It was after hours. I was only there to get some extra practice, otherwise she would have been there all night. Rhaella told me everything when we were at the hospital. She begged me not to tell anyone. She said that Aerys would kill her if he knew she’d told. She said she was going to drop out of school, because she thought it was her fault, what happened to Elia, because she made friends with a girl who was brave enough to step in. I told her I wouldn’t tell anyone, and I didn’t. I kicked the shit out of him instead.” He smiles a little at the memory, and Brienne finds that she can’t fault him. “He went down easy, actually. I was so angry. I told him, while I hit him, that I was hitting him because I saw the way he looked at Cersei. I made sure he thought I was some idiot child, sticking up for his sister, so he wouldn’t think to blame his. And when I was done, and he was unconscious, I called Rhaella and told her where she could find him. I was kicked off the team, almost expelled, but Elia’s family stepped in and made sure that things were smoothed over and kept as quiet as it could be. Everyone assumed it was my father, but it wasn’t. My father probably would have loved the opportunity to stick me in a private school, but the Martells wouldn’t have it. Aerys went to jail after Elia woke up and told them what he'd done, and Rhaella and Elia both transferred schools and eventually got to college, so. All things considered, it was a win. But I never told anyone the whole story, so to everyone else, I’m just…the asshole freshman who took The King out of commission before playoffs.”

He looks at her, and he is so very wary. Wary and hopeful and hurt. It matters to him, she realizes. For some reason, what she thinks about this matters to him. Not as a judgement for her character, but as a judgement for his. It would be ridiculous to assume that she’s the first person he’s told, but it feels like a secret never stated.

“I wish I’d been there to help you do it,” Brienne says, and Jaime smiles.

A strange, fun, weirdly sad weekend. She feels she knows him so much better now.

But school is different. Their truce ended the moment he got back into his car on the Stark’s street and drove away. He didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to.

Still, when she shows up to the library the next day and finds him waiting with a coffee for himself and a soda for her, she allows hope in. Maybe things will be different now.

That’s the part that will make it sting the most. The fact that she allowed herself to believe him.

She has her laptop, with the interview notes and videos saved, and Jaime again asks her to send them, and she actually writes down his number on a piece of notebook paper, planning on it. Deciding to trust him with it. She gets going on the body of the report, and Jaime is more helpful than she would have expected. He has insightful ideas, and he’s good at coming up with colorful phrases. She types as he talks, interjecting to correct or elaborate, and by all metrics they’re a good team. Jaime has a few pages of rough notes on the later heroic armor already typed up, and she takes them from him to read them when he offers them up to her almost nervously.

His shoulder is brushing hers as he leans over to read with her, and that’s why she feels him tense up. But she probably would have realized Cersei was there anyway. A change in the wind somehow. Like a warning. Brienne looks up from Jaime’s notes, and Cersei is standing across the table from them. She’s wearing a short green dress that brings out her eyes, with a white sweater over it, and she looks so hopelessly gorgeous that it reminds Brienne of her own lack. She’d forgotten, for a while, happily working on this paper with Jaime. She’d forgotten the way she forgets with the Stark family, or with Renly and Loras, or with Goodwin, and now she remembers how wrong she must look, sitting beside someone as beautiful as Jaime Lannister.

“There you are, Jaime,” Cersei says sweetly. She slides into the seat across from him, and Brienne is almost afraid to move, like Cersei won’t notice her if she just stays quiet and still and as inoffensive as possible. Jaime clears his throat, and he finally moves, sliding back in his seat to affect a more casual pose.

“I told you I was working on Selmy’s paper,” he says.

“With Brienne,” Cersei says, her eyes narrowing slightly in an approximation of a smile. She looks at Brienne like Brienne is just so cute. “How fun!”

“It’s a paper,” Jaime says with a smile and a shrug, bored and irritated, though in his notes he had typed “and then Brienne kicked the absolute shit out of Jaime, and he had the time of his life (you have to leave this sentence in the paper, Brienne. It’s the law).”

“I hope my brother is treating you well, Brienne. I know how boorish he can be. He takes so much pride in saying things as he sees them, and he has such a dim view of the world. Oh, I see you’re blushing. You do do that a lot, don’t you, Brienne? And it’s such a pretty, ladylike blush. Isn’t it, Jaime?”

She tilts her head towards her brother, but her eyes don’t leave Brienne’s. Waiting. Confident. And Brienne really, really does think...

It’s too embarrassing. She can’t believe it, later. She thinks Jaime will stop Cersei. Or maybe say something nice. Tell Cersei to leave them alone. At least stay fucking neutral.

When she looks at Jaime, she sees him hesitate. And when he smirks, it doesn’t reach his eyes. But he still says, “ladylike? Gods, no”, and he still laughs, and he still sneers in the same old way when he says it.

It’s not the worst thing he’s ever said to her. And he doesn’t even look like he wants to say it.

But he does. Cersei prompts him, and he does. That’s the part that matters.

Brienne can feel Cersei’s eyes on her. This is a game to Cersei. A game that Cersei has won. Brienne didn’t even know she was playing. She didn’t mean to raise Cersei’s ire. She didn’t mean to encroach on Cersei’s territory or whatever it is that Cersei seems to think she has done. Cersei thinks she needs to put Brienne in her place, remind her where Jaime’s loyalties lie, but she didn’t need to do that.

Brienne was just having a nice time at the library with an attractive, utterly unattainable boy.

“Right,” she says flatly, still looking at Jaime. Something on his face wavers, but not enough.

Of course. She knew this would happen. She shouldn’t be upset about this. She can feel her face go blank, and she hates that she told him that her mask hides hurt. She hates that he knows that now. She turns away, and she looks down at his notes in her hand. She puts them on the table very carefully, and she hits “save” in Word. She tears out a piece of notebook paper as both twins wait. Cersei is smiling. Jaime looks nervous, she doesn’t think she’s misreading that, but he’s smiling, too. Brienne writes down her email address and folds the paper in half. Her movements are measured. Purposeful. She puts the paper with her email address down on top of Jaime’s notes, and she starts to stand up, her hands flat on the desk. It breaks the spell.

“Brienne-” Jaime starts, putting his hand on top of her own, but she yanks it back and doesn’t look at him.

“I should go,” she says, eyes flickering briefly to Cersei, who wears her amusement openly now. She looks almost impressed by Brienne’s steadiness. The respect of a victor for the dignity of the vanquished. “We don’t need to write the paper together, anyway. Just turn your notes into a few paragraphs about the later heroic years, and I’ll incorporate them into the rest. I’ll get the middle portion done.”

“Brienne, I-” Jaime starts.

“Oh, Jaime, let the great cow go,” Cersei sighs, standing up. “Come on. Grab your things.”

Jaime doesn’t move. For a second, Brienne feels a spark of hope that he’ll say something now. Great cow. But he doesn’t. The spark of hope shrivels. Brienne doesn’t look at him as she packs up her laptop. She takes the paper she had written his number on, before, when she thought she could trust him with that video of the two of them sparring. Gently, precisely, she tears the paper in two. It makes barely any sound. It’s an exceedingly quiet damnation, and she relishes the sight of Jaime's flinch out of the corner of her eyes. She gathers up all her things, and she heads for the door. On the way, she drops the two halves of Jaime’s number into the recycling bin.

Chapter Text

If anyone notices that Brienne is particularly ferocious in practice that day, they don’t mention it. She’s glad they don’t; she’s not sure she wants to explain it to them. Robb would be furious, and Jon pitying, and Theon would laugh at her for trusting Jaime in the first place, and Brienne has had all three reactions burning through her for the entire day, since the library. She doesn’t need their emotions on top of hers.

After practice, she waves off their offers of hangouts and fast food. She wants to be angry, she realizes. She doesn’t want them to make her feel better. She doesn’t want the safety of the Stark house, where everything bad fades away after enough time spent with people who love her. She wants the isolation and the self-pity and the hurt. She wants it for only a single day, and then she will go back to school tomorrow, and she will be ready to face anything that happens.

When she gets home, she buries herself in schoolwork. Writing. She does most of Selmy’s paper. A dothraki composition she’s been putting off. The main thrust of her final project for her literature class. She’s so blindingly angry and hurt and foolish that it forces her to keep working. It’s fuel for her. She’s hurt, so she works. She feels betrayed, so she works. She’s angry with herself for trusting Jaime fucking Lannister, for enjoying his company, for thinking that he would ever be kind to her in the face of his sister’s scorn, so she works. She keeps her email inbox open, and as the hours go by, she grows steadily stonier, until her hurt and hatred are just tiny lumps of coal in the center of her chest. There is a coldness that radiates out of them, like the heat of her emotions has burned the badness away, leaving only filaments of injury that will not overwhelm her. The later it gets without Jaime’s email, the colder she feels.

Just when she’s about to give up and write the second half of the paper herself, her email notification dings.

I’m sorry, he’s written in the body of it. But that’s not nearly enough, and she doesn’t think he even wants it to be.

I’m sorry, she thinks. What a fucking asshole.

His half of the paper is atrociously written, too. It's mostly sentence fragments, and he's left in the joke about Brienne kicking his ass. It’s not even in the right format! She wants to drive to his house and kick his ass again, but she can’t stomach seeing him so soon after having that tiny flicker of hope crushed.

A whole weekend spent being friendly, spent having fun together, and she had felt like she was being unfair when she suspected that he would go right back to the same old Jaime Lannister when it was done. But she was right.

Everyone is right about him. She was right about him. Jaime Lannister is a jerk and a bully, and she’s a fool who trusted a person she knew all along she shouldn’t have.

She gets to Selmy’s class early the next day, because she’s agonized over this, and she knows there’s no way she'll be able to hand Jaime his printed copy of the report without slamming it on the desk and glaring or telling him off, acting like a bitter, rejected girl. She doesn’t want him to see her hurt. She wants him to believe that she knew he was a dick all along, and that his capitulation to his sister yesterday didn’t surprise her at all. The museum, Goodwin’s armory, Arya Stark’s nameday, that weird moment in the bouncy castle where she thought he was sharing something sacred with her…that was the stuff that didn’t matter. She knew all along that his true face was the one he’d shown her for years.

She thinks of her soulmark on her shoulder again. Her sword. Her strength.

I am stronger than him, she thinks. I will not yield.

Getting to class early means that she can just slide Jaime’s copy of the report on to his empty desk as she passes, and then she’s safe to slump down at her own desk at the back of the room. She pulls out her notebook for her literature class and one of her source materials for her project, and she works dutifully on highlighting and copying down quotations she wants to use. She doesn’t look up when the other students start entering the room. She feels a tension in her shoulders that she knows won’t ease until everyone’s in their seats and she knows she’s safe, but she refuses to look up. That would be a surrender. A yielding. And she will not show anything.

She hears someone enter the room. She hears them hesitate at the door. Just sit down, she mentally begs them. She doesn’t dare look to see. But she hears footsteps coming closer. The class is only half full. It could be any of them coming to their seats, but somehow she knows it’s him. He sits in the chair in front of hers, just like he did the day they were assigned this cursed project, and she ignores him. He waits. She continues to write.

“Brienne,” he finally says, like it’s an incomplete sentence that he forgets to finish, and she’s so annoyed. He’s not going to trick her again. She looks up from her work, and he’s looking contrite but a bit too smiley, like he expects to be forgiven. She feels like an utter joke to him. Like he believes he can smooth things over as long as Cersei isn’t around. Keep Brienne happy so she still likes him while making fun of her to make Cersei smile. Keep her happy for what? A grade? Just to mess with her because he can? Or, worse, because he actually did enjoy this weekend but only thinks she’s worth being nice to when his sister isn’t there? Does he think she’s that starved for friendship? Does he think she'll fall over herself to forgive him because he’s beautiful and she must be so desperate?

“I left your copy on your desk,” she tells him. He stares at her. His smile fades too slowly. She wants to rip it from him, but she will not show emotion. “You didn’t give me much to work with, but I cleaned it up and made it legible, at least.”

That hurts him, and he cringes back a little, his shoulders hunching. He looks down at his hands.

“Look, I just wanted to say…”

“It’ll be an A,” she tells him, to stop him from speaking. He looks at her. “The paper. It’s good. Selmy will really like the pictures, and I already emailed him the videos. It’ll be an A. You don’t need to worry.”

Jaime just looks at her. He wants to speak. She knows he does. But he’s hesitating, and she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want to hear whatever carefully sorry words he’s going to say because he feels guilty enough to feel a little twinge of conscience. The worst thing he has ever said to her has not been nearly as painful as him being kind for an entire weekend, because now she will have to wonder how much of it was real and how much of it was time he spent laughing at her for believing it.

“I really am sorry, you know,” he says, and she looks back down at her work. Marks down another page number.

“Yes, you said that before,” she says. She looks up to meet his gaze when she says, “I didn’t believe you then, either.”

She feels no pleasure when she sees hurt flicker behind his eyes. She feels no pleasure when his face contorts into anger. She feels no pleasure when he gets up and leaves, back to his seat. She feels no pleasure, but it feels like a victory all the same.

She avoids him, after that. She saw the anger in his features, and she knows that high school boys are dangerous when they’re angry. He tried to make amends – sincere or not, there was an attempt at something – but she rejected him, and he will no-doubt be more cruel than ever.

Except he and Cersei don’t show up to their soccer game that afternoon, which is a relief. And though he’s in Brienne’s lunch period the next day, he doesn’t look over at her once. He catches her eye once in the hall between classes, but he looks away quickly and seems embarrassed, so she begins to relax. Maybe he feels more guilty than she realized. Maybe it’s a good thing that he knows she was wounded by him. Maybe his guilt will keep him as far away from her as possible.

As long as she doesn’t have to see him, she doesn’t have to think about him and how he hurt her so badly, and how embarrassed she is that she allowed it.

She receives the note in her locker that afternoon.

Room 147, E period. T.

“I almost didn’t come.”

She hovers just inside the doorway, frowning at Jaime’s brother as he types away on one of the computers in the otherwise empty lab. He looks up at her with a lopsided, charming grin that’s nothing like his siblings’. Tyrion claims he’s a Lannister in name only, but he shares some other things. Blonde hair. Good face. Superiority complex. But his is earned and fought for after years of bearing the brunt of a lot of cruelty. It makes sense that he once gave Jaime the advice about owning who you are. There are always going to be people who say shitty things about his dwarfism, especially in two years when Jaime and all his implied threats are graduated and gone, but Tyrion wears it like a shield. There’s something about it that’s hopelessly attractive to a lot of people. Tyrion is currently dating Ros and Shae at the same time, and they both know about it. He’s a fucking sophomore.

He’s also largely a good guy. Last year, he and Sansa became the only people Brienne has ever seen in fiction or reality who managed to pull off a fake dating scheme without falling in love with each other. Sansa needed a bad ex off her trail, and Tyrion wanted Sansa’s help setting up an operation where kids who are good at writing papers could write papers in exchange for favors – monetary or social – from the people whose papers they’re writing. A brilliant, definitely immoral and illegal idea, but Sansa had been happy to help covertly spread the word, and the business is one of the most successful underground endeavors at King’s Landing. There are rumors that Mr. Baelish – the health teacher who tells Sansa once a week you look just like your mother and who consequently is one of the only people Jon has ever admitted to hating – is running interference with the principal to keep the business alive.

Again, Tyrion is a sophomore. By the time he’s a senior, he’ll be a legend.

“I’m glad you ignored whatever instincts warned you to stay away,” he says. He gestures for her to sit in one of the low chairs at his table, and she obliges.

“If this is about your brother…” she starts slowly, and Tyrion pushes his thick-framed glasses further up his nose, folding his hands in front of him in a pose that Brienne recognizes as one that means he’s about to negotiate with her. She sighs. “Of course it’s about your brother.”

“Jaime is a fool,” Tyrion says. “And weak, especially when it comes to our sister. And there are plenty of therapists and psychologists who could explain the whole thing to you better than I could, but the two of them have always been codependent. Cersei is…” Here, a grin forms on his face. Respecting. Despising. “She’s cunning. She’s fiercely intelligent. She’s probably going to make an excellent president one day, because she can win with ruthlessness but understands the messaging and the causes that she needs to pretend to give a shit about to win over the bleeding hearts like you and I.”

“You sound as if you admire her.”

“I do. She’s loathsome, and I hate her personally, but she’s my sister, and I also love her. But family ties have nothing to do with my thinking she’ll be a good world leader. That’s just how it is. Jaime, if he doesn’t figure out how to have a personality beyond her, will probably end up the head of her secret service. Nobly standing by her side until he has to die taking a bullet for her. How romantic.”

Brienne’s eyebrows raise, and Tyrion coughs a little and looks away.

“I shouldn’t put it like that. There’s no truth to those rumors, amusing as they are. There’s nothing physical between them, though I’ve long thought there would have been, if my father hadn’t been so careful about thrashing those thoughts out of Jaime’s skull when they were younger. Those warnings left an impression on both of my siblings. He learned early how to get the best results from them.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“That my father used to discipline Jaime to punish both of them? Or that there’s something inappropriately carnal simmering beneath the surface of my siblings’ bond with each other? I don’t know. You have a trustworthy face, and I know how much Sansa loves you. And understanding the depth of Jaime’s connection with Cersei is necessary to knowing why Jaime is the fool that he is. I don’t know what happened between you two. He wouldn’t tell me. But I love my brother, and I find myself always trying to make things easier for him, even when he might not deserve it.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Brienne says, feeling slightly helpless in the face of Tyrion’s focus. “He was a jerk, but that’s nothing new. I know he’s kind to you, and that’s good. I do like that about him. But he’s never been anything but cruel to me.”

“Was he cruel to you last weekend?” Tyrion asks, and Brienne huffs and looks down at the table.

“I think you know he wasn’t, from your tone.”

“I’m a meddler, Brienne. That’s what I do. Underhanded deals, sneaky conversations set up like clandestine political meetings. This is the whole Tyrion Lannister oeuvre.” She looks at him and finds that he has his hand pressed sincerely to his chest, and she allows a small smile for him. “Jaime didn’t put me up to this. Jaime told me to leave everything alone. But I’m physically incapable of doing so when my brother’s happiness is on the line.”

“I’m not going to do anything,” Brienne says. “I’m not going to try and hurt him, or retaliate, or anything. It’s done, from my perspective. It hurt for a time, but now it’s over.”

“You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“You’re a rare breed of person, you know. You probably could retaliate. You know things about Jaime that few people do. That even I don’t know the whole of, because he’s never told anyone else.”

Kingslayer.

She shakes her head.

“He didn’t tell me much,” she says. And nothing that he told her was bad, anyway. Just a secret. A promise made to protect two girls. A secret he probably doesn’t need to keep anymore, but she wouldn’t ever betray that.  

