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When Jaime Lannister was seven years old, his mother died. As Cersei raged and sobbed and blamed their newborn baby brother Tyrion, Septa Saranella sat next to Jaime and tried to distract them both by telling them the tale of the the beautiful wild flower.
“In the place where all good things begin, there grows the loveliest flower to ever grace the world. It has lived for a thousand cycles of the moon, feeling the wind and drinking the rain. It is said that when a man gazes upon it, he is changed forever.”
“Do you know anyone who has seen it?” Jaime interrupted.
“I know men who have tried. Many died trying to reach it, and the rest returned with dark hearts and missing limbs and no flower. It lives in a sacred place, beyond even the clouds. The journey is a dangerous and difficult one, for you must cross the wild tides of the ocean, navigate the endless, deceptive meadows, and then climb a tall and lonely mountain to ancient ground.”
“For a flower?” Cersei said in disgust, hiccuping, tear tracks on her cheeks.
“A flower unlike any other. A great prize for the bravest man.”
“Men are stupid,” Cersei sniffed and then she glared at Jaime, eyes as bright and hard as emeralds. “You wouldn't risk your life for a flower, would you?”
“Only that I might give it to you,” Jaime said. He took his twin's hands in his own like he was making her a promise.
“I am prettier than any flower,” Cersei had said and Jaime had agreed and she'd smiled again, like that morning before their mother had died.
That night and for many nights after he dreamed of a tall mountain with a flower shining like a sun atop it and always he woke with a yearning deep in his heart.
When Jaime was fourteen years old, already tall and strong and deadly with a blade, he met his hero, Ser Arthur Dayne. Jaime was squiring for Lord Sumner Crakehall, an old man who would have been better served siring more children than participating in tourneys. But Jaime knew well the pride of men and so he prepared his lord's armor and fetched him fresh lances and rooted for Ser Arthur in his heart.
At the feast that evening, Lord Sumner sat near Ser Arthur and Jaime found reason to hover nearby, though the squires were all at a table much further away. He listened to the men talking, of battles and of blood and of women.
“I would like to pluck that flower,” Lord Sumner said, gesturing at a plump serving girl. He was deep in his cups and Jaime knew his tongue would only turn looser as the evening grew late.
Ser Arthur had glanced at Jaime as he said to Lord Sumner, “a flower plucked unwillingly loses its beauty, my lord.”
“Aye, but I get to enjoy it first.”
“What does the flower wish?”
Lord Sumner growled into his drink. “Did they take your balls when they gave you the white cloak, ser?”
Ser Arthur smiled. “No, my lord. Did they take your sense of honor when they made you a lord?”
Jaime's eyes widened and he ducked his head to hide his own smile, but he felt Ser Arthur watching him closely. Lord Sumner stood abruptly from the table and announced he needed to piss and stalked off, muttering.
“Boy,” Ser Arthur said, and Jaime looked up.
“You unseated him as easily at the table as at the tourney, ser,” Jaime said boldly.
Ser Arthur laughed. “A sharp tongue to go with that sharp smile. You're Jaime Lannister aren't you?”
Jaime straightened proudly. “Yes.”
“I've heard you're as good as a grown man with your blade and as strong as one, too.”
“I am.”
“Have you plucked your own flowers, too?”
He thought of Cersei, who had, when they turned ten, forbidden him from even kissing another girl, though she did not let him kiss her, either. “No, ser. I prefer the kissing of swords, not women.”
“So single-minded. A grown man must find room in his heart for both.”
Jaime shrugged, feeling oddly ashamed. He admired Ser Arthur and wanted nothing but the touch of his praise, not his censure. “I intend to pluck a single flower only,” he admitted, eager to regain the knight's respect. “The beautiful wild flower.”
“That maiden is a lofty goal indeed.”
Jaime blinked, owl-eyed at the older man. “A maiden?”
Ser Arthur had laughed, loud but warm. “You thought she was truly a flower?”
“The story-”
“Stories are not always what they seem, boy. And the beautiful wild flower is but a story.”
“My septa knew men who had traveled to see her.”
“All septas know men who have traveled to see her. They believe it's more honorable to chase a fairy tale than to admit you lost a hand in a tavern brawl.”
“She's real,” Jaime said fiercely. “I have dreamed of her.”
Ser Arthur pursed his lips and looked at him very seriously. “Perhaps she is. A man's dreams are as important as his sword and his heart.”
“Really?” Jaime had always believed his dreams were a message as sure as anything sent by raven, but everyone he had ever known had dismissed them as imaginations of a youthful mind.
“Aye. Do your dreams tell you where she is?”
“Only that she's on a tall mountain. Do you know it?”
“No,” he said, considering. “But if I were going to look for the beautiful wild flower, I would look to Tarth.”
“The deserted island in the Stormlands?”
“It's got rocky shores and a mountain you can see on a clear day from Rain House. There are rumors that one hundred years ago a man lived in Evenfall Hall with his only daughter before terrible tragedy struck and all who lived there died or fled. The island itself drives away those eager to conquer it. If the beautiful maid exists, I would bet my sword she was there.”
“Tarth,” Jaime said, the word feeling comfortable on his tongue, like a memory long forgotten.
“Perhaps when you are older you can go,” Ser Arthur said, clasping him warmly on the shoulder. “But not yet. We need good, strong fighters like you here with us. Come, take Lord Sumner's seat and share a meal with me. I can tell you dreams of my own.”
They talked long into the evening, Ser Arthur filling Jaime's head with tales of chivalrous acts and honorable knights. When Jaime finally collapsed on his pallet on the floor of a room crowded with snoring squires, he dreamt of waters as blue as sapphires and a distant girl burning from the top of a mountain as steady and welcoming as a lighthouse.
When Jaime was twenty-one, a disillusioned knight who had spilled more king's blood than a drunkard spills wine, he extricated himself from Cersei's painful grip and stepped onto a boat he planned to row to Tarth.
“You are a fool!” she screamed at him as he patiently stacked his armor and his sword neatly in the bottom of the boat. “I hate you!”
She likely did, though he wasn't sure when he had stopped caring that she would.
“You will die there and I won't cry for you!” He got in the boat and started rowing. Cersei had forbidden him from touching another woman, had continued to never let him touch her either, and had announced that morning in her quarters in King's Landing that she was pregnant with her husband Robert Baratheon's child. Jaime hadn't spoken to her since, had simply gathered his things and headed for the docks to buy the first boat he could find.
“You cannot just leave the Kingsguard! You'll be known as an oathbreaker!” The wind relentlessly carried her words to him as though she were sitting across from him in the boat.
“I am already a kingslayer,” he called back. “What is one more broken oath?”
“You cannot just leave me!”
“I can. I could have, should have, years ago.”
“I know where you're going!” Her voice was fainter now and if he just rowed a little faster he would be free of it forever. “There is no maid! She doesn't exist, Jaime! Jaime!”
And then there was only the sound of his oars in the water and his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. He rowed for Tarth.
***
The distance from King's Landing to Tarth was great and Jaime should have rowed for days upon days, fighting wild waves and grasping tides, but the ocean itself ferried him, so that for every one stroke of his oars he moved as though he'd made five. Nonetheless, by the time the tall mountain of Tarth appeared on the horizon, Jaime was tired, hungry, and unsure.
It had been seven years since Ser Arthur Dayne had said his dreams mattered, had pointed Jaime towards Tarth and filled his head with fantastic tales. Ser Arthur himself had knighted Jaime the next year with his greatsword, Dawn, cutting Jaime on both shoulders, leaving pale scars that lingered still. Cersei had been appalled when Jaime had returned to her months later and showed them proudly.
“We are no longer twins for I have no scars,” she had said in disgust.
“I will cut you,” he had offered out of love. He repeated what Ser Arthur had told him when the red had bloomed bright on the shoulders of Jaime's white shift: “blood is the seal of our devotion.” Cersei had slapped him and cried and forced him from her room.
That, he thought, was when he and his twin had first turned from each other.
He had tried to win her back to him, but she'd grown more distant with time and duty, and he had joined the Kingsguard, had seen the truth of Ser Arthur's lies behind his stories about the honor of knights, had slain his own king when the man had threatened to burn the world.
Kingslayer, they whispered in the courts. Kingslayer, they shouted at him on the battlefield. Kingslayer, they greeted him in the low and high taverns both.