“He told you more than he tells most people, and not all of it with words,” Tyrion continues. He is watching her very carefully, like she is prey. A lion and a sheep, their physical sizes reversed but their mental sizes more important in this conversation anyway. “He rarely shows so much of himself to people outside the family. And even Cersei sees only the boy he becomes when he’s under her thumb. You saw the Jaime I am allowed to know. That means he liked spending time with you.”

“Maybe he did. That doesn’t mean I owe him anything when he goes back to acting like he did the next day.”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then what is this? What do you hope to get out of this? I don’t hate your brother, Tyrion. I’m not going to do anything to hurt him. I’m going to go back to doing my very best to ignore him.”

“Cersei’s not going to make that easy.”

“She never does.”

“She knows what that weekend meant to him. She knows he went with you to the Stark party after the research visit was finished. You spent the entire weekend with him, when he usually would have been at her beck and call. And after the little incident at the library, he was upset with her. They had an argument. He didn’t speak to her the rest of the evening. Which, thank you for that, by the way.” He laughs, as if fondly remembering something. “Dinner that night was delightfully chilly and entertaining. And then Jaime locked himself in his room and worked on that paper for you. All night, almost. He doesn’t have the easiest time with writing, you know. He’s dyslexic, and he’s never had an easy time with finding the right words. He talks eloquently enough, but there’s something missing when he tries to commit his thoughts to paper. Or, well, computer screen. After the Stark party, he typed up those notes for hours. Wouldn’t let me help, like I usually do. And after the library, he did the same thing. He was quite upset with himself. I think struggling through a paper on a deadline he had no hope of meeting was his way of trying to fix it. He’s never been very good at apologies.”

She hates that Tyrion has made her feel a sting of guilt for how rude she was about his attempted portion of the paper.

“I didn’t realize,” she says quietly. “I’ll apologize to him for…”

“No. Lord, no. Don’t do that. He’d be furious with me if he realized I’d told you. He doesn’t want your pity or your apologies, Brienne. I don’t know if he knows what he wants from you, exactly. I think what he needs from you is friendship, because he hasn’t had many friends he can count on completely. Jaime…he feels things very deeply. He will do anything for the people he cares about. Cersei is a poison to him, because he has more love to give than he knows what to do with, and she wants every bit of it for herself. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object.” Tyrion sighs, and there’s a sense of deep weariness in him. His vocabulary has always made him seem older, but this tiredness makes him seem old. He continues, sadly, “Jaime was the only person in our family who ever treated me like I was one of them. He always waited for me when the rest of them would bound ahead on long legs. He spent time with me even though Cersei would have rather pretended that I didn’t exist. He always made sure that my father included me. I’m not asking you to be kind to Jaime, or to forgive him, certainly not for my sake. But I wanted you to understand. Jaime is a fool, but he did have a good time with you, and he does think you’re fascinating, and if it was up to him, that moment in the library never would have happened. My brother is a weak man when it comes to our sister, and I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to stop. But he wants to. I’ve never seen him angry with her like he was that afternoon. He’s waking up. Slowly, maybe too slowly, but you’ve achieved something very interesting with him. Something that I wouldn’t have said was possible. I don’t know what this conversation is worth to you. Just keep it to yourself, if need be. I just thought, from one freak to another, you should know that if things were different, Jaime would be to you what he has always been to me. But Cersei, now that she knows he likes you…she’s going to make it more difficult.”

“I can handle Cersei,” Brienne says, though she’s not sure that’s true. Tyrion has said a lot of things that she’s not sure are true. She’s annoyed to find that she wants to believe him.

“She’ll be meaner than ever now that she knows.”

“She’s been mean to me for a while now,” Brienne sighs. “I just have to deal with it until we graduate.”

Tyrion looks like he wants to say more, but in the end he doesn’t. He just smiles, a little sad.

“Lucky you,” he says.

When Mr. Selmy returns their papers at the end of the week, Brienne is unsurprised but glad to see the red, circled 100 at the top of the page. She flips through his comments, and she feels herself blushing happily at his unfettered praise. At the end of the final page is a long, hand-written congratulations, with a few comments about the video of she and Jaime sparring that tells her that sending it to him was a good idea. He even asks if he can use it for the next semester’s kids as an example. Brienne is practically floating.

When she packs up her things at the end of class and stands up from her desk, she sees Jaime waiting for her by the door. He’s not even pretending he’s not waiting for her. He’s watching her openly, biting his bottom lip, shifting his weight. When he sees her watching, he doesn’t avert his eyes. He tugs on his backpack straps, a nervous affectation, but he doesn’t look away.

She approaches warily. Her conversation with Tyrion has softened her a bit. She still doesn’t trust Jaime, and she still doesn’t like him, and she still thinks of that boy from the museum as an entirely different person than this Jaime standing in front of her, but it’s easier to face him knowing he’s a weak-willed mirror of his sister. Cersei's pretty little lapdog, not an equal architect of their cruelty.

She won’t be foolish enough to put herself out there like she did before, but she thinks she can handle neutrality.

“I told you we’d get an A,” she says, keeping her voice as even and toneless as possible. Jaime nods, and swallows, and gives her a half smile.

“You did,” he said. “And I wanted to try apologizing again. Better this time.”

“For doubting I’d get us an A?” she asks. She remembers belatedly what Tyrion said about Jaime trying despite his difficulties and despite the deadline, and she sighs. “That we would get an A,” she amends begrudgingly.

“You know what I need to apologize for.”

She starts down the hall, and he follows her, just like before. It’s less unpleasant this time, even though she still doesn’t want his regret.

“You don’t need to apologize for anything,” she says. He scoffs.

“Of course I do. I need to apologize for a lot, actually, but the library…I don’t know why I even said it. I don’t know why I say half of what I say. I know it’s, it’s cruel, and you don’t deserve…”

“Jaime, enough,” Brienne sighs, and Jaime goes quiet. She doesn’t want to look at him. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It is, though. I know I hurt you. I know I’ve been hurting you.” She sighs, and she still won’t look at him, especially not now that his voice has gotten too soft for her comfort. “I know I shouldn’t have…Cersei says things, and I just blindly follow her, and it’s wrong. I shouldn’t do that.”

“Shouldn’t, but you do, and you’ll do it again,” Brienne points out patiently. She finally looks at Jaime, and she feels guilty for the lost look on his face, though she knows she shouldn’t. She remembers what Tyrion said. He’s waking up. Slowly, though, and she has no interest in gambling on it, risking being hurt again because she had fun with him for a weekend and she knows that he’s trying to be a better man. “Look, I had a nice time at the museum,” she offers, as kindly as she can manage. “And with Goodwin. And at Arya’s party. It was a fun weekend. But that’s all it was. It’s over.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Jaime says quietly, but she shakes her head and turns away. Keeps walking.

“Jaime…”

“You can’t tell me you don’t want me to come back to Goodwin’s with you. He said I came closest to beating you out of anyone! Imagine how good we’d be if we were fighting together. If we were friends…”

“Friends?” Her laugh is louder than she meant it, and she feels flushed with embarrassment. Flushed, too, because she promised herself neutrality, and instead she’s getting emotional again. She grits her teeth and reminds him, “if we were friends, your sister could boil me alive, and you’d still stand by happily and watch.”

“No, not anymore. I refuse to be her, her prop anymore. Especially not with you.”

“Jaime, why is this even…?”

“What can I do to make you believe me?”

She has to laugh again, incredulous and exhausted and confused. She stops in the middle of the hallway and looks at him, and she finds him looking back. There’s an odd, determined glint in his eyes.

“Jaime, what is this? Why can’t you just leave me alone?” She asks it quietly, and it comes out more pleading than she wants it to be. He looks pained for a moment, and she searches his eyes for some kind of insincerity. Something that will tell her she can walk away entirely.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “But you didn’t deserve that.” He says it with an odd, almost childlike sincerity. “I was an asshole. And I have been an asshole. I don’t want to be an asshole anymore.”

“It’s really simple to not be an asshole,” Brienne says. She still feels unmoored, but she manages a smile. “I do it most days.”

“I have trouble believing you’ve ever been an asshole in your life.”

“I can be,” she warns. She says it particularly, and it makes Jaime smile.

“I’ll prove it to you,” he says. There is a sudden certainty in his tone.

“Jaime…”

“I’ll prove it to you,” he repeats. He points at her as he starts to back away, down the hall, leaving her standing in the center.

“I don’t know what that means!” she yells after him.

“You will!” he shouts back, before spinning on his heel and continuing down the hallway, a worrying amount of pep in his step.

Things get weird after that.

The Lannister twins continue to show up to the soccer games, but it’s different. There’s some actual support. Not just from Jaime – some of their friends join in – but Jaime is the loudest. Cersei looks bored as ever, but more than once after Brienne has stopped attacks by particularly vicious forwards, she hears Jaime cheering her name.  

Their coach, misreading the continued attendance of the football players as some sort of show of camaraderie, insists that the team go to one of the big home games. Brienne doesn’t mind going to show support to Sansa, so she and Robb and Jon and Theon all go together and sit close enough to the front that Sansa can hear them cheering for her.

When Jaime comes off the field after a decent play, and he spots Brienne still clapping, he takes off his helmet and waves in her direction, looking very sweaty and good and bafflingly earnest. She ignores the stares of all three of her male companions, and she reluctantly waves back.

Nearly every day they share a class or two, and he talks to her. Whether or not Cersei is in class with him. Little things, but pointed and obvious. Complimenting her on an answer in dothraki class. Backing up her assertions during a history debate. Offering her a high five when he sees that she has aced a quiz. And whenever he passes her in the hallway, he starts this new game of addressing her with terms of endearment.

“Hello, my good friend Brienne,” he’ll say.

“Brienne, buddy,” another time.

Bestie gets him an eyeroll. Comrade a raised eyebrow. He asks Mr. Mormont how to say friend in dothraki, and then gives her such a shit-eating grin across the room that she actually groans aloud. He absolutely butchers the sentence he tries to use when he passes her in the hall, and it earns him a laugh and a shake of the head. He tries again in Valyrian, and she actually stops him to ask what the fuck he was trying to say, which makes him blush and stammer just a little.

He gives bro a shot once, and she looks at him so incredulously that he laughs and only uses bro thereafter. It's mostly annoying, but it starts to make her laugh after a while, every time she sees him. She can see him gearing up for it when he approaches her in the hall, eyes lighting up, and she'll start laughing before he’s even had time to say nice weather, isn’t it, bro? Or good game yesterday, bro.

Jon asks her if she’s okay. Robb glares at Jaime every time he sees him. Sansa asks if she wants her to talk to him, tell him off.

“It’s fine,” Brienne says, every time. “I don’t know what he’s playing at, exactly, but I think this is him attempting to be nice.”

In fact, the one time Cersei does try dragging him into her insults, about a week after Jaime waved at Brienne at the football game, it backfires on her spectacularly, and Brienne doesn’t stop thinking about it for weeks.

“What an interesting sweater choice,” Cersei says. The sweater is too big, because it stretched in the wash, but it’s comfortable, and it’s Brienne’s favorite. “It’s so…you. What do you think, Jaime?”

Jaime looks up from his phone. Brienne is already walking past, not waiting to hear it.

“I like the color,” he says. He meets her eyes. Smiles. “Gray suits you. It brings out the blue of your eyes.” He pauses, and his smile is beatific, utterly victorious in the face of Brienne and Cersei's combined confusion. “Bro.”

She hasn’t really forgiven him, and they aren’t really friends. She doesn’t need to forgive him to think this dynamic is funny. This casual banter feels like the neutrality she was striving for. The Jaime of the museum weekend still seems like a different person. Like those Dornish children she remembers from Vaes Dothrak. A good memory of a fun weekend, but she has packaged those memories away and put them in the back of her mind, and she only looks at them sometimes. Peeking, like she can’t quite believe it happened.

And if she sometimes feels sad for him, when she thinks about what Tyrion said about Jaime being more like Museum Jaime than School Jaime, and how difficult he finds it to actually be himself, she pushes that sadness away. It’s not her responsibility to help him figure his life out. She won’t let herself go any deeper, because she made that mistake once, and she learned.

Jaime calls her bro in the hallway, and she smiles at him when he does it, and it’s leagues better than ducking away from he and his sister and dreading the sight of their perfect golden faces. It’s a level of companionship she’s entirely comfortable with, and she appreciates Jaime for not trying to push it farther, like he tried to do in the hallway that day, insisting that they could be real friends.

It’s safer this way, and she likes it. A casual friendship, only in school. They don’t exchange numbers. He never again uses the email address she gave him. Brienne would call her feelings for Jaime Lannister entirely flatlined. She doesn’t hate him anymore, and she doesn’t fear seeing him, but she also doesn’t think they’ll ever be friends in a more monumental way. That’s just not going to be them, and that’s fine. She’s more comfortable with this than she was with the weekend of Museum Jaime, anyway.

Except then there’s the bet, and the fight in the cafeteria, and fucking Hoat, and the entire world shifts its gravitational center.

Chapter Text

Brienne doesn’t even notice that it’s happening.

It’s so her, she thinks, to be oblivious to her own ongoing humiliation.

It’s possible it’s been going on for weeks, which might explain why Cersei’s been so inoffensive. Brienne had figured the head cheerleader may have conceded defeat once Jaime stopped supporting her in her campaign to make Brienne miserable. She thought that maybe Jaime even talked to Cersei about it. Asked her to be a little nicer, or at least to just leave Brienne alone.

In hindsight, of course, it’s obvious that Cersei was just lying in wait. Brienne remembers what Tyrion said about her. Cunning. Fiercely intelligent. A girl like that isn’t going to just give up. Not without at least a vicious parting blow.

Brienne has been oblivious, but not entirely. She has noticed a few odd things. Hyle Hunt volunteered to partner with her in chemistry, even though everyone knows Brienne is hopeless in chemistry. A few boys, on different days, boys she barely even knows by name, passed her in the hallway and complimented her. On different outfits, on whatever she did in the game the previous day, on silly things like her backpack, even. They only ever did it when she was alone, when she didn’t have any of her friends beside her, but of course that’s something that she only realizes later, when it’s done. And people have been complimenting her in class a lot, too. Not in the half-joking way Jaime Lannister does, but with a kind of baffling sincerity.

She assumes, at the time, that they might just want her help on papers, because she’s been crushing it lately, in terms of grades. What a naïve idiot, she’ll think later.

It’s just a series of odd coincidences, so spread apart that she doesn’t even think to connect them in her mind. Odd but not alarming. It isn’t until the day of the cafeteria fight that she realizes the oddness for what it was.

Hyle is directly behind her in the lunch line, chatting happily about the chemistry class they just came from. He tells her that he likes working with her better than anyone, even though they always wind up getting bad marks for their experiments. Brienne is blushing, because his tone is so purposeful. She fleetingly wonders if he might be hitting on her. The thought is ludicrous. Of course he isn’t hitting on her. But she can’t help but wonder. She’s not even sure what she would feel about it if he was. He’s very plain, Hyle. He has a nondescript face, and a nondescript personality, and he’s the sort of person you forget the moment you aren’t looking at him. She’s never had that in her life; she’s always been a curiosity. She almost wishes people could forget her.

She doesn’t think she likes Hyle very much, but she doesn’t dislike him, either. Hyle Hunt is a boy who inspires no strong emotion, except that he says things to her with so much purpose, and he’s the only person who ever has, and so her mind is already occupied wondering about it as she heads back to her table.

She passes Jaime on the way, who gives her a nod and says “bro” in an extremely dignified tone that only lasts a moment, before he crumbles and laughs as he walks by, offering up a high five for no particular reason, as is his way. Brienne obliges, balancing her tray, and he keeps walking, turning to face her as he does, walking backwards, confident that everyone else will get out of his way, because he’s a fucking Lannister.

“Selmy said to ask you if you could send him that video again,” he says. “The one of you wrecking my shit. He deleted the email and can’t figure out how to get it back.”

Brienne laughs, delighted.

“I’ll do it. Thanks, Jaime,” she says.

“Bro,” he reminds her, once again very solemn.

“I thought that was your name for me.”

“Well unless you have any ideas for a name of your own, I think bro pretty much covers it.”

“Who said I didn’t have ideas?” Brienne asks, and Jaime grins, letting it light up his whole face in a way that reminds her that he really is very good looking. She forgets, sometimes. Exposure to him has normalized it, except in fleeting moments like this.

“I can’t wait to hear them,” he says, before he spins away and keeps walking back to his table, where Cersei sits, not looking at either of them.

When Brienne gets to her seat, Sansa’s already eating and hurrying to finish her geometry homework for next period. The rest of them are still up buying lunch.

It’s as deserted as the table is going to get, and Red Connington makes his move.

He’s been kind to her the past few weeks. He’s always ignored her before, but his kindness has been hesitant and welcome. Just little comments made in classrooms. He asked her for help in literature, and he seemed grateful when she gave it. She was suspicious at first, but he just kept being kind, and she decided that that was just his nature. Some people are just friendly.  

Later, she will realize how absurd it is that she never identified any of this as problematic. She will be furious with herself for not assuming the worst of everyone no matter how many times the world seems fit to throw her own kindness back in her face.

But she doesn’t find it suspicious, and when Red very quietly asks if she’d like to go to the spring formal with him, pulling out a single rose to hand to her, she just as quietly agrees.

She doesn’t even really want to go with him. That’s the almost funny part that makes her laugh, later, when she’s giddy off the fight that follows and the adrenaline that leaches too slowly from her bloodstream. She doesn’t want to go to the dance with Red Connington, who she thinks is only being nice. She wants to go with Robb, because Robb wants to go with her, because he always wants to go with her, because dances are just an excuse for them to hang out with their friends in fancy clothes. She only says yes because she’s too polite, and because she sees no harm in indulging a nice boy who probably fancies himself half a hero for asking the ugly girl to the dance with a gift of a flower.

She's the one being nice, saying yes. She’s the only one being nice.

When she accepts, Red laughs. He’s no longer quiet. He’s loud. Shocking. He lets the rose fall to the ground at her feet before she can touch it. He stands straight, his chest puffed out, and he faces the table where the Lannister twins are sitting. He bows like a matador who has just defeated a raging bull, shouting that he has brought down the beast, Brienne the Beauty, and demands his prize for winning. Several boys – some from the track team, some from newspaper club, Hyle, all the boys who have been oddly kind to her these past weeks – groan aloud or clap or jeer at him.

Money begins to change hands. Sore losers and smug winners.

A bet.

“I was so close!” Hyle yells, and he laughs a braying laugh.

Brienne cannot move. Her heartbeat is loud in her ears, and her face is enflamed with humiliation, and Sansa is staring, gaping between the Lannisters and Red and Brienne. Brienne feels a stabbing horror to think that Jaime might be involved, but it doesn’t last for long. Jaime is like her mirror, his expression as dazed as she feels. He meets her eyes, and they are big with hurt for her, and she somehow believes them. He slowly rises from his chair, and he looks away. He says something to Cersei that Brienne can’t hear, because people are laughing. Not everyone, but enough people to make her chest hurt. Like her heart’s trying to shrivel away and die, pulling free from the ligaments that support it.