Savior, he wanted to scream back at them, but he bit his tongue and swallowed his bile and didn't try to convince any of them otherwise. He had comforted himself with his fleeting minutes sharing space with his sister, the occasional shared laugh with his brother, and at night, though she grew fainter each year, the distant burning light of the maiden on the mountain.
The mountain grew in inches on the horizon as he neared it, looking so in detail like his dream that he was stunned to find the top was dark. The deserted island of Tarth appeared next, a hilly jewel of green that looked more myth than land. When he was close enough to see shore, the ocean turned gray and wild, tossing his boat about like a child's toy on a fast-moving stream.
Jaime fought the current as it pushed him away from shore, his every strong stroke moving him less than a footstep's worth. But he leaned forward and yanked back, roaring with every movement, his body and the wind roaring at him to stop, let go, return to the land he had left behind. Water splashed over the edge of the boat and pooled at his feet, his hands grew slippery on the wood and when he looked down it was blood, not water. Jaime grit his teeth and rowed and rowed and thought of the maiden that haunted his dreams and after hours or possibly minutes he burst through into sunlight and sparkling blue, and the waves and wind carried him gently to the shore.
He stumbled out of the boat and fell to his knees on the warm sand, his breaths loud as a hurricane in the quiet. After pulling the boat far up the beach, Jaime looked around in wonder. His septa had told him there would be meadows, but what met him was forest, as green and lush as Cersei's eyes, back when she had loved him as the mirror of herself.
Jaime gulped down the sweet air and heard, faintly, birds in the distance. The island was not deserted of all life, it seemed. He could not see the mountain from here, too close to know it more as a presence in the distance, and the sun was already setting, so he gathered wood and built a small fire tucked back where none could see it from the water. While he searched for kindling he found bones bleached white by a hundred years of sun, the skeletal hand grasping at nothing. Jaime murmured a brief prayer to the Seven and left the bones behind.
***
That night Jaime dreamed of a man younger than him, with dark skin and kind eyes. “What you're looking for won't be found easily,” the man said in a voice as sad as the grave.
“I know.”
“You don't. Look past what you see and you will find her.”
The man lifted his hand and in it was a flower, bluer than the ocean itself, so beautiful his heart leapt into his throat. Jaime reached out but before he could touch a petal he woke to the sunrise.
***
Past the forests that ringed the edge of the island like a wall, were the meadows of Tarth, rolling in gentle, endless hills in all directions. Jaime gathered the fruits that he recognized, water to drink, and began to walk towards the mountain in the distance. His Septa had warned him of the meadows, but he was not afraid of distance; he had walked through battlefields twice as big and ten times as horrific as this solitary, peaceful place. He wore his armor until mid-day, when the sun grew too warm and there was no shade to protect him, and then he carried it for hours more, until his sore arms grew too weak and his legs grew too tired to move further.
Jaime crumbled to the ground, trembling with exhaustion. The mountain had come no closer in all his walking. His fruits were gone, his water half empty, and the sun hovered low on the horizon. In the glimmering golden light of late afternoon he saw a short distance away another skeleton still wearing ancient, rusted armor. Jaime said another prayer for this skeleton and lay down on the ground for just a moment, but sleep overwhelmed his tired body quickly.
***
That night Jaime dreamed of a knight older than him, tall and strong as a bear, dark hair just turning to gray. His armor shone under the light of the full moon.
“What you're looking for won't be found easily,” the man said in a voice as deep as winter.
“I know.”
“You don't. You cannot carry all that you have brought with you. You must let it go.”
The man lifted his hand and in it was the blue flower again and again as Jaime reached to touch it, more quickly this time, he awoke touching only empty air, with an unfamiliar name on his lips.
“Brienne.”
***
Jaime left his armor covering the other skeleton like a cairn, and walked with light steps towards the mountain. For every step he took, he moved as though he had taken three, and he was upon the mountain's base by the middle of the day. He craned his head back and back, his golden hair falling curled and sweaty against his neck.
It was a long way up. He imagined at the top he could see a figure waiting for him. When he reached for the stone it was sharp against his hand and he hissed when it pricked his finger a drop of bright red blood welling there. He pulled off his dirty shirt and ripped it to pieces, wrapping his fingers in the rags, and began to climb.