It was a joke. Asking her to the formal was a joke. All those kindnesses and compliments, and they had all been laughing at her the entire time.

She never even thought they were really interested in her, except maybe Hyle. That’s another almost-funny thing. They thought they were tricking her, making her fall for their charms, but they weren’t. She never assumed that they liked her. She never believes that people like her.

She just thought they were being nice.

She feels tears springing to her eyes before she can help herself, and she wants to get up and leave the cafeteria and run home if she has to, but she can’t even breathe properly. It’s like a waking nightmare, except none of her stress dreams have ever been this excruciating, or this detailed. She sees Margaery and Renly both on their feet across the cafeteria, shouting at Cersei, who looks innocently injured and confused to be accused, but who cannot hide her smile. She locks eyes with Brienne like she had in the library that day. Knowing. Victorious. Jaime, beside her, looks aching. Pitying. Brienne sees people whispering to each other, everyone waiting to see what Brienne’s reaction is going to be, but she can’t do anything.

“She’s gonna kick Cersei's head off,” someone says.

“She’s gonna cry,” their friend argues.

“I’d cry, if it happened to me. Can you imagine?”

It’s Robb who breaks the spell of inaction that has settled over her. The fear of doing anything and giving pleasure to the people who watch her, waiting to jeer her, waiting to laugh at her humiliation. Robb’s tray clatters to the ground as he understands what has happened, and then he’s picking up speed, storming over, his eyes locked on Red.

She has to do something. Robb is Robb. She knows him well. He doesn’t internalize his feelings, especially not where his friends and family are involved. He’ll kill Red, if she allows it.

She jumps up from her chair, and she intercepts him.

“No, don’t, it’s not worth it,” she tells him, holding him back.

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Robb growls, and she has to chokehold him to keep him from fulfilling this promise. Red laughs in his face, and Robb writhes against her hold, furious.

“Robb, no!” Sansa cries. She plants herself in front of Theon as he tries to go for a sneak attack. Jon, a little farther back, cracks his knuckles and rolls his shoulders.

“Please,” Brienne begs. She just wants it to be over. She just wants to leave. Then there’s a scream from somewhere, and another one closer, and she turns just in time to see Jaime Lannister pushing savagely through the gathering crowd. He shoves Red with both hands in the chest, knocking the smaller boy back against a lunch table. Red trips, loses his footing, sprawls half on top of it. The cafeteria waits. It’s suddenly quiet. “Jaime, don’t,” Brienne says.

Jaime grabs Red by the t-shirt, fist tight in the fabric around Red’s neck. He looks at her, and there’s a fevered gleam in his eyes. Half fury and half of that joy she noticed in him when they were sparring.

“Someone has to kick this guy’s ass,” he says, with irritating sincerity, as if he is swearing an oath, and then he looks away from her, and he hauls Red closer with one hand, and he stares at the boy for just long enough that Red is sure to understand what’s about to happen.

He says nothing to him. He says nothing else to Brienne. He just hauls back and punches Red in the face.   

Robb lets out an almost joyful war cry and uses the distraction to yank himself away from Brienne. He grabs Hyle, who seems about to try to pull Jaime off Red, and flings him, sending him sliding across the linoleum to collide with a tangle of nearby chairs.

The entire cafeteria erupts.

Boos and cheers and laughter and shouting, but most of all fists flying.

Sam Tarly immediately crawls under their table to hide. Theon laughs at him and takes the time to gently lift Sansa up to stand on top of it, out of the way, before flinging himself in to help Robb hold off some football players. Jon plants himself to guard Sansa and Sam, his arms folded in the same disapproving manner as Sansa’s, up on her perch. Loras and Renly leap into action, though Loras seems to be doing most of the actual fighting while Renly eggs him on.

Margaery, across the cafeteria, stands on a table and cheers like she does at the heroic fair, except her usual courtly grace is replaced with a somehow audible litany of curses.

Tyrion and Mr. Baelish appear to be placing bets.

There are so few people who aren’t fighting. Even people who have no real stake are jumping in, seeming to relish the chance to throw a few punches. The prettiest girl in the senior class, Daenerys Targaryen – who is, through some very complicated family dynamics, actually Jon's aunt – screams wildly before launching herself across Cersei's table and grabbing the head cheerleader’s hair in two tenacious fists. Her boyfriend Daario and a bunch of his drama club friends are throwing down with the band. Neither side, as far as Brienne knows, has anything to do with the bet. Missandei Naath's boyfriend Grey picks her up bridal style and sprints out of the room with her to keep her safe, kissing her at the door like a man riding off to war, and then charges back in to take on Harry Strickland and half of the rowing team singlehandedly.

It’s a meltdown of the entire lunch period. Even the people who aren’t fighting are watching, cheering, participating. The only people who are trying to stop it are the teachers, but there are too few of them, and the students are too strong.

Brienne joins in. How could she not? The fight is happening because of her. She may as well make sure that her friends make it through unscathed.

She helps Robb and Theon in their goal to physically chastise the track team, because Robb has a laser focus on every guy who groaned or clapped when Red announced his victory. She rescues a boy she knows from the freshman soccer team, little Podrick Payne, when she sees a guy she only knows as Lemon with his hands around poor Pod's throat. She knocks Lemon back and then shoos Pod safely under the table to hang out with Sam.

 She’s just standing up from that when she spots Gregor Clegane through a break in the crowd, moving with an obvious purpose towards Jaime. Cersei’s twin has finally beaten Red into raising his arms in surrender. He’s gloating about it, smiling his sharpest and most sharklike smile, reveling in his victory, and he doesn’t seem to notice Gregor at all.

Brienne is big. Jaime is also big. Robb, even, is broad-shouldered and strong, even if he’s shorter. Gregor Clegane makes them all look like children. His wrestling opponents call him The Mountain in terrified whispers. He even makes his brother look small. Said brother, Sandor, is taller than Brienne, and is currently standing off to the side of the room and watching the proceedings with a small smile, seeming not to care who wins.

Brienne is increasingly angry that Jaime started this fight, but she’s also not going to let him be turned into paste.

Besides, everyone knows that one of the only people Gregor actually likes is Cersei. If Gregor is going after Jaime, it’s for a reason. Brienne will not let Jaime’s kindness to her be the reason he gets hurt. Not by his sister by proxy, especially.

She ignores the little voice in her head that’s screaming that she knows better than to start a fight she knows she can’t win, and she pushes past a few of the battles, and she strides up behind Gregor, and she punches him straight in the back of the head.

She may as well have punched a boulder.

He turns around, far more annoyed than injured, and he grabs for her. Luckily, he’s as slow as he is strong, and she dodges away.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jaime cries, dismayed, though she’s unsure if he’s yelling at her or at Cersei’s friend. Loras, small and slight and fast, runs up with a cafeteria tray, vaults up on to the nearest table, and swings his arms, smashing the tray into the side of Gregor's head. The sound of the tray hitting skull reverberates throughout the melee. Brienne doesn’t let Gregor turn to see who hit him. She gets him with a right hook to keep his attention on her. He swings again, catching her with a hard glancing blow on the cheek before she can turn her face entirely away, but she goes for his knees, kicking one from the side to make him stumble. Jaime jumps in, punching at his kidneys. Between the three of them (Loras comes running back with another mighty smack), they seem to actually have a chance at tiring Gregor out.

Brienne dodges a swing. She plows into Jaime, knocking them both out of the way of one of Gregor’s meaty paws. Jaime steadies her. His nose is bleeding from where Red hit him, but he looks happier than she’s ever seen him.

“We’ll be legends when we pull this off,” he says. His voice is low in the heat of battle, and Brienne finds herself agreeing, even though she also finds herself rolling her eyes.

For a few moments in the middle of all this, she forgets entirely why it’s happening, and she forgets that she should be humiliated. Jaime’s grinning at her, and they’re going to take down The Mountain together, and it’s glorious.

She and Jaime spring apart when Gregor slams his fist down between them, cracking the surface of one of the cheap cafeteria tables. Brienne slides under another one, knocking chairs out of the way, and pops up on the other side of it, getting Gregor’s attention again.

Jaime is still behind him, and he’s winding up to deliver a winning punch. But then Vargo Hoat, one of the kids on Gregor’s wrestling team, grabs his fist from behind to stop him.

Brienne dodges Gregor again, and this time she jumps up on a chair to do it, getting out of the way of The Mountain’s stumbling. Loras hits him again, and Brienne punches him, and then there’s this horrible sound. This crack, like splintering bone, and then a scream of pain. Jaime, she realizes belatedly. That was Jaime screaming. It isn’t a hoarse, manly cry, either. It’s higher pitched, genuinely scared and hurt, and Brienne knows that something terrible has happened.

She turns to seek him out, and Sandor jumps in and saves Loras from what would have been a devastating punch from his brother. Gregor roars in his face. The teachers are starting to get a handle on most of the fighting, but not quickly enough. Hoat is standing over Jaime, who’s on his back on the ground, cowering half under a table, looking pale and small and very young, like the kid Brienne once played teeball with. His left hand is trying to protect his right wrist, which is angled wrong. There’s blood, Brienne realizes. Her stomach sinks. There’s bone.

And Hoat isn’t backing down at the sight of it. In fact, he’s laughing.

During that awful moment in the library, when Cersei claimed a temporary victory with Jaime’s assistance, Brienne felt something like the cold calm that comes over her now. Her movements had been careful and precise and purposeful, not an iota of energy wasted on anything but what she was doing. Her whole mind was on her hands and her body, because focusing on that meant not focusing on anything else. It meant getting the job done and getting out of there as soon as she could without breaking down.

She has that same kind of feeling now, except instead of cold fury, it’s hot. White, burning, like a solar storm.

She pushes aside at least three people who probably didn’t deserve it. She grabs Hoat by the back of his neck, her fingers digging into his skin, and she slams him down, shoving his head on the table. He fights back, turns and swings. She lets the punch land. She lets the force of it snap her head to the side. It barely registers. While he stares at her, she can see the dawning realization in his eyes: she is going to win. Brienne relishes it, and then she throws all her force into a punch, knocking him out cold.

Jaime stares up at her, wonderingly. He breathes out her name.

“Get him up!” Sam is yelling, still hiding under the lunch table. He’s covering Podrick’s eyes with one hand. “Get him to the nurse!” He sounds like he’s about to pass out. He can’t look at Jaime’s wrist. Brienne holds out her hand, and Jaime takes it with the one that’s still fully attached. His whole body seems to be trembling from the shock of his hurt, and he keeps looking at it and then looking away, as if he thinks it will somehow stop being there.

She pulls him to his feet. She tries to shelter him from the other fighters, but they’re surrounded. People are noticing too slowly that there’s been an injury beyond bruises and split lips. Jeyne Poole screams when she sees it, and even Hyle blanches and scrambles out of the way. But other people bump into them, jostle them, reach for them. Jaime cries out when someone shoves him, and he stumbles a little, going even whiter. Brienne splits her knuckles open on the face of a boy they all call Biter, who comes for them with a purpose.

And then, just as she’s beginning to feel overwhelmed, Robb is there, shoving a path for her to follow. Jon and Sansa flank him, Jon doling out occasional, purposeful punches when people come too close to his cousins. Loras and Renly take up the rear. Most people are finally turning their attention toward the Clegane brothers, anyway, about to face off in the middle of the room. Jaime lurches unsteadily, and Brienne pulls his left arm over her shoulder to help keep him up. He clings to her with fingers that almost bruise the skin of her left shoulder, over her soulmark. He looks deeply unwell.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” he says, right before he does.

Before he’s taken away in an ambulance, Jaime proclaims himself a hero, which everyone gathered on the sidewalk cheers. Robb allows that he is, begrudgingly, “all right, Lannister”, which sounds like a “thank you”. Tyrion still looks worried, but he rolls his eyes.

Once the fighting stopped, but before the ambulance arrived, everyone in the cafeteria heard Tyrion accuse Cersei of orchestrating the bet. Word has been spreading fast. Everyone knows that Tyrion’s in for hell once Cersei recovers from the embarrassment of being told off by her little brother, in addition to the indignities doled out by Daenerys and Margaery.

Brienne had expected to feel more humiliation once the adrenaline was gone, but instead she just feels loved. The Starks and Theon were ready to fight for her, but she’d known they would be. They always are. It’s the others, like Renly and Loras and Margaery (who, apparently, dumped her soda on Cersei’s head in the middle of the chaos). And Jaime, especially. The way he flew in like that. For her. She still hasn’t figured out the right words to thank him, though she spent the past fifteen minutes sitting with him in a very silent nurse’s office while the nurse tended to the minor fight injuries in the hall.

She feels pressure building up inside her as Mr. Selmy and Mr. Mormont start ushering everyone back inside. It was good of them to even let people see the ambulance off. She knows she shouldn’t push it. But she wants to say something. Do something. Let him know that she appreciates what he did, even if she also thinks it was very stupid of him.

She lingers, awkward, beside his gurney, while Sansa stands patiently beside her, and Jaime chats with Tyrion and the two EMTs and is very cheerful now that the painkillers have kicked in.

“Wait, wait, Brienne,” he suddenly shouts, before realizing she’s still standing beside him. He grins goofily and reaches out with his left hand to snag Brienne’s arm. “A favor, my lady.”

“Favors are given out before the battle,” Brienne says. “And I’m not a lady.”

“Semantics,” Jaime insists. He says it rather grandly, like a more grown up version of his snotty rich kid voice. “I fought The Mountain for you.”

“I fought The Mountain for you,” Brienne fires back, annoyed. Jaime sighs. It’s a happy, dreamy sound.

“We made such a good team,” he says.

“Well, Sandor was…”

“Bro. Brienne. Broenne. Sandor was not half the hero I was today! I was injured protecting your honor.”

“My honor.”

“Yes. So I demand a favor.”

“What exactly do you want? I have three pieces of gum.”

“Your number,” Jaime says. One of the EMTs, the older man, laughs, his eyebrows shooting up.

“That’s the smoothest shit I’ve ever heard,” he says.

“Oof, and he’s only in high school,” the other EMT says with amusement. She’s an ageless woman with red hair. “Imagine when he’s legal, Davos. There’ll be no hope for the rest of you.”

Nothing about how ugly Brienne is, or how Jaime must be high if he’s asking for her number. Brienne feels something strange stirring in her gut. Hope, maybe. Her father always told her that people are at their meanest when they’re in middle school and high school, and once you’re out in the real world, the differences that seemed like the whole world don’t matter nearly as much. Could that be true? Could those EMTs see not a ridiculously attractive person asking for the number of a great lumbering beast, but just a boy asking a girl? They don’t know the whole story, so to them, it must look romantic, and they don’t mock her. It means something to her, though she can’t find the words to explain it.

“I don’t have a pen,” she manages weakly.

“I’ll text it to you,” Sansa says to Jaime, and he leans back and smiles, finally releasing Brienne’s arm.

“Thank you, Sansa. You’ve always been my favorite Stark. Also, Brienne, I will take one of those pieces of gum, please. Everything tastes like vomit.”

“There might be some hope for us yet,” the male EMT says.

Somehow, Mr. Baelish “missed” seeing the moment when Jaime started the fight, and despite threats of legal action from Red Connington, blame avoids being thrown. Vargo Hoat’s savagery, of course, was spotted by no less than three teachers, some of whom weren’t even in the room at the time, and he is summarily suspended, while Jaime remains the innocent victim of a horrifying injury.

Fucking Lannisters, Brienne knows, but she’s grateful for it. At least she doesn’t have to feel more guilty than she already does.

Throughout the week, there are several deeply embarrassing assemblies about personal respect and treating others kindly, which are too pointedly about the bet, but Brienne weathers those well enough with her friends by her side.

If there is anything good about the fight, it’s that people have been kinder to her in general. Hyle actually apologizes for being involved, and he’s full of praise about her fighting prowess, likely hoping to avoid pissing her off in the future. A lot of the girls who Brienne only ever knew tangentially through Margaery start talking to her, too. They ask her if she’s ever thought of teaching self-defense classes, and they admire how strong she is, and they don’t ever seem to pity her or feel embarrassed for her because of her lack of good looks. Renly and Loras and Margaery reclaim the mocking nickname “Brienne the Beauty”, and they use it kindly, lovingly, and with no sense of irony every time they see her.

The Starks were never not in her corner, but if anything the fight brings them closer. Sansa stops speaking to Cersei after one final public confrontation in which she unleashes what is, for her at least, a very angry rant. Arya sends her many excited and poorly spelled messages about the videos she’s seen and how amazing she thinks Brienne is. And Robb has always been touchy about Brienne, willing to snap at or physically fight anyone who dares say anything about his best friend, and now that people seem to like her, he’s her biggest hype man. She catches him more than once surrounded by a gaggle of girls, giving them a play-by-play of her fight with Gregor Clegane. Tyrion catches her eye and shakes his head.

“What is it about you that inspires so much loyalty, Brienne?” he asks, only lightly teasing. “Here I am, feuding publicly with my sister for your sake. My brother is in the hospital having his wrist reconstructed. Robb Stark has turned himself into a traveling bard to tell of your exploits.” He smiles broadly. “You’re an astonishing woman, Brienne. Jaime used that word yesterday to describe you. Well, your eyes, specifically, and he was high as a kite on painkillers, but he wasn’t wrong. Astonishing is exactly the word I’d use.”

And Jaime texts her. One handed, poorly, slowly. But he texts her. He complains about the pain and the boredom and sends too-detailed descriptions of exactly what his bone looked like poking out through his skin. Brienne doesn’t pay much attention to the social media of their classmates, so he sends her a barrage of screenshots of people making jokes and posting memes about the fight on Twitter.

Brienne’s favorite is from Loras, and it has hundreds of likes, and it uses Brienne’s favorite shocked Pikachu picture to express the student body's surprise when Brienne saved Jaime's ass instead of kicking it, the way “everyone” apparently wanted her to.

Jaime sends a screenshot of it to her with a laughing crying emoji and “Brienne Tarth, once again disappointing the masses”.

 A video of her and Jaime and Loras fighting Gregor Clegane shows up on Margaery’s Instagram, and it goes mildly viral, at least in the surrounding towns. There are dozens of comments from people in other schools who have played her in soccer or who recognize him from football or who have wrestled The Mountain. Jaime seems to be reveling in the attention paid not only to him, but to her as well. A video of his injury and Brienne’s punch that knocked out Hoat ends up on some Youtuber’s compilation of Fucked Up High School Fights, and Jaime spends a whole day sending her screenshots of comments with people praising her and talking about how the snap of his wrist made some of them literally vomit.