The mountain seemed to shift under his hands and feet. Every time he placed one foot solid on an outcrop, the next moment it would fall away beneath him and he'd be left clinging with desperate, aching fingers until he settled again. But he climbed without hesitation, until his fingers were arched into permanent claws and his thighs and calves were on fire with pain. As though he had wished it into being, a large boulder jutted out just above him, flat and big enough on top he could fit his whole body with room to spare. As he panted and wiped the sweat from his face and the blood from his hands, he saw some of that room was taken by another skeleton sitting back against the wall, a rusted sword in its hands like an offering. Jaime said a prayer over it, and settled back against the wall next to the skeleton, mimicking its posture. He was afraid of lying too near the edge and rolling off, so he fell asleep sitting up, staring out at the endless dark of the land and the brilliant shining of the stars.
***
That night Jaime dreamed of Ser Arthur Dayne.
“What you're looking for won't be found easily,” Ser Arthur said in a voice as familiar and forgotten as his own mother's.
“I know.”
“You don't. Blood is the seal of our devotion.”
He held out his hand with the blue flower and this time Jaime hesitated.
“I thought you died at the Tower of Joy.”
Ser Arthur smiled warmly. “I did. Dreams, like stories, are not always what they seem, boy.”
“I have one and twenty years, ser. I am no longer a boy.”
“You are not yet the man you must be if you intend to pluck this flower.”
Rage washed through Jaime like a wild fire. “What do you know? You told me knights were honorable and that kings were chivalrous, both lies. You filled a boy's head with pointless fairy tales.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Perhaps Cersei was right and I am a fool.”
“There's only one way to find out, boy.”
Jaime reached for the flower, his finger a hairsbreadth away as he remembered one last question to ask Dayne. “Who is Brienne?” he cried out even as he woke.
***
Jaime climbed the rest of the morning until the air grew thin and the clouds dipped below his feet and his breath came out in puffs of smoke like a dragon. And then he put his hand over the rim of a ledge and pulled his body up with leaden arms and discovered he had reached the top.
The ground was flat here, like the gods had sheared off the top of the mountain and left a huge open space. There was sparse grass and a breeze as gentle as a kiss and the air was warm as though he were thousands of feet below on the beach again. Jaime rolled onto his back and found he could breathe as easily, too, and he gulped in air, licked the sweat from his lips.
With a grunt he pushed himself back to his feet and wavered only a little on legs that felt like useless wooden stilts. Several hundred feet away, Jaime saw a figure, and he had to lift his hand to his eyes against the blinding shine of sunlight on armor.
“Hello?” he called and the man shifted but remained still and silent. Jaime moved towards him, was able to see the knight was taller than he was and easily as wide, clad in dented armor, with a plain sword strapped to his side and a helmet that hid his face. “Well met, friend,” Jaime said easily, his hand falling to the pommel of his own sword.
The sound of steel released from its scabbard shivered down Jaime's spine and the knight charged him, moving with a speed Jaime had not expected. Jaime unsheathed his own sword and brought it aloft just as the knight's sword swung down, sending shockwaves through Jaime's whole body.
Jaime Lannister was the best swordsman in all Westeros, known as much for the number of men he had killed and tourneys he had won as for the king he had slain. He had grown up with a sword in his hand, and he was young and strong and unafraid.
And still the knight of the mountain was better.
Their swords crashed and sparked, a flurry of movement and glinting steel in the sunlight. Jaime pressed forward, without his armor able to move with unusual speed, but he was quickly driven back again, the knight as relentless as a thunderstorm. Jaime's body sang, a song of battle and blood, his feet moving in the dance to which he was most suited. The knight swiped his sword down and Jaime brought his up and the power of the connection made his entire body tremble until his own sword fell from numb fingers. Jaime rolled out of the way just as the knight brought his greatsword down where he'd been, but Jaime had rolled away from his own sword, and the knight kicked it so hard it went skittering across the ground before it slipped over the edge of the mountain.
“Shit,” Jaime muttered and the knight turned to look at him through the slit in his helmet. Jaime knew in that moment he would not be one of the men who returned missing a limb; he would die here on the top of this mountain, having never even seen the maid of his dreams at all.
“Tell me,” Jaime said as the knight stalked towards him, “does the beautiful flower even exist, or is it all just a story?”
The knight hesitated and a voice muffled and not as deep as he had expected said, “she exists.”
“She has a most fearsome protector,” Jaime said. He knelt down before the knight and grinned up at him. “I'm pleased to die at the hand of a knight truly greater than I am. I only wish I could see your face and know your name before I die.”
“Why?” the knight asked.
“So I can put in a good word with the Warrior, I suppose.”
“You mock me.”
“I don't,” Jaime promised. “I only hate to die having this mystery unsolved.” Jaime held out his hands. “I have no weapons and I assure you I cannot fly.”
The knight gripped his greatsword in one big hand and then with the other he slowly removed his helmet and unleashed an entirely new mystery.
“You're a woman!” Jaime gasped.
“I am,” the woman said between clenched teeth. She had pale skin covered with freckles over the red flush on her cheeks, sweaty, straw-colored hair that hung limp down to her shoulders, a crooked nose and big teeth, and eyes the color of the flower in his dreams.
“You've answered one question but raised a hundred more, I'm afraid. Tell me your name?”
“Brienne.”
“Brienne? I thought the flower was Brienne,” he murmured, but then shook his head. “Very well, you've done as I asked and it seems my sword has still not somehow returned to me. It will be my honor to die by yours instead.”
Those captivating eyes narrowed. “You're giving up?”
“I lack armor or a sword and you have both, unless you're willing to give me either.”
The woman frowned. “I will not kill an unarmed man.” She considered him for a long moment and he felt himself leaning towards her, as though pulled in by the depth of her eyes. “You may go.”
“Go?”
“You may leave Tarth and live.”
“But the maiden-”
“Is not any concern of yours,” she said, her jaw twitching.
Jaime stood, at a loss. He had expected to succeed or to die trying. He'd never been sent home to lick his wounds before. “It's a long way back,” he said, knowing he whined like a small child.
“Then I shall not expect to see you again.”
“You will,” he swore.
She shook her head. “Take that path,” she said, pointing to a hidden trail Jaime hadn't noticed. “It is easier.”
“Where will you go?”
“That is not your concern, either.”
“Brienne,” he said again. The name felt welcome on his tongue, the woman welcome to his eyes even as big and bold-faced as she was. “I will see you in a year, Brienne of Tarth.”
She silently watched him leave.
When it was all done, Jaime fought Brienne seven times in seven years.
***
The second year he returned after months of fighting as a sellsword. They called him Kingslayer still, but they meant it less harshly with every man he killed for them. During that year Tyrion discovered him in a rundown bar in the south and told Jaime that Cersei had cried for days after he'd left, though she cried no longer now that she had a babe to care for. Jaime told Tyrion only that he was on a mission to prove he was truly the greatest fighter in the world and Tyrion had scoffed and begged him to come home. Jaime thought of his father, and perhaps even his sister, waiting for him, of Tyrion laughing with him over dinner.
“When I am done,” Jaime promised. So Tyrion had left and Jaime had fought and nearly every night he dreamed of a tall, broken-nosed knight standing atop a distant mountain, waiting.
***
He climbed again to the top of that mountain a year to the day he had left it last. The journey had been less difficult, and the dreams of the men along the way had not returned. Brienne was nearer this time, her helmet off.
“You came back,” she said after he'd caught his breath.
“You never asked my name and I didn't want you to die with your own unsolved mystery.” She had rolled her stunning eyes in a movement so domestic that Jaime laughed aloud at the absurdity. “Shall we talk first this time, lady knight? I would hate to kill you before you told me more about yourself.”
“Don't you wish to learn of the maiden instead?”
“I'll find out about her soon enough.”
Brienne lunged for him without warning and he brought his sword up swiftly. He had gotten better in the year since last they fought, but he realized quickly he was still not good enough and though he held out longer she disarmed him once again and kicked him onto his back, her sword point at his throat.
“Will you do it this time, then?” he asked, her sword so near that when he swallowed the edge nicked his throat.
“I told you I will not kill an unarmed man.” She stepped away and kicked his second sword over the mountain's edge.
“At least stop wasting my swords,” he groused, rising to his feet. “My name is Jaime, by the way, since you have still failed to ask. Ser Jaime Lannister.”
“I don't care.”
“You will.”
“You're arrogant. And still not as good as me.”