She knows he’s choosing the comments and videos and funny tweets that don’t mention anything about her size or ugliness, and only choosing the ones that make her look good, and she almost appreciates it. She doesn’t need that kind of consideration, but she likes that he’s being kind. He even sends her a few comments that call him out for looking at her with heart eyes after the punch. He sends these screenshots to her with a string of the appropriate emojis, turning it into a joke, but she still has to smile when she watches the video again and sees the way he’s looking up at her, and whispering her name.

When Jaime comes back to school the following week, he’s wearing an ocean blue cast that keeps his elbow slightly bent, and he has to use a sling that keeps it close to his chest. He looks tired, and slightly harried and older, with his facial hair growing out. But he grins when he sees her, and he hurries up to her, and he holds out a metallic gold sharpie.

“Sign it,” he says. “My knight in shining armor.”

“I thought I was bro,” Brienne says with a grin, and she takes the pen from him. He grabs her fingers when she does, and he squeezes.

“No,” he says, and he looks into her eyes. “I think we’re a little past casual hallway bros at this point, aren’t we?”

Brienne smiles a little every time she thinks about it for at least the next few days.

Jaime and Tyrion start sitting with Brienne and the Starks at lunch immediately. There’s a tension to all of Jaime’s interactions with Cersei that wasn’t there before. A coldness that Brienne tries to avoid looking at too closely. Tyrion and Cersei’s open feud meant that Jaime needed to pick a side, and she doesn’t think anyone in the entire school expected him to pick his brother’s. He’s touchy about it, about the gossip that surrounds it, and Brienne doesn’t dare ask him how any of it makes him feel. She hates the fact that it’s all because of her, but Tyrion assures her that Jaime is happier than ever, and the relationship between the brothers seems stronger even if the one between the twins is strained.

Aside from the awkwardness of the thing with Cersei, Jaime is cheerful about his injury, and he gets annoyed when Brienne tries to apologize to him for it.

“How could it be your fault?” he asks. “If I’d stopped Cersei from the start, she never would have done what she did, and I never would have needed to punch Red in the face. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I shouldn’t have gotten distracted. I should have kept an eye on Hoat.”

It’s the only time in the next few weeks that he seems anything but fine about what Hoat did to him, so she lets it drop.

The cafeteria fight has made friends of them. Real friends, like Brienne was sure they’d never be. It’s not a gradual change, or one that she looks back on with surprise later. It’s a very simple transition, actually. Giving him her number and patiently responding to his constant barrage of texts opened something up between them, and it solidifies over the next few weeks, mostly because she’s the only person he’ll let help him.

He asks her for first for a hand – literally, those are the words he uses, because how else would he ask? – with a literature paper.

“I suck at writing papers even with all ten fingers, Brienne,” is how he puts it, pouting prettily at her, and it wasn’t like she was going to refuse, but she certainly doesn’t even think of refusing after that. They meet at the library so she can type as he spitballs ideas, and it’s fun, and Cersei never shows up even once.

His cafeteria heroics get him invited to one of the Stark family’s many holiday parties, and he introduces himself to every single Stark and Tully uncle and aunt as “Brienne’s friend, Jaime”. It’s strange, how quickly the fight has changed everything between them. He’s still terribly annoying, and he still says rude things without thinking, but they’re never meant anymore with a bad spirit. Brienne has accepted about him that he’s always going to be kind of an asshole, but she knows now that he’s kind, too. He’s capable of being funny without being cruel, and he never shuts up except when she starts to speak.

That has become easier, too. Jaime still talks more than enough for the both of them, but she’s less hesitant to speak her mind when she has something to say. And she jokes with him now, the way she jokes with Sansa and Robb and Theon and Jon. She doesn’t clam up as much, afraid that he's mocking her. She always believes him.

He seems to delight in irritating her, and he laughs every time she snaps at him, mostly because he must know she isn’t sincerely angry. His favorite game is to struggle at doing something one-handed, like carrying his books, or zipping his jacket, or cutting his food, and then looking over at her with a pathetic expression of pleading, like a dog begging for scraps. She’ll sigh, complain loudly, and then help him as he swoons over her.

“You treat me like a real lady,” he says one day. “Carrying my books. Cutting up my food. Opening my locker. You’re a very good boyfriend.”

She laughs in the middle of shoving his books into his locker. He’s grinning at her in anticipation of her response.

“If this is what you think a boyfriend does, I pity the girl who agrees to date you,” she says. “Cutting up her food? She’s a girl, not a baby bird.”

“Hey,” Jaime starts as they head down the hall to history, Brienne carrying his books on top of hers. “I would be a fantastic boyfriend. I would only cut up her food if she asked.”

“Is she five years old, this imaginary girlfriend?”

“No! But if she ever broke her arm defending me in a fight…”

“Such a specific situation for a five-year-old to find herself in.”

“It could happen. And even if it didn’t, I still…well, I’d help her carry her books if they were too heavy. Though I can’t imagine they would be. She would have to be spectacularly frail. It does sound like I’m planning on dating a child, doesn’t it? I guess I don’t know very much about high school boyfriend stuff.”

Which is frankly bizarre to her, with Jaime looking like he does, but she supposes any girl who wanted to date Jaime would have to get through Cersei first. It’s probably been an effective filtering system so far.

“I don’t know very much about it either,” she admits. “But cliché high school stuff like that…I don’t know. I’ve never liked it. I guess because it's not very applicable to me.”

“That’s true. You’d make a much better cliché boyfriend than a cliché girlfriend. You’d be carrying my books for sure. I like to think of myself as versatile. I’m handy in a fight, and I would totally pull out a chair at a dinner table for you, but I do like you catering to me like this.”

“Catering to you,” she snorts.

“Taking care of me,” he says, fluttering his eyelashes, leaning in too close, with a mischievous grin on his face. She shoves his good shoulder so he bounces away from her, laughing. “If I was your girlfriend...”

“For fuck’s sake.”

“Or your boyfriend, I would know exactly how to treat you.”

“I can’t wait to hear this.”

“Well I wouldn’t need to carry anything for you, obviously, but territory does need to be marked. I’d wear your soccer jersey.”

“Didn’t I just say I didn’t want clichés?”

“For the boy to wear the girl’s jersey? Brienne, we’re breaking barriers, here. You’d wear my football jersey sometimes too, of course, but still. Barriers.”

“I’m so sorry. Of course. Go on.”

“Well I’d cheer for you in the stands of your games, obviously. I would bring an airhorn, because I know it would annoy you but also make you smile.”

“Fortunately for all our eardrums, soccer season is over.”

“I’d also go with you to your heroic fairs, because I want to see you fight. I’d probably have to have my own armor made, because I’d want to fight alongside you, once my cast is off. We’re quite good at fighting on the same team, as we proved with The Mountain.”

“They do have fights where you can go two on two. Like very violent doubles tennis.”

“Oh, see! Perfect. We’ll do that. What else.” Jaime looks at her, considering. “Well, I know you like movies.”

“Everyone likes movies.”

“So we’d go to the movies a lot. And we’d share popcorn, because that’s romantic. Action movies, though. Or maybe horror movies? You could protect me, because I get scared easily. I like that. Switching genders again. Barriers.”

“You’re making a big assumption that I’m not a fan of romantic movies.”

“I’m not assuming anything. I cry at romantic movies. There’s no way you’re seeing me like that. I’m not that versatile.”

She laughs again, and he seems pleased with himself.

“See,” he says. “I’d know exactly how to treat Brienne Tarth. I would never cut up your food. I promise. I’d shake on it, but…”

He gestures to his right hand, and she laughs again, and they reach history class, so she plops his books on his desk and goes back to her seat.

And it’s only after, once Jaime sends her another grin down the aisle and then settles in, and once Selmy has started the class, that the conversation in the hall catches up to her, and she realizes that there’s this horrible feeling in her gut. Like when Red dropped that rose on the ground, or like when Jaime insulted her in the library at Cersei’s behest.

You fucking idiot, she thinks. She’s been able to ignore it for so long because he was just…he was Jaime Lannister. He was so far outside her experience that it was unthinkable. He didn’t like her, barely spoke to her, never said anything that wasn’t an insult. And that feeling was still there, even after the fight, even after they became friends, because she’s ugly and awkward and she’s never believed that someone might like her except for whoever it is that has the twin to her sword. She’s never bothered to really like someone, because why would she? It only ever hurts. Liking someone as unreachable as Jaime Lannister would only ever hurt.

It hurts right now, realizing it. Imagining all those things Jaime said. Sharing popcorn with him at the movies. Going to heroic fairs together and fighting back to back. Going to more Stark family outings together and having him introduce himself as “Brienne’s boyfriend, Jaime”. Spending time with Rickon and Bran, running soccer drills or showing the boys how to throw a football. Watching his games from the stands, wearing one of his extra jerseys. Seeing him in a jersey, Tarth emblazoned on the back. Territory marked.

She wants that. She wants him.

To her utter dismay and disbelief, for the first time since that disappointment with Renly, Brienne Tarth finds herself with a fucking crush.

Chapter Text

So the crush is a problem. It’s obviously not good. But Brienne is skilled at keeping romantic feelings contained after years of practice, and Jaime is her friend. That’s more important to her than whatever absurd emotions were revealed after his jokes about dating.

These weeks of genuine friendship with Jaime have turned him into someone more important to her than she ever thought he would be. And Robb has begun training for baseball season, so he’s around less, and Sansa started dating this kid Ramsay, so she’s all but disappeared. Brienne’s days have become filled with Jaime, in part because he uses his injury as an excuse to have her around as a crutch.

He asks Mr. Selmy if he can move his seat in history to sit beside Brienne so she can help him take notes. Mr. Selmy obliges, looking fairly smug, like he knows somehow that his assignment led directly to this friendship.

It’s harder for Jaime to pull that off in Mr. Mormont’s dothraki class, because Mr. Mormont is suspicious of everyone’s motives, but he asks Brienne if that’s okay with her, and Brienne nods. Mr. Mormont looks back and forth between them a few times, and then he glances to the front row, where Daenerys Targaryen gives him a single, subtle nod.

“Well, all right,” he says. He is, as ever, clipped and proper, but it’s obvious he’s baffled.

He isn’t the only one. Brienne is used to people whispering about her and joking about her, but she can’t walk anywhere without being the focus of seemingly the entire student body. Big Brienne, the ugliest girl in school, had all the best looking boys fighting to defend her, and now Jaime Lannister is her constant shadow and won’t stop telling everyone that she’s his knight in shining armor. It’s ridiculous on the outside, and she knows they must look strange together, but Jaime never seems to notice. It’s his lack of care that enables her to push past it. The whispers mean nothing to him. He’s a Lannister, she remembers. And Lannisters don’t worry about the petty opinions of others.

Having Jaime as a friend is important to Brienne, so she only briefly entertains the idea of doing something dramatic like pulling away from him to force her feelings to change. It wouldn’t be fair to him, and it wouldn’t really be fair to herself, either, to punish herself for something she can’t help. She doesn’t want to hurt him. She just wants to not have a crush on him, and that’s something she’s sure she can work on without alerting him to any strangeness.

She just starts being smarter about it, is all.

Jaime has this habit of veering sharply into flirty territory. It’s not real flirting, obviously, but he’s so snide and sarcastic and cheerful that it always seems a little like flirting, and it’s enough to make Brienne blush. She becomes adept at changing the subject to make him stop, or at least pretending that she doesn’t like the way his green eyes flash when he looks at her in those moments.

She gets better at enforcing boundaries, too. Jaime can be a lot, and she doesn’t usually mind. She has become used to his neediness and his constant texts and his apparent endless desire to spend time with her. But it’s important for her to make some space for herself, and so she does. It’s nothing so bad that he notices, but it helps her to center herself. It gives her some space to breathe. She makes some time for her less omnipresent friends, and resists the urge to invite him along to everything. She would, otherwise, because the truth is that they’ve become almost a package deal, and she knows she’s funnier when she has Jaime to bounce banter off of, and she always feels more confident when he’s by her side.

And when it still becomes too much for her, she pulls her feelings out of the little box she has shoved them into, and she examines them carefully, one by one. The way her stomach swoops when Jaime laughs at her jokes. The way she wants to lean into him every time he puts a friendly arm across her shoulders. The disbelieving flutter in her heart when he fought Red Connington for her (underneath the anger that he started the fight at all).

She makes herself look the truth in the face as often as possible, to keep from forgetting it: Jaime is very fond of her. He likes her a lot. He has become a good friend. But that’s all it will ever be with him, and containing her feelings is the only thing to do if she wants to continue to have him in her life.

It’ll be just like it was with Renly. She’ll be sad about it, figure out how to be friends with him without thinking about him as anything more, and then move on with her life. She hardly ever thinks about her old crush on Renly anymore, beyond the occasional embarrassment that she ever thought he might like her. And he’s such a good friend. Getting over him was the smartest thing she’s ever done, and she knows she’s capable of doing it again with Jaime.

It’s just, the thing is, she wishes Jaime would make it easier.

It's not like he's making it harder on purpose, which makes it worse. Like Sansa with her oblivious kindness in the face of Cersei’s scorn. Except with Jaime it’s this naive allure. He’s constantly acting in a way that makes her crush on him worse without ever realizing he’s doing it.

Like this one time, he suggests they should take a walk after school. It’s just barely starting to snow, and he complains non-stop about the cold but then wraps his scarf around her neck when he notices her shivering. Gallant and kind and extremely Jaime, especially since he keeps complaining but then refuses to take the scarf back when she offers.

Or this other time, she drops Jaime off at his house after a late study session, and his father is in the driveway, just getting home from work. He walks over before Brienne can flee, and there’s this excruciating moment when Brienne gets out of the car to shake his hand, and he watches the height of her unfold. She sees the disapproval in his expression. She understands the disapproval in his expression. This is the great lumbering beast that drove a rift between my children and got my son hurt, she can almost hear him thinking. She panics and introduces herself by saying that she’s been helping Jaime with his schoolwork. Jaime interrupts, glaring at her, and says, “this is my friend, Brienne.” Later, when she’s at home, he texts her and says you’re my friend. What my father thinks doesn’t matter. Please don’t think you have to lie to him.

After that, he is almost annoyingly demonstrative in his loyalty to her. He will yell for her attention in the hallway. Steer her with an arm over her shoulders if he wants her to walk with him someplace. Glare territorially at people who whisper or giggle or question why the fuck Jaime Lannister is so attached at the hip to Brienne Tarth, of all people. He never gives her cause to question or wonder or worry about their veracity of their friendship, and it makes her heart thud heavily in her chest every time he does it.

He invites her over to watch a movie one weekend when his father and Cersei are both out of town, and he’s wildly nervous about it in a way that’s both endearing and telling – he clearly isn’t used to having friends over. He keeps asking her if she wants more snacks, or another soda, or a blanket. He only relaxes once the movie starts and they both start making fun of the cheap horror and terrible CGI. And then it’s worse, because he’s laughing and light and too close on the couch beside her.

They take Rickon and Bran to the zoo once – Brienne takes them to the zoo, while Jaime tags along, which is how most of their outings happen. At the gift shop, he picks up a gigantic stuffed bear and boops her on the nose with it, and then laughs obnoxiously when Bran says “I can’t believe you let that bear kiss your girlfriend”. Jaime mimes strangling the bear with one hand as Bran pretends to choke to death, and Brienne knows she’ll show too much of herself if she reminds them that she’s no one’s girlfriend, but the impulse is there. Watching him with the Stark boys, she almost needs to speak the thought aloud. I’m not your girlfriend. A reminder to herself as much as it is a retort to Jaime.

And then there’s the fact that Cersei hasn’t said a rude thing to her since the bet. Brienne knows she owes this peace to Jaime. She will never understand the dynamic between them. She won’t ever comprehend the hold that Jaime is still breaking away from. But she knows it was difficult for Jaime to stand up to Cersei, and she knows that he did it anyway. And he never even mentioned it, which is rare for him. He loves to brag about the things he does for Brienne. Even something as simple as buying her an ice cream at lunch will warrant at least six mentions during the next week. But he doesn’t say anything until she brings it up, wondering aloud if they should expect a repeat of the bet situation.

“We barely survived the first one,” she reminds him, trying to make it into a joke. Jaime seems to realize that she’s actually worried, and he just shakes his head.

“I talked to her,” he says simply, like it’s not a huge deal. Like breaking away from his sister’s influence hasn’t been a major struggle for him. “Don’t worry about it.”

The very worst thing, though, is that he has started kissing her on the cheek.

It’s always the same cheek: the one that for a long time held the bruise that Gregor Clegane gave her. It started as a joke whenever he was doing his silly simpering damsel thing about the fight, but long after the bruise is gone, he kisses it to say goodbye or hello or just because she’s said something nice. Usually it’s still played off as a joke, but sometimes it’s almost soft, and it makes her heart ache, so she has to avoid looking at his eyes and try to stuff every feeling she’s ever had back into the box that Jaime keeps accidentally upending.

Half the time, maybe more than half the time, he’s totally normal. He’s her friend, and annoying, and needy, and hilarious. But she has become terrified of those dangerous moments when it’s too easy to hope. She knows how scary hope can be. She knows how badly it can hurt when hopes are dashed.

She wishes she had never realized that she had these stupid feelings.

All of it is difficult, but it’s survivable. She maintains her friendship, and she hides her absurd longing, and no one even seems to suspect that she might have anything more than friendly feelings for him. A feat in itself, really, with him looking the way he does. As the weeks continue to crawl by, it becomes normal. Her feelings and their impossibility and the strengthening friendship between them. The pain of the situation isn’t even so bad anymore. It’s more like a soft ache than a sharp sadness. By the time the spring formal is around the corner, it manages to fade to the background of everything else, as long as she doesn’t let herself think about it.

As a rule, Brienne doesn’t love dances. She doesn’t like dressing up. She doesn’t like that Sansa always puts so much effort into Brienne’s hair and makeup, trying to make her beautiful. She appreciates her friend’s kindness, but it only makes her feel worse. Uglier. At least if she doesn’t try, she can fool herself into thinking that she could be pretty, if only she put in the effort. And the effort only makes her a bigger target anyway. Trying and failing makes her feel pathetic, and it’s easy for people to seize on that.

But this year already feels a little different. Margaery insists on taking her shopping, and they manage to find her a blue dress that she actually likes. It’s long enough to be floor-length even on her, and Margaery is delighted that the color matches her eyes, so Brienne finds herself almost looking forward to it. The target on her back even feels smaller this year, since her main tormenter was always Cersei, and things aren’t as bad with her as they used to be. They’ll never be friends, and Brienne will never expect Cersei to apologize for or even regret the way she’s treated her in the past, but now Cersei just ignores her, which is all Brienne really wanted.

 She entertains fantasies, sometimes. Imagines Jaime showing up at her house in a suit, with a corsage in one of those little plastic boxes they come in. Brienne would be wearing her blue dress. He would smile at her, and he would give her the flowers.