“I accept both claims as truth, painful as they are.” He looked around the clearing. “Where do you sleep, Ser Brienne of Tarth? What do you eat? What do you do all day?”
“That is none of-”
“My concern, I remember. I wish to know anyway. I'll keep coming back until you tell me or I defeat you, whichever comes first.”
“I might kill you first.”
“You might. It's a chance I'll have to take.”
“Go away, Ser Jaime. The maiden does not want you.”
“She has seen me, then?” He looked around but the plain was empty except for himself and Brienne. There were not even trees to hide behind. “Is she a stone?”
“I will not answer your questions. Go home before I change my mind about unarmed men.”
Jaime grinned. “The protector knight has a sense of humor, how delightfully unexpected.”
“I am not a knight,” she spit out and then riveted her eyes to the ground at his feet, her freckles lost in the wash of red in her face.
“Yet you fight better than any knight alive. Intriguing.” He examined her armor, her old sword. “Your maiden should equip you better, regardless.”
“I have defeated many men like you with just this.”
“There are no men like me,” he snapped, suddenly angry. “How many men have you fought? Ten? Fifty? A hundred?”
“I have fought every man I ever met.”
“I believe you and yet it tells me nothing. If you will not talk of yourself then tell me about the maiden. How did she come to the top of such a dreary place?”
“She disappointed too many men.”
Jaime frowned. “Then why does she wait for one?”
“Because the heart is a curse,” Brienne said quietly. “Go. Please.”
“I will see you in a year,” he promised, and then he went.
***
The third year he sharpened his skills and grew his reputation and ignored his family. He refused Tyrion's pleas to return to Casterly Rock, Tywin's scathing letters that he was letting the Lannister line die out. Cersei did not contact him at all and whole months would pass where Jaime did not even remember he had a twin, though she had been the beat of his own heart for more years than he could remember. He dedicated his days to fighting and his nights to dreams of a woman with eyes so blue they redefined the color and still he could not defeat Brienne when the time came to try again.
He lost his third sword over the edge of the mountain and found he was, in some small way, glad to see it go. It had soaked up all the blood it could.
Jaime sat on the hard ground with his knees up, his arms resting comfortably atop them, while Brienne stared down at him as though he were an unpleasant bug.
“So how do I see her?” he asked. The sun streaming behind her made it look like she was glowing.
“The maiden appears only after I have been killed.”
“You're all that stands between us terrible men and this poor girl, hm? Why don't you let someone pass? Go make a life of your own. You could join the Golden Company with me, you'd do very well for yourself.”
“I cannot leave, I made an oath.”
Jaime's curled his lips into a bitter smile. “I have broken an oath bigger than you can imagine and I have survived.”
“At what cost to your soul?” she said quietly and Jaime surged to his feet, his hands in fists. Brienne's hand tightened on her sword.
“My soul is torn asunder by the oaths I've broken. But I'm alive and so are all of them,” he threw his arm out towards the direction of King's Landing, “though the ungrateful bastards will never know they have me to thank for it. I killed the man I had sworn to protect, Brienne. My king. To save a hundred thousand innocents. Is that worth breaking an oath for? If your precious maiden had threatened to bring down this mountain on top of the head of every man, woman, and child who had lived on Tarth, would you protect her still?”
“No,” she whispered, her eyes round as river stones and twice as smooth.
“I thought not.” He exhaled loudly, wished desperately for a drink.
“I am sorry, Ser Jaime.”
“Don't be,” he muttered. “I'm not.”
“After I die, there will be a flower,” she said suddenly and Jaime lifted his head. “A blue flower.”
“The color of your eyes.”
Brienne blushed and it was not pretty but it moved him anyway. “Perhaps. If you do kill me, you must leave immediately and take the flower with you and the maiden will appear.”
“Where do I go?”
“Home,” she said.
“Is the maiden as beautiful as the stories say?”
“No,” Brienne said, a deep hurt in her lovely eyes. “Those are only stories.”
Jaime nodded, understanding. “I will see you in a year, Brienne of Tarth.”
“Goodbye, Ser Jaime,” she said, and he took the hidden path, feeling her eyes upon him long past the time he had left the island.
***
The fourth year Jaime had become so deadly a sword that his mere appearance on the field could win the battle, the opposing armies not willing to fall to him. He became more legend than man and when they said Kingslayer it was with a reverence he did not want. Tywin stopped contacting him after one last letter stating in terse words that Jaime had been disowned. The quill had pressed so hard into the paper that there was a stain of ink that looked like the cut of a sword across a throat. Tyrion continued to send him letters and as the time neared for Jaime to return to Tarth, he met Tyrion one night in a small tavern on the Kingsroad. Jaime sat in a dark corner, his hands cupped around a steaming mug of cider.
“Jaime?” Tyrion gasped when he sat down.
Jaime smiled at his little brother. He knew he must look very different to Tyrion; he'd cut his hair close to his head a year ago and it had started to grow brown, the Lannister gold leeching from him. A life of battle and being constantly on the road had honed him as surely as a whetstone to blade, and he was all sharp angles and long muscles. The pampered lion had been replaced by a wild cat made only for death. “I've missed you, brother,” he said, meaning it.
They talked long into the evening and the laughs came again as they had when they were younger. As he was leaving, Tyrion said, “Cersei has had a second child. A girl.”
“Is she well?” Jaime asked, not quite meeting his brother's eyes.
“Well enough. She loves her children more than anything in this world or any other.”
“She does not ask of me.”
“No. You didn't ask of her either,” he said gently. Tyrion placed his smaller hand on top of Jaime's. “I'll ask you one last time. Come home to Casterly Rock. Don't go back to Tarth.”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“There is a flower,” Jaime said, unable to explain further. How did one explain a devoted protector with eyes so blue they were almost iridescent?
Tyrion had not understood but he had hugged Jaime anyway and bid him safe travels.
The journey to Tarth was no longer a challenge for him. The waters welcomed him to shore, the meadows parted to his eager steps, the rocks were steady and supportive beneath his feet. He had conquered the island at least, if not the woman at the top of it.
He was startled to find her sitting when he pulled himself over the edge, though she rose to stand immediately.
“Why do you return?” she demanded before he had even gained his own feet.
“Why do you tell me nothing of yourself?” he panted. The air along the mountain's climb had gotten no thicker.
“They called me Brienne the Beauty in jest,” she said and her fingers flexed and clenched around the pommel of her sword and his heart clenched in time. “I took an oath to protect my maiden's virtue for only the truest of men, of which there have never been. Now answer my question.”
“To see the beautiful wild flower, of course,” he said, not believing himself.
Brienne's face twisted in disappointment and she put on her helmet and took up her sword and beat him soundly. He gave her little fight and when they were done, his fourth sword lost with the others, he left in silence. She did not wish him farewell.
***
When Jaime returned to King's Landing to the dock from which he always left, he abandoned his life as a sellsword and went to go see his sister.
“Jaime?” she gasped when she spied him in the doorway of the children's room in the Red Keep. With her were a little boy of no more than four and a chubby-cheeked girl standing on wobbly legs. They both had the thick, black hair of their father, and their mother's green eyes.
Cersei looked the same as Jaime remembered, a little older, but in a way that had softened the hardest lines of her face. He wondered if she would have looked the same if he had stayed, if they had ever given in to the love he thought he'd held for her. He loved her still, he realized, watching her eyes well with tears. But his heart was devoted to another now.
They hugged and Cersei introduced him to his niece and nephew, Joffrey and Myrcella. The boy had a sweet smile that reminded Jaime of his brother; the girl the same proud nose of his mother. Cersei sent the children away and bid Jaime sit, but he declined.
“You're not staying?” Cersei asked and the hardness was still there in her voice at least.
“I'm not. I came only to see that you were well, to meet the children. I'm happy for you, Cersei.”
“Do you still follow your idiotic dreams?”
Jaime thought of Brienne and smiled a little. “Yes.”
He left Cersei and spent the year searching for a new sword. He killed no men for money that year, though he killed many men for justice. The smallfolk called him hero. Near Starfall he hunted down and killed in single combat Gregor Clegane and felt a weight lift from his heart. Clegane had been a stain which had been left too long in the Seven Kingdoms, and when Edric Dayne found Jaime standing over the huge body, blood on his sword and his face, he had decreed Jaime the new Sword of Morning and given him Dawn.
Jaime's hand trembled as he took the greatsword, the blade pale as milkglass and sharp as Valyrian steel. “Might I have one other favor?” he asked the young lord, and the boy had nodded.