The fantasies don’t get much more detailed than that, because trying to imagine it is ridiculous. Jaime Lannister kissing her. Jaime Lannister telling her she’s beautiful. Jaime Lannister wanting to dance with her. Brienne wishes she could imagine it better. She wishes she was more like Sansa, who never lets things like logic get in the way of her fantasies. When they were younger, Sansa would make them all play make-believe games where she was a kidnapped princess and Robb, Jon, Theon, and Brienne were a rotating cast of heroes and villains. One of them would have the honor of rescuing her. It didn’t matter who it was; she'd swoon over their heroics like a lady in love. She had that kind of mind, suited to imagination. If she looked like Brienne, she would be able to envision herself as someone more beautiful, and she would let it make her confident. Brienne is just too practical for that. Why try to imagine her face looking softer? Why try to imagine smaller teeth? Smaller lips? A boy as pretty as Jaime Lannister will not kiss a girl as plain as Brienne Tarth, so why would she bother picturing it? And he’s not going to ask her to the dance, so she shouldn’t waste time thinking about a world in which he would.

She doesn’t waste time thinking about it. She refuses to waste time thinking about it. It certainly doesn’t threaten every quiet moment when she’s left to herself.

Normally, Brienne would be thrilled with a distraction. Something needs to happen to break the pathetic cycle of her steadfastly trying not to dream about some kind of absurd, romantic declaration on the front porch of her father’s house, or maybe on the dancefloor itself.

Normally, she’d be excited at the promise of a fight.

But not like how it happens. Not when it’s about Sansa.

Sansa has always been flighty and romantic and obsessed with her soulmark. She believes in the stupid thing maybe twice as hard as Brienne does. She has dated, and fallen for people, and she has entertained romantic longing far more than Brienne has, but she has always said, over and over again, that she’s just waiting to find her true love, and that no one else could possibly compare.

So it’s weird enough that she’s been dating this Ramsay guy for a while, since she already said he’s not her soulmate. Weird, too, that she’s so quiet about it. Usually, she’s all dramatics and flowery words and spinning around her room with her arms held to her chest while Brienne and Robb sigh in annoyance and Jon pretends to be interested and Arya loudly gags. There’s none of that with Ramsay.

It only shifts from weird to alarming, though, when it turns out that Theon doesn’t like him.

“What do you think of Bolton?” he asks. It’s blurted, and tense, and not like Theon at all. Theon’s defining character trait is that he laughs at everything. Any time anyone asks him why he lives with the Starks and not with his father, he laughs. When they ask him what the deal is with his cultish uncles, he laughs. He takes nothing seriously. But this, this mention of Sansa’s boyfriend, is through clenched teeth.

Robb pauses the game he’s playing, and he turns to look at Theon, to take in the strange sights of Theon’s sincerity.

“Sansa’s boyfriend?” he asks, like there’s another Bolton. Theon nods, and Robb hesitates. “I think he’s a slimy creep, but I’m meant to be respecting Sansa’s choices, according to mum.”

He rolls his eyes, and he clearly expects Theon to laugh, but Theon doesn’t. More alarm bells go off in Brienne’s mind, and she starts thinking about it. She’s barely met Ramsay, which is strange. And Sansa has been spending more time with him than the family lately. She’s seemed a bit withdrawn, but not necessarily unhappy, Brienne didn’t think.

Then again, she’d turned down the chance to go shopping with Brienne and Margaery, even though Brienne had begged her. That wasn’t like her at all.

“What have you noticed, Theon?” Brienne asks.

“I just…” he starts. He hesitates. “The way she acts around me now. And Sam, too. Even your Lannister pet. Like she can’t talk to us the way she used to. She’s always looking for him over her shoulder every time we talk at school, and she never wants to go anywhere after. It’s out with Ramsay or home. It never used to be like this.”

“What, like he doesn’t like her hanging out with other guys?” Robb bristles, anger rising in him as quickly as it ever does when something threatens one of his sisters. “That’s ridiculous.”

“He doesn’t even like her talking to Jon,” Theon continues, gaining strength now that he sees that Robb and Brienne aren’t doubting him. “Because Jon doesn’t like him.”

That’s a red flag if there ever was one.

“Why doesn’t Jon like him?” Brienne asks. She sits up further on the couch, trying to keep from showing her worry. If she seems too concerned, Robb will feed off her energy and go into a full-blown panic about it.

“Apparently Jon caught them arguing and tried to step in. Ramsay said he’d talk to his girlfriend however he liked. Said she was free to dump him if she didn’t want to put up with it. But Sansa just got Jon to drop it, and he actually fucking did, because he’s soft.”

“And why hasn’t Jon mentioned this to us?” Robb asks.

“Because he knew you’d hulk out? And it wasn’t what Sansa wanted. She’s been careful since then, not bringing Ramsay around any of us, but I think it’s just getting worse.”

Brienne looks to Robb for his reaction, though she knows already what it’s going to be. He doesn’t disappoint; his expression is twisted in loathing. Loathing of Ramsay? Or of himself for not noticing sooner?

“What should we do about it?” he asks. It’s a lordly voice, older than his years, and Brienne takes strength from it. Theon hesitates.

“I think I should be the one to talk to her,” he says. This gets identical raised eyebrows from his two friends, and he finally shows some humor, grinning at them. “She knows the two of you are going to flip out if anything’s wrong. I’m more neutral. I’m the kid who lives in her basement, and I’m never worried about anything, but she knows she can trust me. If I show her I’m concerned…”

“And what are you going to say?” Robb asks.

“I’m going to tell her that she can talk to me about it.” Robb snorts, and Theon looks affronted. “Well let’s hear it, genius. What would you say?”

“I’d say the same thing, but I’m me. She’s going to think you’re making fun of her.”

“No she won’t,” Theon says. He seems as if he wants to say something else, but then he stops himself. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow, after school. She’s got that cheerleading thing tonight, but she’s free tomorrow, and I’ll tell her…well, I’ll wing it. And I’ll let you know how it goes. What happens after.”

“You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?” Brienne asks softly. Theon looks pale. Like he’s afraid of Ramsay. Or like he’s afraid of talking to Sansa about this. She’s never seen him this nervous.

“What’s there to be worried about?” he asks. Like with most things Theon says, Brienne gets the feeling that there’s some other truth lurking behind the words he says, but she has no idea what it could be.

Just after school the next day, she’s with Jaime at his locker, listening with half an ear as he talks about something that happened in dothraki class that she wasn’t paying attention to. Then she hears sneakers squeaking on linoleum. Sansa, full-tilt running down the hall towards her. And she looks terrified.

“What happened?” Brienne asks, and Sansa skids to a halt, grabbing Brienne's arms. Her eyes are red and brimming with tears.

“I’m so stupid,” she sobs, and Brienne's heart breaks to hear it.

“You’re not,” she promises. “What’s wrong?”

“Theon, he…he asked me, and I shouldn’t have told him, but I thought he would help me. I didn’t realize…I didn’t think he'd…”

“Sansa, where is Theon now?” Brienne asks. She’s already pulling out her phone.

“He left! I told him Ramsay went home already, and he asked me for Ramsay’s address, and I didn’t want to give it to him, but… I thought he was going to call the police or, or Robb or someone, but he just got into his car and left. He’s going to get hurt, Brienne. Ramsay’s going to hurt him.”

“Did he hurt you?” Brienne asks.

“No, Theon would never!”

“Not Theon, Sansa. Ramsay.”

Sansa sobs and hangs her head, which is answer enough. Brienne pulls the smaller girl into her arms, and she hands her phone to Jaime.

“Call Robb,” she says over Sansa’s head. Jaime obliges, looking furious. She remembers the gleam in his eye when he’d talked about beating up Aerys for hurting Elia and Rhaella. She remembers the fevered joy when he hurt Red for her. Brienne's almost glad the fool's wrist is broken.

Robb doesn’t answer; he must already be at baseball practice. Brienne instructs Jaime to call Jon, and she’s got her arm around Sansa's shoulders as they head for the main entrance, and it’s only when they’re almost there that she remembers that Theon drove them all to school.

“Shit,” she says. “He drove us today. I don’t have a car.”

“Margaery?” Sansa asks, and Brienne nods.

“I can ask her. Jaime…”

But Jaime’s already moving away, down the hall.

“I can get you a car,” he says.

This would be surreal enough if it was just she and Sansa and Jon. Sansa is sobbing in the center back seat, babbling apologies and explanations, almost a month of confusion and terror and abuse finally coming out.

“I didn’t know what to do. I thought he would stop if I was good,” she cries, and Jon might actually have an aneurysm just from the force of holding his rage in check. Brienne has never seen him like this. It simmers through him, crackling like lightning beneath his skin. Brienne herself is ready to throw down, but Jon…

And of course there’s Jaime. He’s sharp and sharklike as he ever was, and he reminds Brienne of how afraid she used to be, because he was so cruelly unpredictable. She’s not afraid of him anymore. If anything, she’s afraid that he’s going to hurt himself trying to hit Ramsay with his cast. He keeps looking down at it speculatively in the front seat, and he ignores her knowing, warning glares.

Surreal enough, these people and their destination and their mission, but the fact that Cersei Lannister is driving the car, the steering wheel held in a white-knuckled grip, really brings the whole thing into “am I dreaming? This can’t be real” territory.

“Will you shut up?” Cersei snarls to Sansa, so maybe it’s not completely surreal. “None of this is your fault. It’s his fault, and he’s about to pay for it.”

Okay, so it’s still surreal.

Then again, there were all those rumors about her and her last boyfriend. Maybe this is exactly the button you need to press to make Cersei abandon the petty shit, at least for a while.

By the time they pull onto Ramsay’s street, Sansa has calmed down a little, but new sobs break out when Cersei screeches into the driveway and they see Ramsay and Theon. Theon is already on the ground, weakly fending off blows. He put up a fight – Ramsay's face is bloodied on one side – but it’s been over for what looks like a while, and Ramsay isn’t stopping.

Everyone gets out of the car. Ramsay stops punching Theon, and he stands up straight to take them all in. He doesn’t look concerned at all. He looks perversely glad that more opponents have shown up on his doorstep. His gaze flickers from Brienne to Jon, trying to decide who is the bigger threat. He takes a second to decide – she can see him decide that it’s her – and then viciously hits Theon once more in the stomach, making Theon curl up in pain.

“Stop it!” Sansa begs, darting forward, but Ramsay just shoves her away, sending her sprawling.

Brienne will never be able to explain what comes over Jon when he sees Ramsay touch his cousin. All that pent-up energy, all that lightning sparking under his skin, is released in a roar of fury. It only makes Ramsay look smug, but not for very long. Jon is the shortest of their friends, but he’s powerful and fast. He hits Ramsay like a battering ram, and Ramsay goes down hard.

As much as Brienne would have liked to land a few punches of her own, she’s glad that Jon ends it quickly. The only action she gets is wrapping both arms around Jon’s waist and literally lifting him off Ramsay once she has decided he’s not going to stop on his own. He’s still tense with fury, but Sansa runs to him and flings her arms around him, sobbing out thank yous, and the fight bleeds out of Jon as he hugs her back. Then Sansa drops to her knees beside Theon and continues to cry over him.

It all reminds Brienne of their childhood games. Sansa swooning and sighing and falling over herself to thank her brave knights while the body of the vanquished villain lay cooling on the ground nearby. It’s an echo of childhood made real with blood and sadness and the rage still coursing through her, and Brienne needs to step aside to let the fury fade. Ramsay is still on the ground, moaning in pain. Good.

Theon has a long cut on his forehead, and it’s bleeding badly. Brienne pulls her pale blue sweatshirt off over her head and wads it up, pressing it against his skin as she kneels beside him. She watches blood soak into it, turning it a rusty brown color.

“You’re all right, Theon,” she tells him. He nods, still curled on his side, and Sansa wraps her fingers around his. “Sansa, take this. Keep pressure on that cut.”

Sansa nods, taking hold of the fabric with shaking fingers. Brienne tries her best to see if there are any other visible injuries, but she’s afraid to touch him and make anything worse. The early spring wind cuts across her bare arms, and she idly wishes she’d grabbed a jacket. It’s definitely not tank top weather. Nothing about this situation feels quite real yet, except for the cold.

Ramsay groans again, and Brienne rises to her feet, her eyes moving over him dispassionately. He’s taken quite the beating from Jon. It’s no less than he deserves, but she doesn’t want to see Jon end up in prison if his injuries are worse than they seem.

“Someone should call an ambulance,” she says, turning over her shoulder to look at Jaime.

In the several minutes since they got out of the car, something strange has happened with the Lannister twins. They had been neutral on the drive here, but now Jaime is glaring fiercely in his sister’s direction. Cersei is looking back at him, her chin tipped up defiantly.

“You…” he starts, and he looks momentarily lost. He doesn’t finish his thought. He just looks hurt and angry at once, like the two emotions are fighting to figure out which is going to come out on top.

“Jaime,” Brienne says, drawing his attention. She knows she has interrupted something, but there’s no time. “Can you hand me my phone from the backseat? We need to call an ambulance.”

“I’ll call,” Cersei says. She pulls out her phone and dials, not waiting for agreement. Jaime glares at the ground now, and he looks openly wounded; hurt has won over anger. Cersei has begun to look nervous, her eyes darting to him occasionally as she reports their location and the fact that there are two injured parties.

“Jaime,” Brienne says, stepping closer. She puts her hand on his arm, and he jolts in surprise, his eyes darting up to meet hers. “Are you all right?”

He hesitates before he answers, looking her over, looking at her as if they’ve never met and he’s trying to figure out why she’s talking to him. He swallows, opens his mouth to speak, and finally just nods.

“Brienne, it won’t stop bleeding,” Sansa cries, and Brienne leaves Jaime with another searching look that he reciprocates in kind. She kneels beside Sansa, taking the sweatshirt away from Theon’s pale skin.

“Head wounds bleed a lot. Just keep the pressure on,” she says gently, and Sansa nods and sobs again. Brienne leans across Theon to hug her. She doesn’t know how else to help.

 Before Cersei hangs up, she tells the woman on the end of the line that Ramsay Bolton attacked Theon Greyjoy and Jon Snow, and that they fought him off.

“He just snapped. It was like he was trying to kill them,” she says. “We all saw it.”

There are policemen and questions and Ramsay being taken away in an ambulance under guard, and Brienne would normally feel terrible lying to authority, but it’s for Sansa and Jon and Theon, so she does it. Tyrion's comments about Cersei making a good world leader make sense in the wake of the way she took charge in the several minutes between the cops being called and the cops arriving. She made sure everyone knew the right lines to say. She made sure they all knew their stories.

Theon went to Ramsay’s house to confront him about the abuse. Jon and the others followed. When Jon got out of the car to protect Sansa, Ramsay attacked both of them, going after Theon first. Together, they fought him off. Easy enough to remember, and easy enough to sell. Jaime is unsurprisingly skilled at it. He’s casual and charming and makes a few jokes that make the cops laugh and serve the purpose of explaining how Theon and Ramsay both look like shit while Jon is virtually untouched. He effortlessly makes it sound more equal than the merciless beatdown it was.

Theon’s ambulance is driven by the same two EMTs from when Jaime broke his wrist, so he walks over to show them his cast like it’s interesting as they load Theon onto the gurney.

“If you need a ride to the hospital…” Cersei starts, looking at nothing, and Brienne realizes that Jaime’s twin is talking to her.

“Thank you,” she says. She’s afraid to say more. It’s not an olive branch; it’s a momentary concession for Sansa’s sake on both their parts. Cersei nods, and Brienne follows Jaime.

Sansa has exhausted her sobs, but tears still leak constantly from her eyes as she stands by Theon's side. He’s awake and alert and savagely pleased by what happened, even though he’s bleeding and probably has a few broken ribs.

“I’ll meet you at the hospital,” Sansa says. “We’ll all go. Won’t we, Brienne?”

“Cersei’s offered to drive us,” Brienne agrees, and Sansa sends her former friend a grateful, wary look. Jaime doesn’t react, though Brienne sees his shoulders go tense.

Sansa takes one of Theon’s hands in both of her own, and she brings it to her lips to kiss it, just like she used to when they were young.

“My hero,” she says sadly, and Theon laughs.

When they reach the hospital, Jon and Sansa head straight in. Jaime gets out of the car with them, but he tells Cersei to wait a minute, and he only goes as far as the door.

“Is everything okay?” Brienne asks him, knowing that it isn’t. She glances back pointedly toward Cersei, and Jaime shakes his head.

“She…” he starts, but then he shakes his head again. “Not now. I can’t…shit.” He hangs his head, and he runs his fingers through his hair absently. “I need to go. I’ll, um. I’ll text you later?”

She hates to leave him like this, looking as helpless and confused as he does, but she nods, because she knows that not every battle of his is one that she has to fight. Jaime looks relived when she doesn’t press it, and so she turns to go.

She only makes it a few steps before he’s saying, “wait,” and hurrying after her. When she turns, she sees him shrugging out of his hoodie. It gets caught a little on his cast, but he tugs it free, and he holds it up, gripping it awkwardly with both his cast and his good hand, holding it open.

Brienne tries to take it from him, but he backs up a step and holds it just out of reach, looking a little bit more like himself, all shitty and playful. She sighs and turns around to allow him to help her into it.

“You ask me to write on your cast, and I write some excellent advice, and you never listen to it,” she says as she slides her right arm in. It’s warm, and it smells like him. Her crush on Jaime rattles around in her brain, contained in its box but not for long. It’s his fucking sweatshirt, her brain is screaming.

“Stop trying to be chivalrous, bro,” Jaime quotes in a voice that’s probably meant to be hers. His thumb skims briefly over the skin of her shoulderblade as he helps her left arm into the sleeve. She suppresses a shiver, and she turns to face him. He’s grinning at her. No, actually, it’s not the usual, familiar Jaime Lannister grin. It’s different. It’s just a smile. Sincere and relieved and kind and almost breathless. The smile she’d liked on him even back when he was a dick. Pleasantly surprised. Expectations exceeded. “It was good advice,” he says. “Just one problem.”

“And what’s that?” Brienne asks. She draws his sweatshirt tighter around her before she realizes she’s doing it. It’s just…Jaime’s hoodie. It smells of him.

“I’m not trying to be chivalrous. I am being chivalrous.”

He’s smug about it, and he’s starting to look nearly giddy now that the weirdness has gone. She wishes he wasn’t leaving with Cersei, but she’s glad he’s here at all.

“You’re the worst,” she tells him, and he smiles wider.

“Pretty sure that was Ramsay, before Jon made him much more silent and bearable and closer to dead,” he says. He’s entirely too chirpy, now. He’s practically bouncing.

Her body moves without her permission. Even as she knows exactly what she’s going to do, she can’t believe she’s doing it. She swoops in, registering his shocked expression, and she presses her lips firmly to his cheekbone, right in the same spot where he keeps kissing her. He goes still, finally. She hears him breathe in one sharp, surprised, shaking breath. She can feel an ugly blush spreading across her face and chest. Blotchy and patchy, she knows. It always is.

“Thank you, Jaime,” she says, indicating the hoodie she has pulled around her. She thinks she might be embarrassed about the kiss, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. She manages to avoid looking at him fully, and then she ducks at last through the door to the hospital, and she goes to find her friends.

Chapter Text

Before an hour has passed, most of the Starks have shown up at the hospital to wait for news of Theon. Ned and Catelyn are as fierce and angry as they would be if he was their own child. Arya enters the waiting room with her parents and begins chanting Jon's name like he’s just scored a crucial goal. Jon’s mother, Ned’s sister Lyanna, shows up and offers her anxious son a high-five and a hug, doing away with his obvious worry that she would be angry with him.

Sansa and Catelyn have to leave the waiting room to give an interview to a cloyingly kind female detective about Ramsay’s abuse. When she comes back, Sansa looks small and pale, and she reminds Brienne so much of the little girl she was when they first met. Arya and Ned and Lyanna are kind and gentle with her, all of them seeming equally unsure how to deal with Sansa’s emotions. Robb doesn’t have to say anything: he holds open his arm, and she goes to the seat beside him immediately, snuggling into her big brother’s side. She thanks him in a muffled, tear-filled voice when he drapes his jacket over her as a blanket. Jon, similarly wordless, sits on her other side, and he lets her hold his bruised and battered hand.

Robb is quiet, his eyes rimmed red with a fury and a helpless sadness that Brienne understands. She takes a seat beside him, and he immediately rests his head on her shoulder.

“You should have gotten me,” he says.

“There wasn’t any time.”

“I should have gone with Theon to begin with. I could have skipped practice.”

“You couldn’t have known what would happen.”

Robb is quiet, then, but Brienne knows him. He'll blame himself until everything is okay again.

Theon's worst injuries turn out to be a concussion and a fractured ankle. There are bruises and cracked ribs and several facial wounds that require stitches, but the doctor says he’s lucky. Catelyn and Ned go in to see him first, and Sansa gets up from her chair and grabs Brienne’s hand to pull her along. They line up in front of the door. Sansa’s shoulders are set, determined.  

“We're next,” she says. Her voice is still thick with tears, and no one tries to argue.

Once Ned and Catelyn are done, Sansa and Brienne enter. Theon looks slightly hazy and pale and tired, but mostly he still looks smug. One side of his face is badly swollen. The bruising and the stitches are ghastly, but it looks better than it did when it was covered in blood.

Sansa sits on the bed beside him, and her eyes rake over his face, like she wants to touch his wounds but doesn’t dare.

“Theon,” she finally says, quiet and trembling. “Thank you.”

“I couldn’t let him keep hurting you,” Theon says. He’s so sincere. Brienne keeps waiting for a laugh that never comes. He just keeps looking at Sansa, and his eyes are swimming with genuine emotion. Does he love her? Brienne suddenly finds herself wondering. Has he always loved her?

“I shouldn’t have let it get as far as I did. I shouldn’t have ever dated him. I should have…”

“Sansa, please don’t,” Theon sighs. That seems to be an end to it, except then he bursts out, all at once. “It’s all my fault, anyway.”

“Your fault!” Sansa exclaims, dismayed.

“I should have told you last year, but I…I wanted to wait until we were a little older, and see if you wanted…or if you fell in love with someone who doesn’t live in your parents' basement.” He takes a deep breath, steadying, and then his nervousness seems to fade in the wake of what can only be resignation. “It’s me, Sansa. The kraken with the wolf's head on your hip. I’ve got one too.”

Sansa gasps. That’s all. Just this delicate, breathy gasp, and then she stares at him, taking him in. Brienne feels like she’s watching a film, not a conversation between two of her best friends. She is already choked up. Who knew she was such a sap? Who knew Theon was such a sap?

“Is that what’s it’s called?” Sansa finally asks, her voice choked and bleary. “I’ve always just called it the sea monster.”

“I know,” Theon says. He finally laughs, though it’s small and nervous. “It’s kind of been driving me mad.”

Sansa doesn’t ask Theon to prove it to her, and maybe that’s partly because she’s being kind about all the blankets in the way, but mostly it just seems like she trusts him.

“Theon,” she breathes, and then she leans down, and she presses her forehead against his, and she holds his face in her hands. Both of them squeeze their eyes shut, and Brienne can see tears trickling out from behind his lashes, and she knows that she should go. She backs out slowly, quietly, and she closes the door behind her.

All of the Starks are watching her.

“She’ll just be a minute,” Brienne says. She hopes that her flush isn’t nearly as bad as she thinks it is.

Later, at home, in bed, she closes her eyes, and she remembers it. She remembers the way Sansa held her friend’s face as if he was an entirely new person. Seeing him for the first time. She thinks of Theon’s guilt, and how he’d cried when Sansa pressed her forehead to his.

She’s resisted texting Sansa since she got home from the hospital, but she knows she won’t last the whole night. She’ll have to say something. Ask her if she’s happy. Ask her if Theon is who she would have picked for herself. Sansa is the first of them to meet their soulmate, and Brienne wants to know everything.

Her phone rings, vibrating on her bedside table, and she glances at it in surprise. The surprise turns to a low swooping feeling in her stomach when she sees that it’s Jaime calling. Calling. He’s never called her before.

She lets it ring for a few seconds, because she feels like he’ll know she’s too eager to talk to him if she doesn’t. She wonders if he’ll be able to hear in her voice that she’s wearing his hoodie in bed like an absolute creep.

“Hey,” she says when she finally picks up. She tries to sound casual. It is, obviously, a minor disaster.

“Brienne, hi,” he replies. He sounds confused somehow.

“Did you not mean to call me?” she asks.

“What? No, I meant to.”

“Oh. You just sounded…surprised.”

“Did I?” Now he sounds uneasy. Oddly wrong-footed, like she has said something challenging to him, although she doesn’t think she has.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“What? Yes. I’m fine. Are you? I didn’t ask, earlier. Wait, how’s Theon? That’s why I was calling. How is he?”

“Theon’s going to be fine. He’ll be going home tomorrow. Nothing too serious.”

“That’s good. That’s, um, good news. And Sansa?”

“She’s good! She’s…” Brienne thinks of telling him about the revelation at the hospital, but she stops herself. She’s pretty sure she knows what Sansa is going to do with the information – tell everyone, talk about it ceaselessly for the next six months, make Theon very happy and very annoyed by singing his praises to everyone she meets – but she doesn’t want to assume. They may decide to keep it quiet. “She feels quite guilty about everything, but she’s glad. I think she didn’t really know what to do when Ramsay started hitting her. We’re lucky Theon was able to get through to her before it got worse.”

“Yes. And lucky Jon beat the absolute shit out of that little bastard,” Jaime says.

Brienne laughs, and she snuggles deeper into her blankets. The warmth of his sweatshirt is so soft around her, and she does a very silly, self-indulgent thing: she upends that stupid little box in which she has been trying to keep her feelings for Jaime. She allows herself a reprieve from holding herself too tightly, and she lets everything out. Just for a little while, just now, on this call, where he can’t see her. She lets it fill her. Her feelings for Jaime, the warmth that those feelings generate, everything makes her head feel like it’s filled with bubbles.

She just likes him so much.

“Are you all right?” she asks when the silence has lingered too long.

“I’m perfect,” he reminds her with a smile in his voice, and she snorts a little.

“How silly of me to ask. You just seem…quiet. Not like yourself.”

“I’m…I’m just thinking about what happened today.”

“It was nice of Cersei to drive us,” she says. She thinks she’s trying to be polite, or maybe trying to stave off the silence, or maybe the rest of the conversation has been so fucking awkward that she figures she might as well make it ten times worse. Jaime’s breath catches. She can hear it like he’s sitting right next to her.

“I don’t want to talk about Cersei,” he says. His voice is short. Rather clipped. Brienne fights the urge to cringe and change the subject back to something safer. No, this is Jaime. He’s her friend, and she knows that something is bothering him, and she wants to help. Or at least she wants to let him know that she’s willing to.

“I noticed you seemed upset with her earlier. Did she do something?”

Jaime’s laugh this time is bitter and mean, and Brienne doesn’t like the sound of it.

“She did,” he admits.

“Do you want to tell me about it? I’m told I’m a good listener.”

“Of course you’re a good listener, but…I don’t want to talk about it like this. On the phone. I can’t…I suppose I can just tell you the basics. No details.”

“Whatever helps, Jaime,” she says, and he sighs.

“Stop being so fucking…noble. And good. And nice. I’m trying to be annoyed at my sister, and you’re making my mood better.” She laughs at that, a little louder than she meant to, and she can hear Jaime’s answering chuckle. But it fades quickly, and she knows he’s going to tell her. “We had a difficult conversation,” he says.

“At Ramsay’s house?”

“After. When we got home. Cersei…” He sighs explosively, and she can hear what sounds like him flopping onto a couch or his bed. “She lied to me. For months. Or, I don’t even know if it was a lie. It was an omission. A partial truth, but she left out the most important part. On purpose.”

“Was it about something big?”

“Something fucking…monumental.”

“I’m sorry, Jaime.”

“Funny, that’s all I wanted to hear from her. I’m sorry, Jaime. How hard is that? But all I got were excuses and justifications and…and not enough. I don’t know if I’ll forgive her for this.” Another sigh, this one tinged with laughter and a bit of a groan. “Who am I kidding? Of course I’ll forgive her for this. She’s my fucking twin. She’s inescapable. But I’m going to need to be mad and bitter about it for a while, first. I think I’ve earned that much.”

“You can stay mad about it as long as you want,” Brienne points out gently. “I mean, even if you do forgive her. You don’t have to completely forget what she did.”

“Are you still mad at me?”

“About what?”

“All the things I said to you. All the shit I pulled with Cersei. I was horrible to you. I keep looking back on it, and I just…fuck. How could you be my…how can you even be friends with me after that? The thing in the library…”

She wants to say immediately that of course she has forgiven him. She wants to assure him that she isn’t angry. But she makes herself consider it so she can be as honest as possible.

“I have forgiven you,” she says slowly. “I do still get angry when I think about the things you said. Hurt, too, I suppose. But not in a way that makes it linger. It would be different if you’d kept saying those things to me. I don’t think I would have trusted you enough to forgive you. But you stopped, and you changed. The trust I have for you now, you’ve earned it. I think those are good standards to set. If Cersei doesn’t stop hurting you, or lying to you, I don’t think you should feel obligated to trust her. But it might be different for you than it was for me. I don’t have a twin.”

“Yeah, lucky you,” Jaime sighs, but she can tell that he’s considering her words. “You really are a good listener.”

“I told you.”

“I’m not surprised. You’re good at everything. I hope you realize it’s the most annoying thing about you. Are you going to the dance?”

“What?”

“The spring formal. Are you going?”

“Yes. I’m going.”

She waits, and there’s this awful hope that trembles inside her, because she knows better, she really does, than to think anything of it. But she can’t help it. Something about Jaime allows him to slip past all her defenses.  

“Oh, good,” he says finally. Another silence stretches between them.

“I always go with Robb. And…the others.”

“Well, that’s good,” he says. “I should go.”

“Oh, um, okay. Seriously, thank you again for getting your sister to…”

“It was nothing,” he interrupts. “Just…anything. For you. Um…good night.”

“Good night, Jaime,” she says, but he’s already hung up, and she knows that she’s not going to find it easy to sleep tonight, with his voice still ringing through her mind.

Jaime’s strangeness doesn’t lessen for the next few days. It might get even weirder. It’s not bad, necessarily, Brienne doesn’t think. Nothing changes on the texting front: it’s all memes and silly jokes and annoyed complaints about their classes. But when they’re physically in the same place, there’s something off-kilter about him. He goes quiet for long stretches, and then never lets her get a word in edgewise for others. During their lunch periods, he’s bizarrely chatty with everyone instead of just monopolizing her conversation, the way he usually does. Tyrion has taken to staring in amused, unhelpful silence while Jaime fumbles for topics with Jon and Theon and the Starks, who never seem to understand what he’s getting at. When it’s just the two of them, like when they walk to his locker to drop off his books, he’s jittery. Talks more than he has to. Uses too many words to say what he wants to.

She asks him again if everything is okay, and he says it is, but he has no further explanation for what happened with Cersei, and no explanation for why it has unnerved him so.

In her best moments, she wonders if maybe he was thinking of asking her to the dance and she spoiled it by revealing that she was going with Robb.

In her worst, she wonders if Cersei pointed out that Brienne is clearly halfway in love with him, and now he’s uncomfortable around her in a way he wasn’t before.

She oscillates between those two options when she can’t help herself. Mostly, she just doesn’t think about it. She giggles with Sansa over her blossoming relationship with Theon. She mediates between Theon and Robb, the latter of whom is a bit prickly about the fact that Theon kept the soulmark thing a secret for so long, to say nothing of the fact that he’s suddenly dating Robb’s beloved sister. She talks to Theon about it, too, with an amount of sincerity that’s a bit weird to both of them. She does what she can to help him work through his guilt over the fact that Sansa would never have dated Ramsay if he had told her earlier about his soulmark. There’s a lot going on with the Stark family, and it’s not like Jaime isn’t still around. He doesn’t talk to her less, or anything. He’s still needy and irritating and she’s still got a massive crush on him.

He just needs some time, she tells herself whenever she gets too worried. He’ll figure out a way to tell me what’s wrong. Maybe he just isn’t used to having someone he can talk to about things like this.

The day of the dance, after school, he turns to her suddenly as they’re about to separate in the parking lot.

“You’re still going, right?” he asks. “To the dance?” There’s a nervousness in his expression, and despite her best intentions, despite the careful shield she thought she had erected around her heart, she feels a little shiver of something hopeful. Why is he nervous about the dance? Why is he nervous about her going to the dance?

“Yes,” she says. “I’m still going.”

He smiles, and it’s a less complicated smile than any of the ones he has been sending her for the past half a week.

“See you there,” he says, and he backs away, watching her, knowing that everyone’s going to get out of his path because he’s still a fucking Lannister, even if he’s a nicer one than he used to be. She watches him go, and she feels her blush still building long after she’s turned away.

The dance, like all of the dances thrown by Kings Landing, is held in a function hall not far from the school. The doors are guarded by dour-faced teachers in hopelessly outdated formalwear, and it becomes a game to try and smuggle booze past their watchful eyes. Robb had thought of finding a way to repurpose Theon’s crutches somehow, but Sansa made them both promise not to try. It’s her first dance with Theon as a couple, and she refuses to let them ruin it by getting stopped at the door and sent home like a couple of delinquents. Robb’s been sulking about it relentlessly ever since, but Tyrion supplies he and the other boys with whatever they need, so he cheers up quick enough.

Brienne never drinks. She especially wouldn’t drink at one of these things, because she feels awkward enough in a dress in front of all these people without risking doing something embarrassing on top of it. It’s not like anyone gets wasted: Jon’s just buzzed enough to get giggly, and Robb’s northern accent has gotten rather more northern, and Sam has been gazing around with wide and terrified eyes as if certain that he’s going to be caught, but aside from that, they’re normal. Theon laughs at all of them, smugger than ever now that he’s got Sansa by his side. She’s looking especially pretty, Brienne thinks, because she’s so radiantly happy. She’s picked out a lovely lavender dress with gold-edged cutouts near her hips so that her soulmark is visible. Theon can’t stop looking down at it and smiling. He brushes it with his thumb every time he puts his hand on her waist.

Brienne has already decided to give him another week before she starts giving him shit for it.

She knows that Jaime is here because Tyrion and Cersei are both here, and though she doesn’t necessarily search for him, she can’t help but look around from time to time. She’s nervous, she knows, though she tries to deny it to herself. She picks absently at her long blue dress. Then, finally, she spots him. He’s already making his way towards her, and he looks unfairly good in a white button-down shirt and gray pants with a tie that matches his cast. His sleeves are rolled up – of course his sleeves are rolled up – exposing one forearm and one cast, with her gold-lettered “stop trying to be chivalrous, bro” still not faded after all these weeks. He lifts his cast to wave at her, and it makes her laugh. She’s glad he’s being normal now.

“There you are,” he says, as if he has been looking for her too, and he immediately takes her hand. “Come on! We should dance!”

It’s a bit of a slow song, with couples swaying in the middle of the floor, but Brienne allows him to lead her out. She’s never liked dancing at these things. They usually involve way too much movement and coordination. But slow songs are easy. She can sway back and forth as well as anybody, and she doesn’t mind when he puts his hands on her hips, and she doesn’t mind getting to wind her arms around his neck. With her in flats, they’re roughly even for height, and she finds she likes dancing with someone who’s right in her eyeline.

“Already lost your jacket, I see,” she says with practiced disdain once they’ve been dancing for a few beats. Jaime grins at her like she’s the best thing he’s seen all day, and she allows herself to sink into the warmth of this feeling.

“Never had one,” he says. “A jacket is trying too hard for spring formal. Everyone knows that. I did see your date didn’t get the memo. Hope he’s not jealous I claimed first dance.”

“Yes, my date, the love of my life, Robb Stark,” Brienne deadpans. “He’ll duel you for the insult later.”

“He didn’t even match your dress,” Jaime continues, flapping his tie in her direction. She frowns down at herself.

“Did you…how did you…?”

“Margaery Tyrell sent me a picture of it. She was very sly about it, too.”

“Why did you match my dress?”

“Well, technically, I matched my cast,” Jaime points out. “Why do you think I chose this color?” He holds his injured arm up to her face, grinning. “It’s the same color as your eyes. You were my knight in shining armor, and I was unreasonably high on painkillers, so I demanded sapphire blue. This was the closest they could get.”

She laughs loudly, and as always he grins in return. Like he’s won something.

“You’re so annoying,” she says fondly.

“I did think of asking you so we could match my cast and your eyes on purpose, but I figured you’d say no,” Jaime says.

“Oh, I definitely would have,” Brienne laughs. Jaime frowns at her, even though he’s the one who started this bit. Brienne says, “But only because I would have assumed you were messing with me.”

He frowns deeper now, and he takes a step back from her so his fingers trail along her hips. She very pointedly does not shiver, but she feels shivery, inside.

“Still?” he asks, incredulous, and deeply wounded in a way that seems disproportionate to the jest. She feels like she’s made a misstep, though she’s not sure how.

“Jaime, it was a joke,” she assures him, and he shakes his head.

“I really did make a mess of things, didn’t I?” He’s nearly mournful when he continues, “back at the start.”

“What do you mean?”

“For Cersei. With Cersei. Insulting you and…”

“I already told you I forgive you. It was a joke.”

“If I had asked you, I would have asked you for real. Not as a prank. I’m not Red Connington.”

“I know you’re not,” she snaps, getting more annoyed the more this conversation goes inexplicably off the rails.

“Then how could you think I would…”

“Because you mess with me! That’s our dynamic. I wouldn’t have thought it was to be mean. Not anymore.”

“But it would be…cruel,” he finishes lamely.

“Not on purpose.”

“Not exactly a ringing endorsement of me. Only cruel by accident now.”

She doesn’t know what’s happened. Why he’s so upset. It’s making her upset in turn, because all she wanted was to dance with him and joke with him like they always do, and suddenly things are different and serious between them. She has worked for weeks on shoving her crush on him into the box in the back of her mind in which it belongs, and now he’s taking things too seriously and acting all wounded, and it’s infuriating.

“Jaime…” she sighs, and she starts to pull away, but he only holds on tighter.

“I was going to ask you,” he insists, weirdly refusing to back down. “I was. But I fucking…I waited too long, and then after the fight, and the thing with…with Cersei, I just…”

“Okay,” she says.

“You still don’t believe me, do you?”

“I mean…” she laughs a little, and he glowers at her. “Oh, come on, Jaime. It’s not a big deal, really. It was a joke. I don’t need to be asked to dances, and I don’t think you...”

“It should be a big deal,” Jaime insists. “People should want to go to dances with you. You should have big romantic gestures and, and important symbols of love, or whatever!”

“Have you been drinking?” she asks. He looks down at his feet, and she feels a little better now that she knows where this is coming from. “Tyrion?”

“He said I needed some,” Jaime admits. “It was only a little.”

“Well, it’s very nice of slightly tipsy Jaime to try and defend me from, I don’t know, myself? But it’s really unnecessary. I know myself pretty well at this point, you know. And I know what I look like, and I know I’m not…”

Jaime’s expression has taken on something sort of edgy and desperate as she has been speaking, and then he quite suddenly surges forward, and he presses his lips to hers.

This is my first kiss, she thinks, inanely.

Jaime’s the one who deepens it. He brings his hand up to her jaw, and she can feel his fingers there. They’re cold, and she can feel tension in them, and she sighs into the kiss, feeling wistful and weirdly regretful even as it’s happening, because he’s been drinking, and he’s Jaime, and of course he thinks she deserves nice gestures like this.

“Jaime,” she says, pulling back. He smiles at her, and his hand is still on her face.

“Brienne,” he says.

That was my first kiss, she wants to say, but she doesn’t.

“Why did you do that?” she asks instead. She cannot think of a single answer that won’t break her heart when she hears it, but she needs to know.

“Because I wanted to,” he says simply.

She realizes all at once that they’re on a high school dance floor, and that they’re in the middle of all their peers and classmates. She doesn’t see anyone openly gaping at them, but she knows that at least someone must have seen.

She felt as pretty as she’s ever felt in her life before she left the Stark house earlier, but now she remembers. She’s big and gawky and awkward, even in her beautiful blue dress. She backs away from Jaime, and she shakes her head, and he’s looking at her, and he looks so sincere, but how could he be sincere?

“Why?” she asks. “Look at me.”

Jaime’s smile is too soft. His eyes are too soft. All of it is, from his stupid blonde hair and his glimmering green eyes and his cast that has about a hundred signatures but only one thing that he insisted be written in gold. It’s all too soft, and she cannot allow herself to believe something that can’t be true.

“I look at you quite a lot, Brienne,” he says, and his smile hurts to look at, and she cannot bear any of this for another second.

She thinks to make her escape. Out into the parking lot to breathe on her own for a while. Maybe text Sansa and beg her to come outside so she can finally unload everything about her stupid, cursed crush on Jaime fucking Lannister.

She should have known she wasn’t going to make it very far.

She’s just outside the door to the hall, standing in the parking lot in the dark, when she hears the door open behind her.

“Wait,” he says. “Please. I fucked it up again. I keep doing that.”

“Jaime…” she starts, wiping at her eyes, which are just starting to spill over. He doesn’t give her a moment to compose herself. Of course he doesn’t. He walks right up to her, and he’s looking at her with this horrible expression on his face. Pained and self-loathing, and she wants him to go away.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you. I thought you wanted me to.”

“So, what, it was just a, a fucking pity kiss?” Brienne asks. She’s trying not to cry. She feels so hideous when she cries, and this is bad enough as it is, but Jaime grabs her hand and holds it tight in his, and it’s like he’s trying to tell her something with his eyes, but she doesn’t know what it is.

“No! I wanted to kiss you. That’s not…I planned this whole thing. I got you a gift and everything. A necklace. I had it made special. I don’t know much about necklaces, but it’s very well made, I think. I was going to give it to you later, after the dance. And then you’d know, but I…I shouldn’t have drank anything. Tyrion said it would help me get my courage, but then I saw you, and I got all nervous and forgot the order I wanted to do things in. But I wanted to kiss you. I still do. You keep looking at me like that, like I’m lying, but I’m not.”

“You have to admit it’s a bit hard to believe,” Brienne says. She manages to say it without sobbing in the middle, but that’s about the best thing she can say about it. It’s oddly quiet and squeaky and weak, and she feels weak, and she hates it.

Jaime sighs, and he looks down at his hand, still holding hers.

“It’s really not that hard to believe from where I’m standing,” he says. “I know that you’ve heard things that people have said, for years. And I was one of them, probably the biggest asshole of the lot. And I know that all together, those things made you think…”

“I don’t need other people to tell me what I look like, Jaime.”

“Apparently you do, because I think you’re beautiful.”

She’s ashamed, and mortified, and very fucking angry with herself, but she actually begins to cry at that. She turns away, like she can hide the fact that her shoulders are starting to shake. He lets go of her hand.

“I really do keep fucking this up,” he says. “It’s almost impressive how badly I’ve…please stop crying, Brienne. I don’t know how…Here, okay. Look. Fuck it. Look.”

She doesn’t want to, but she does anyway, and she sees that he’s struggling with his shirt buttons. As she watches, he tries to tug the top one open with his mouth.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“I’m taking off my shirt,” he answers around a mouthful of fabric.

“Why?”

“I’m trying to be romantic.”

“By taking off your shirt?”

“Are you going to help me or not? I have something you apparently need to see before you’ll believe me.”

Brienne knows she’s oblivious about a great many things. A lot of the time, it’s to protect her heart. Expect the worst. Prepare for the worst. It’s better than thinking the best of people and having your heart broken. But even she can’t be oblivious about this. There’s only one connection she can see, and she is suddenly very afraid that she’s wrong.

Jaime looks at her with that helpless, pleading expression he’s been using since he started wearing his cast.

“Oh,” she says.

“No, no, no, don’t make that thinking face at me. You’re not allowed to figure it out before I show you!”

“Jaime, I…”

“Shh, shh. Come on. Help me take my shirt off. I need you to see it. You’ll believe me, then.”

He seemed slightly tipsy before, but he doesn’t really seem it now. Just giddy, and a little manic, but that’s just how he is sometimes. Brienne’s fingers are shaking as she begins to unbutton him. She can hardly breathe for how afraid she is that she’s going to be wrong.

Once the final button is free, Jaime shrugs out of his shirt. He turns around.

And it’s there. The sword. Her sword. The ruby on the hilt is red, and the blade is very nearly gold.

“Oh,” she says again. She reaches out and touches it, and he lets her. She only allows herself a brief touch, just with the tip of her fingers, before she pulls her hand away again and lets it fall heavily to her side.

“I saw yours at Ramsay’s house,” Jaime says, and then he’s turning around to face her, and he looks so genuinely worried and happy and Jaime, and she feels…

She’s not sure what she feels. Confused? Surprised? In shock, definitely. In denial, maybe. It’s just…things like this don’t happen, right? Things don’t happen exactly the way you want. She never even for a second considered that Jaime might be the bearer of her twin sword, and here he is talking about it like it’s the thing he’s been secretly hoping for too.

But that just can’t be right. The universe doesn’t make matches of beauties like Jaime and great lumbering beasts like her.

“I don’t understand,” she manages.

“I understand,” he says. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for months. It makes total fucking sense to me.” He laughs, jittery again, like he’s been all week. “It apparently made sense to Cersei, too.”  

“What? What about Cersei?”

“She told me. Months ago, before you and I were friends, she told me that she’d seen your soulmark. She was so angry that you would have a soulmate when she didn’t even have her mark yet. Or that’s what I thought, at the time. Now I realize it was because your soulmate was me. That’s why she wanted to make you miserable. That’s why she wanted me to help. My sister and I…we’ve never had the healthiest relationship. Tyrion always says ‘codependent would be a nice way of putting it’, and he’s probably right. And the idea that I might not be the one made for her…I think it upset her.”

“You think it upset her,” Brienne says slowly. Jaime smiles a little.

“I know it upset her. She didn’t get her own soulmark until a few weeks ago. When I talked to her about it the other night, she said that she did it because she didn’t want to lose me. Because if I knew my soulmate, it would mean that I wasn’t constantly by her side. But she lost me anyway, I guess. When I realized what she had done...She kept this from me. Kept you from me, because she was jealous.” He sighs. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say, except I imagine I should say that I like you a lot. I’ve liked you for weeks, even before the soulmark. I’ve been trying to date you for weeks. I’m. Shit, I don’t know much about it. I guess I might love you? It’s hard to say. I love you as a person. I know that. As a friend. But I think I love you as everything else, too.”

She has to look away from his expression, because it’s too much. It’s too open, and too earnest, and she believes it. It’s so easy to believe it, with his sword at her back.

“You love me,” she whispers.

“I might. Unless that’s too quick?”

“I don’t know anything about it either,” she admits. Jaime laughs.

“I started to suspect after we sparred. It was strange. I’d never found you attractive before, but suddenly, when we were fighting, I realized that I liked how tall you were. I liked your big shoulders, and I thought your freckles were very cute. And then we were in the bouncy castle at Arya’s nameday, and I realized that your lips looked very soft, and your nose had a lot of character. I didn’t think those things before, but then I did. Your eyes have always been nice, but suddenly they were the best eyes in the world. And your legs.”

“My legs?”

“They’re very long. I like them.”

He says these things as if they’re just true, as if there’s no question. But he’s saying things she never dreamed of hearing, even when she imagined what it might be like to date him, and he’s her fucking soulmate.

He continues, because she doesn’t stop him, “and then that thing in the library happened, and I felt wretched about it, and that was another clue. I was used to caring only about the people in my family. And suddenly I cared that I’d hurt you, and that you didn’t want to forgive me. Tyrion called me an idiot, and he was right, and I wanted you to be friends with me again. That weekend was the happiest I’d felt in a long time, and I wanted that feeling back, even though I knew I had no right to ask. But I knew for sure when you punched Hoat for me. It was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and I knew it was you. I knew if I could look at your back, I’d see it.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because I looked at you standing above me, and you looked…I don’t know. You looked exactly how the sword made me feel when I first saw it. I just knew. And I knew I wanted you. Even if it wasn’t you, I’d have wanted you anyway. I’d have probably said fuck whoever my soulmate is. The universe got it wrong. But then I saw it when you were helping Theon. It was practically glowing on you.” He laughs a little. She realizes that he’s overwhelmed. Emotional. Is he crying, too? They can’t both be crying. That’s pathetic. “It was still such a relief. I was so afraid I was wrong.”

“Me,” she says, just to make sure. “You were relieved because it’s me.”

“You have to believe me,” he says, tapping the spot over her shoulder where he knows her soulmark lies. He raises one eyebrow before leaning in, ready to kiss her. “It’s the law.”

“You’re an ass,” she says, but she does believe him. “I like you too. A lot. Have for weeks, at least.”  

“Oh, good. I was beginning to worry,” Jaime says, not looking worried at all.

“Though I’m starting to wonder why I do,” she continues, and he laughs, and she thinks she might love him too, and so this time she’s the one who kisses him.

Chapter Text

Becoming friends with Jaime hadn’t seemed like a very big adjustment at the time. Sometimes, when she looks back on it, it seems like it must have been one. She’ll remember how much she disliked him before, and she can’t understand how it could have been easy to jump into friendship with him over the course of a few months, to say nothing of actually falling in love with him. But Jaime has this way of sneaking into things. Slithering into places he doesn’t belong. Dislike became begrudging camaraderie became genuine friendship, and every step seemed to make a certain kind of sense even if only hours ago it would have seemed ludicrous.

Dating him feels like it should be different somehow. It should be more difficult somehow. More of an adjustment. Or at least more of a surprise to the people around her.

It isn’t.

She tells Sansa first. After the dance, when they’re back at the Stark house, and Sansa is taking out all the complicated little pins that have been holding Brienne’s hair in place.

“Oh, I figured it would happen eventually,” Sansa says, after Brienne tries to stammer her way through several attempts at being coy or subtle and finally just baldly says Jaime’s my boyfriend now, I guess.

“What? Why would you think it would happen?”

“He looks at you quite a lot.”

“That’s what he said.”

“It’s true. Also, after the fight, he liked this tweet of Margaery’s that was…” She laughs a little, glances at Brienne, and grins. “Well, it wasn’t not indicative of, um, sexual interest? Once he stopped being so high, he unliked it, but Margaery and I have been texting him screenshots of the notification to remind him that he should make a move.”

“Apparently I should be paying more attention to Margaery’s Twitter,” Brienne manages, trying not to blush. She isn’t very successful.

“Mm. Anyway, it really was obvious after a while. He’s like a little golden retriever. Every time you walk in a room, he jumps up to say hi to you. It’s so sweet. I thought he’d cave faster than he did, but I suppose he is a bit of a mess.”

“Well he only saw the soulmark earlier in the week, when we were at…”

“Wait, what?” Sansa breathes. “Soulmark? He’s…he’s your…”

This is followed by noises of an increasingly high pitch, and several too-tight hugs, and helpless laughter from Brienne until Catelyn finally knocks on the door to see what the commotion is all about.

“Jaime Lannister is Brienne's soulmate!” Sansa squeals, spinning around the room in her dress, still clutching about ten thousand little pins in her fists.

“Oh, of course he is, Sansa! That doesn’t mean you need to wake the whole house. Keep it down! Congratulations, Brienne. He’s very handsome.”

“I…thank you,” Brienne whispers, and Catelyn gives her a very indulgent look before she closes the door.

When Sansa leaves the room to hop in the shower, Brienne gets a fairly ominous text from Robb.

Meet us at Theon’s.

They have this habit of saying “at Theon’s” as if it isn’t the finished basement of the Stark house.

She heads down, feeling foolish, still in her dress, her hair all frizzy and uncooperative now that Sansa has freed it. Robb and Theon have their arms crossed over their chests, Jon is sitting back on Theon’s ratty old couch and already shrugging at her, like he has no idea what this conversation could be about. Sam lurks near the back of the room guiltily.

“It has come to my attention,” Robb says, lofty and grown-up sounding to compensate for what is obviously a fair amount of drunkenness. “That you were seen leaving the dance upset after being kissed by Jaime Lannister.”

Brienne looks at Sam. Robb and Theon look at Sam. Jon looks at Sam. Sam tries to turn into wallpaper.

“Sorry,” he squeaks. “I didn’t mean to see it, but it happened, and I couldn’t unsee it. I tried.”

“And what does that have to do with any of you, exactly?” Brienne asks.

“What does…what does that have to do with me?” Robb asks. “I need to know how bad it is. We need to strategize. What level of retaliation are we talking? Is this ‘never talk to him again’ bad? Is it ‘go to his house and key his car’ bad?”

“Make sure not to get Cersei’s by mistake,” Jon says. “That’ll just make it worse.”

“Oh, no,” Sam sighs.

“Who said it was bad?” Brienne asks. Robb frowns. Re-crosses his arms. Frowns deeper.

“What d’you mean? You stormed out!”

“I misunderstood!”

“What’s there’s to misunderstand about a kiss?”

“I thought he was just…you know what, I’m not explaining this to all of you. Jaime and I are dating now.”

Robb glares even more fiercely.

“Him,” he says flatly.

“Yes.”

“Him.”

“Yes!” She’s starting to get a little annoyed, and a little hurt. The incredulity reminds her of being eight years old again, and Robb laughing at the idea that she had a soulmark.

“He’s a football player, Brienne,” Robb groans, suddenly animated, throwing his hands in the air. “He was a total dick to you. His sister orchestrated that fucking awful bet. He drives a stupid rich boy car. And I’m supposed to just, what, accept that he’s good enough for you? You? The best person in the world? No. No way. I reserve the right to, to, um.”

“To what, exactly?” Jon asks with a patient sigh that hides a bit of a smile.

“I don’t know. Fight him?”

“Fight him,” Jon repeats, grinning at Brienne, who feels warmth threatening to overtake the annoyance.

“I could fight him.”

“He would destroy you,” Jon insists.

“No! I’m a clever fighter. I’d trick him somehow.”

“And then Brienne would be mad at you,” Brienne points out. “Because you ignored her clearly stated wishes.”

Robb’s eyes narrow at her.

“You’re sure, then,” he says. “He’s your choice.”

“He’s my soulmate,” she says. Jon’s eyebrows fly up. Theon does a very sloppy slow clap. Sam says “aww!”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t fight him if he hurts you,” Robb says, but he seems satisfied enough. “All right, get out. Sansa will be mad at me if she finds out I’ve claimed your time when it’s supposed to be her turn.”

She passes Arya as she’s on her way back up to Sansa’s room. The youngest Stark daughter is eating a massive bowl of ice cream, looking slightly terrifying in the dark kitchen, sitting at the center island.

“Heard Sansa losing her head over your soulmate,” she says. “He’s the blonde one, right? The one who fought swords with us and threw us into the castle?”

“That’s him,” Brienne says. She sits down next to her, wondering where this is going. Arya is very intense for her age. She’s always been very intense for her age, and very intensely smart. Her eyebrows are expressive, and they’re sort of lowered in thought now as she snacks and stares at Brienne.

“I guess he’s pretty enough, if you like pretty ones,” she finally says.

“I suppose I do,” Brienne admits.

“You’re a bit bigger than him. Is that nice? I’m not bigger than anyone.”

“You’re bigger than Rickon.”

“I was bigger than Bran once, too, but he’s growing. I grow slower than the rest of us. Which totally isn’t fair. I take after aunt Lyanna and Jon and he’s far too short. I’ll probably be even shorter. Which is bullshit.”

“Arya!” Brienne gasps, and Arya laughs.

“Dad’s been asleep for ages, and mum’s probably halfway there by now. No rules when they’re in bed.” She gestures pointedly with her spoon to the giant bowl of ice cream. “Anyway, I guess it’s exciting news for you. Sansa seems happy with Theon, though I don’t know I would be. He’s a bit smirky and smug and annoying. At least he’s funny. And your Jaime Lannister seems funny too. He’s good at swords. You’re better though, right?”

“I am.”

“Good. You should be better. I’m loads better than my soulmate at lots of things. He’s taller, though. Everyone’s taller.”

Brienne makes some sort of commiserating noise, but then she realizes what Arya has said.

“Wait, you know who your soulmate is? You already have a soulmark?”

“Urgh,” Arya groans. “Yes. My friend Gendry. Remember him? He’s so annoying. He used to just be my friend, but then the stupid soulmarks showed up on our ankles, and he was all oh, I have to be nice to you now and can’t treat you like a boy anymore. I stopped talking to him for like two weeks and he learned his lesson, but he still doesn’t hit as hard as he used to when we play swords now. We did get a bit better at soccer, though. We like to train a lot. We’re going to be as good as you and Robb soon. Better maybe, because we’re soulmates, and maybe we’ve got some kind of psychic connection. That might make the whole stupid thing worth it.”

“When did this happen?” Brienne asks.

“Two years ago, maybe? We were babies. I made him promise not to tell, because I didn’t want everyone to make a big deal about it. With all the screaming Sansa was doing upstairs about you and Lannister, I’m glad I kept it quiet. You have to keep it quiet too, you know.”

“I will,” Brienne says, fighting a smile. “Thank you for telling me, Arya.”

“Thank you for not being the worst about it,” Arya says back.

Robb texts her the next morning, apologetically hungover.

I’m sorry I was a dick about it. I’ll be nice to him.

Then, several minutes later.

Will def break his other wrist if he hurts you tho.

Brienne has never dated before. She doesn’t know the rules.

“I’ve never dated anyone before either,” Jaime reminds her on the phone the day after the dance. “So we can make our own rules.”

“I just mean, it seems strange to go around telling everyone.”

“We don’t have to tell anyone. I’ve already told Tyrion, and one of us can text Margaery. By the start of the week, the whole school will know.”

“Do we want the whole school to know?” Brienne asks. Jaime is quiet for long enough that Brienne knows he was taken aback by the question. Maybe hurt. She hastens to fix it. “I want people to know. I just mean…people are going to be, well…”

“Cruel?” Jaime asks.

“You know they will be.”

“Do you care what they say? I mean, really care. Because we can keep it quiet if you do.”

“What about you?”

“Well I’ve already called aunt Genna, and I’ve told Tyrion, and I can’t wait to tell my father that he can stop trying to introduce me to the daughters of all his business partners. And if anyone at school says anything…well, I’ve long stopped caring what they think of me, and I’m certainly not going to start over something as amazing as figuring out that you’re my soulmate.”

“Do you think your father is going to have an issue with it?”

“With me meeting my soulmate?”

“With your soulmate being me.”

“I think we should have a new rule.”

“A new rule?”

“Yes. You’re not allowed to think anything but the absolute best about yourself.”

“That may be an easy rule for you to follow…”

He laughs at her. That’s fair.

“You know it’s not,” he says. “Do you think your father will have an issue with your soulmate being someone who used to be an absolute monster to you?”

“My father doesn’t know about any of that.”

“Ugh. Honestly. You’ve got to stop being so good. It’s making it very hard to date you. I’m already so far behind. Here, let’s call a truce.”

“A truce?”

“Turns out we’re pretty good at them, aren’t we? This one is easier. No more insulting ourselves.”

She laughs. It won’t be easier. She knows that. She is too used to doubting herself and seeing ugliness when she looks in the mirror.

But he’s right. He’s her soulmate. He chose her. If she is going to believe that, then she has to believe him when he says that he's attracted to her. That he doesn’t mind if people look at them together and see something that shouldn’t have happened.

And what does it matter what those people see, anyway? They’re wrong. Jaime and Brienne are perfectly matched. They are exactly what should happen. The universe says so.  

“All right,” she says. “Truce.”

“We need to shake on it, so how about you come pick me up and we go to the movies? There’s that movie out with the kids in the woods and the murders. I want popcorn and my girlfriend and being very scared of a terrible film.”

“All right,” Brienne says, and she can hear the smile in her voice. “It’s a date.”

Being back at school is a little strange, but not for long. Brienne did text Margaery, so the entire school knows before they enter the building, and that helps. Most people don’t care. A lot of people are confused or mildly scandalized but not in a bothersome way. Some people stare and whisper, but Jaime just looks at her with his sharp and sharklike smile, and he rolls his eyes at them, and she feels like some of his most Lannister qualities might be rubbing off on her a little, because she’s willing to not care if he doesn’t.

“I think most people are too afraid to care,” Tyrion jokes that day when he finds her in the library. “They saw you fight Gregor Clegane, and they know you would have won if Hoat hadn’t distracted you with my brother’s pain.

“I think a lot of us already thought you were fucking,” says Tyrion’s friend. Tyrion hangs his head.

“Eloquent as always, Bronn, thank you,” he says.

“Funny, though, the soulmate thing,” Bronn continues, ignoring him. “You’re both tall and blonde and like a good fight, sure, but other than that…what do you even talk about? He’s a tit, and you’re not.”

“Based on what I overheard when Jaime was on the phone last night, Brienne explains to him the simplified versions of all those ancient folksongs, and Jaime laughs at all the dirty parts.”

Brienne frowns at him.

“We talk about more than that. I was helping him with an assignment.”

“I like that,” Bronn says. He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. When Brienne turns her frown on him, he holds his arms up defensively. “No, I mean it. That’s a good base for a strong relationship. I look forward to the wedding.”

“I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic,” Brienne says.

“No one ever can,” Tyrion sighs.

She doesn’t witness this, but she does hear about Margaery cornering Jaime in the hallway and reminding him that she knows every secret he’s ever had and some he hasn’t even figured out are his secrets yet. She says it sweetly, kindly, and with only half a threat meant to it, because she laughs happily in the middle of saying it, and she doesn’t insult him by suggesting that she might use those secrets if he does anything to hurt Brienne. She just gives him a knowing, smiling look, and he nods.

“Think of it like high school pre-nup,” he says to Brienne at lunch that day. “Insurance. I do something horrible, Margaery ruins my life.”

“You seem awfully cheerful about this.”

“I am. I’m a little insulted that she’s got a better handle on big gestures than I do, but I’m glad she’s doing something nice for you.”

He grins at her, and she shakes her head.

“You’re pathetic,” she says. She cannot help but smile back.

“So pathetic,” he agrees. Then, “oh, shit.”

“What?”

“The fucking necklace,” Jaime whines. “Here I am talking about big gestures, and I fucking forgot…wait here. I’ll be right back. Fuck. I’m such a fucking…”

“Truce,” Brienne reminds him, and he laughs before pecking her on the cheek and then sprinting out of the room.

Some people come up to her in the hall to congratulate her on meeting her soulmate. They do the same thing to Theon and Sansa and Jaime, so she doesn’t feel targeted or made fun of, though some people have this incredulous look in their eyes, like they want to say something more but don’t dare. Brienne thinks maybe Tyrion has the right of it, and maybe Bronn a little bit too: Jaime has a reputation as a bit of a tit, and everyone saw that video of Brienne laying Hoat flat. She’s sure a good number of these people are laughing with their friends about how strange it is that Brienne the Beauty and Jaime fucking Lannister are meant to be soulmates, but it doesn’t make her chest tighten up with anxiety to think of it anymore. She knows that she and Jaime fit. She knows that she and Jaime will make each other happy. Jaime’s right: the rest of them don’t matter.

The ones who are kind to her about it make her smile. And the ones that are only barely kind to her about it make her feel nothing at all. She knows that if anyone was truly mean, she’d be able to answer them herself. And even if she couldn’t, even if they somehow managed to break down the confidence that she feels more possessed of now, she would have so many people in her corner. Jaime, of course, but Robb would be shoulder-to-shoulder with him, jockeying with Jaime for a chance to land first hit. And Sansa, with Theon at her side. Jon and Sam. Margaery and Renly and Loras. Her father. Ned and Catelyn. Even little Arya, who might grow up to be fiercer than all of them. Brienne is loved. She knows she’s loved. What a few small-minded people in her high school say will fade away long before her love for her enormous extended family does.

Several days into the week, Cersei approaches her at her locker.

“I’m told I should apologize to you,” she says, sounding a bit like she’s being tortured. “My father insists.”

“I don’t need an apology,” Brienne says. Cersei nods, and her eyes flicker over Brienne. It’s not pointedly cruel like it used to be, but she still obviously finds Brienne wanting in some way. Brienne’s not sure that that’s ever going to change, but she doesn’t need it to.

“Treat him better than I have,” Cersei says finally. Her eyes soften, just a bit. “Jaime is…he’s sensitive, though he doesn’t like people to know it. I know I’ve taken advantage of that, and I hope you won’t.”

“I won’t,” Brienne says. It’s a promise. Cersei nods, and she and Brienne hold each other’s gazes for a moment longer. It’s not threatening. It’s not apologetic. It’s just something strange and complicated and difficult to explain. It’s a look of two women who care for the same man, both of them knowing that they will never like each other, but that they have this one monumental thing in common. Then Cersei nods, and she moves on down the hallway, and Brienne finally feels like she can breathe easily. Easier than she has in years, really; Cersei won’t be bothering her anymore.

Their first weekend after the dance. Brienne stands in front of her mirror, looking at the very plain clothes she’s wearing. She wishes she was less practical than she is, because she’d find it worth it to put in the effort, but she can’t. She’s just going to be changing into her new armor at the heroic fair, so why bother getting all dressed up now?

She fusses with her hair, but it’s hopeless without Sansa here. She wishes she’d thought to call her.

But she remembers her truce with Jaime. She swallows down her nervousness. She will trust him. She will not let her insecurities make her doubt him.

She leaves her room and heads down the stairs, and she knows that she has to tell her father now. She’s been putting it off, because she doesn’t know how to have these kinds of conversations with him. They are both very straightforward people, and emotions are difficult to discuss. Selwyn always tries. He’s a wonderful father. But he’s more like Ned than Catelyn Stark, and a Catelyn would handle this sort of thing infinitely better.

“I have something I need to tell you,” she says, standing in the door to the kitchen. Selwyn, finishing up his morning coffee, raises one eyebrow. She sits at the table across from him, and she folds her hands in front of her, and she can’t make herself say the words. She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

“Is that your soulmark?” Selwyn asks. Brienne’s mouth closes again, and she looks down at her necklace. She’d tucked it into her shirt, but the chain is short enough that it keeps slipping out. It’s fairly small, the replica of she and Jaime’s swords. It’s also a real gold chain, and a real gold hilt, and a real Valyrian steel blade, and a real ruby in the center, because Jaime doesn’t think about money the way normal high school students think about money.

“I went to Goodwin to ask if he knew anyone who could make it for me,” he said when he handed it to her by her locker after lunch the other day. Not the most romantic place for it, but Brienne had already realized that she didn’t need the cliché trappings of romance. As long as it was Jaime, everything made her feel like she was in some kind of sweeping drama film, the kind where one or both people die at the end because their love is too pure and good to survive or whatever stupid fucking message the directors think is more artistic than a happy ending. “He sent me to a lady who specializes in metalworking and jewelry, and she didn’t believe me when I told her what I wanted. Didn’t think I could afford it. So obviously I had to go all out, just to prove it to her.”

“You really didn’t,” Brienne had said. The sword was small, but it wasn’t that small. It must have cost a fortune.

“I absolutely did,” Jaime had scoffed. “I’m a Lannister, Brienne. If my father didn’t want me to spend money on gifts for my girlfriend, he shouldn’t have given me a credit card with such an irresponsible limit.”

She takes the necklace off now, and she hands it to her father. Selwyn has big hands, like her, and he has clumsy fingers like her too. He examines the sword by the light coming in through the window.

“How much did this cost you?” he asks.

“It didn’t cost me anything,” she says. “I…Jaime Lannister had it made for me. The one who came to the house a few times?”

“The nice-looking lad. The football one,” Selwyn says.

“I’ve been trying to find out how to tell you. He’s my soulmate. Apparently.”

Selwyn’s eyebrows shoot up a little, and he looks down at the sword in his hands. He hands it back over to her, gently, looking thoughtful.

“Robb already threatened him with bodily harm if he hurts me,” Brienne continues nervously. “And Loras, you remember Loras? His sister threatened him with social ruin.”

Selwyn laughs. He has her laugh, the one that she’s always afraid is a little too loud.

“Glad to know I’ve got some support in my corner,” he says. “I won’t embarrass you in front of him, don’t worry. But I want you to know that I’ll have their back if it comes to it.”

“I know,” Brienne says.

“Your mother was my soulmate, you know.”

“Yes. I know.”

“It’s a powerful thing, loving your soulmate. Dangerous, too. But I think you probably gathered that.”

Brienne thinks of her father’s string of failed relationships. His quiet desperation to find something even close to what he had with her mother. It’s not something she thought about much, growing up. She just resented the fact that her father had new girlfriends who never seemed to have any idea how to talk to his awkward, gangly daughter. But getting older, she started to understand it more, and it has always made her sad.

“I know it is,” she says.

“And some people manage to be very happy with people who aren’t their soulmates at all,” Selwyn continues. “So I don’t want you to ever feel trapped, like this is the only choice you can make.”

She does know that. Catelyn Stark’s soulmate was Ned’s older brother Brandon, and Ned belonged to some woman he only briefly met, years and years ago. Catelyn tried to make it work with Brandon, but she refused to tie herself to someone who had such a wandering eye, and over the years, she and Ned chose each other instead. Stone by stone, they carved a family out of something that the universe said was wrong, and they made it work better than any couple Brienne has ever known; they’re the happiest family in the world.

“I know that, dad,” she says.

“You’re so young,” Selwyn says. “Sometimes I wish these damned soulmarks would show up after you’d graduated and lived a little. It would make more sense. But…you’re happy?”

“I’m very happy,” she says, and Selwyn searches her eyes for the truth, and he finds it there.

“Good,” he says. He laughs a little. “He really is a pretty lad. Polite enough when he came here, but I wouldn’t have figured him for your type.”

“He wasn’t, for a while,” Brienne admits. “Someday I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“I’d love to hear it,” Selwyn says.

Jaime shows up in his Audi to pick her up, earlier than he was meant to. He has an iced tea for her and an iced coffee for himself. He reveals with giddy, youthful joy that his cast is finally gone, and he is proud of his pale and slightly shriveled-looking wrist and hand.

Selwyn behaves himself, as he promised he would, and he doesn’t threaten or warn Jaime. He just looks in interest at the hand and wrist.

“What happened?” he asks.

“Broke my wrist. I’ve got pictures, if you want to see. The bone was sticking out. I had to have surgery.”

“Football?” Selwyn asks. Jaime turns to Brienne, looking offended.

“Do you tell your father anything?” he asks.

“We’re going to be late to meet Margaery and Renly and Loras,” Brienne says quickly.

“I was hurt helping your daughter, and I would do it again,” Jaime says. It’s very serious, and he looks Selwyn in the eyes as he says it. Selwyn only smiles, and he sticks out his hand to shake.

Months pass. They pass well.

Brienne has never been so happy.

“I’m going to kill them,” Robb says as they head to the bench at the end of the half. He pushes his sweat-lank curls out of his face. The airhorn is still blasting from the stands. Brienne sighs.

“And this is just summer league,” Jon points out as he jogs by. “Imagine how annoying they’re going to be during the fall.”

Theon, fresh off scoring, approaches Brienne and slings one arm over her shoulders, looking fondly up at the bleachers where Jaime and Sansa sit together, laughing at their own airhorn nonsense. Both are wearing their respective partners’ extra jerseys. Brienne wishes she could scowl threateningly, but she can’t stop grinning every time she sees him wearing it.

“No more goals, Tarth,” Theon says. “My ears can’t take it.”

“You’ve done just as much damage,” Brienne argues.

“Yes, you’re both very obviously disgusted and annoyed with your stupid soulmates,” Robb grumbles. “Let’s get on with it.”

“You should see how annoying he is at the heroic faire,” Brienne says. “He buys monogrammed handkerchiefs to throw at me from the stands when I fight.”

“I wish he was still a giant asshole so I could be justified in punching him,” Robb says. There’s a pause, in which they let his annoyance build before he explodes with, “I never gave a shit about soulmates. I was content to at least be perpetually single with you two assholes and Sansa, and now all three of you are…”

He continues talking, but Brienne doesn’t hear any of it. Behind him, she watches the slim, dark-haired girl sit down on the opposing team’s bench. She’s got a first-aid kit slung over her shoulder. She’s wearing shorts, and even from here Brienne can see the circular symbol on her tan thigh. The two wolves interwoven.

“So, let me get this straight,” she interrupts. “You care nothing for soulmates.”

“Nothing!” Robb agrees.

“You don’t give a single shit about any of it. The whole matching symbols, love of your life thing.”

“Not at all,” Robb says.

“So if I told you that your extremely beautiful soulmate was sitting right behind you, right this second, you wouldn’t even turn around.”

Theon looks past Robb, his expression lighting up with immediate laughter. Robb lifts his chin with as much dignity as he can muster.

“No, I would not,” he says. “Because I know you’re making it up, and I…” But he does turn around anyway, and then he gives an almost girlish gasp, high-pitched and disbelieving. He stumbles to his feet.

“Well?” Brienne asks. “What are you waiting for?”

“Easy for you to say,” Robb whispers. “Gods, she’s pretty.”

“Was it easy?” Theon wonders. “I had to get beaten nearly to death before I got with Sansa.”

“You didn’t have to. You chose to keep it from Sansa until then,” Brienne points out.

“Well, fine, but I still nearly died.”

“And I, for one, would not have missed you,” Robb says. “She looks focused. I think she’s here in case anyone gets hurt. Is she being paid? Is she working? What if she’s annoyed that I’m even talking to her, and the whole thing crashes and burns before it starts?”

“Why would it? You're hot,” Theon says. Brienne snorts.

“The two of you are insufferable,” Robb hisses, but it finally does prompt him to go over and talk to her.

Brienne looks up into the stands, and she sees Jaime giving her a quizzical look, trying to figure out what’s going on. Brienne just rolls her eyes, and he grins at her. He pats himself on the shoulder, right where she knows the sword is, and she returns the gesture. Will it ever stop feeling strange and wondrous that her soulmate is exactly the person she wanted? She hopes it doesn’t. She likes this feeling, this little bit of surprise every time she looks at him.

She has known since she was eight years old that someone was going to love her one day. Awkward, lumbering, too-tall Brienne, with her straw-colored hair and her too-big lips and her prominent teeth. She knew that someone was going to love her regardless. And now someone does, and it’s the greatest feeling in the world.

“He’s totally crashing and burning,” Theon says. Brienne tears her eyes off Jaime and sees Robb blushing red while his soulmate looks him up and down, seemingly unimpressed.

“I’m not worried,” Brienne replies. “He’s got this.”