When Jaime returned to Tarth for the fifth year, he arrived at the mountaintop with two swords. Brienne looked relieved when she saw him.
“You came back,” she said and there was something almost eager in her voice. She spied the swords and smiled a little and his heart lifted at seeing it. “You brought a second sword, for when I disarm you the first time.”
Jaime laughed a little. “No, my lady.” He unstrapped the second sword belt and held it out to her, unsheathing the blade a little to show her the pale blade, the pommel a lion's head with eyes of rubies that shone like stars in the sunlight. Brienne gasped. “This sword and its sister,” he patted his own blade, “were once the Sword of Morning. They were given to me in exchange for righting an injustice. I have named this one Oathkeeper, and it is for you.”
Brienne shook her head, her eyes blinking hard and fast. “I cannot take that.”
“You cannot or you will not?”
“I will not,” she admitted.
“Then I suppose I will throw it over the edge. I don't need two swords, and Honor is much more my size.”
He gripped the sword and prepared to throw and she cried out, “wait!”
Jaime looked over his shoulder and saw Brienne was swiftly unbuckling her own belt. With it gripped between her two hands she walked slowly towards him and Jaime's heart beat harder with her every step nearer, until she was standing a foot away and he was certain she could hear it loud as a drum in this quiet place.
He had to tilt his head up a little to meet her eyes. They had never been this close when they were not fighting. Brienne set her sword down. Jaime presented Oathkeeper to her and she took it with hands that had trembled as much as his had.
“You still wish to see the maiden?” she asked, staring down at Oathkeeper.
“I do,” he said hoarsely.
“Then we must fight,” she said, and her voice was thick and desperate.
“I know.”
They stepped away from each other and drew their glimmering halves of Dawn.
They were equal in battle now. Jaime had been honed for a single purpose; Brienne for an equal but opposite purpose. Their fight lasted three hours until both were sweating and panting and could barely lift their swords. They stood feet apart, chests heaving.
“I yield,” he said, dropping Honor to the ground. Brienne swallowed and sheathed Oathkeeper, and there was gratitude in her eyes.
Jaime took a long drink from his waterskin and held it out to her. “Water?”
“No. I get enough from the rain.”
He took another swig and looked around. “You're all alone here. Does she talk to you at least?”
“Yes.”
“Is she a good conversationalist?”
“Not as good as you, I suppose.”
Jaime's lips twitched into a pleased smile, delighted by the answer. “Then I shall stay and talk with you longer.”
“You must go before night falls or you will be trapped on this mountain.”
“Is that how you got here?”
“No,” she said, and gestured at the sun resting on the horizon. “You should go. Your life is not here.”
Jaime hesitated and for a long moment he considered it, but there was no food and no water and unlike Brienne, he would die without it. It would be a short life, and he wanted more.
“I will see you in a year,” he said.
“You must not come back,” she said, her voice quiet in the dimming light.
“Afraid I will defeat you?”
“Yes.” Jaime stared at her, but she turned away, giving him only her back and no goodbye.
***
The sixth year Jaime traveled from Sunspear to Winterfell, offering his sword in service to those he and the Lannisters had once harmed. Ned Stark greeted him as the Sword of Morning and offered him warmth and food and a welcoming smile and Jaime felt the tightly coiled bitterness loosen and slip away, left behind to die in the snow. Doran Martell offered him a gift of his choosing, and Jaime ordered a suit of armor in blue, sized to fit a woman of slightly bigger build than him. When the time came to return again to Tarth, Jaime carried it with him over ocean, through meadow, and up the side of a mountain.
“This is for you,” he said as soon as their eyes met, and he set the carefully wrapped weight down. It had been lighter to bear than he'd expected, as though buoyed by the wind that urged him forward at every step. He opened it, freeing the deep blue armor inside.
“This will not help me,” she protested and Jaime ignored her, setting out the pieces.
“Come, let me help you put it on.”
“Will you just throw this over the edge, too, if I refuse?”
“I will,” he said cheerfully.
“Put it aside, I will do it after.”
Jaime swallowed. “You're sure there will be an after this time?”
Brienne could not meet his eyes. “Put it aside,” she urged him again. Jaime wrapped the armor back up and moved it to the edge. He did not want to fight yet, but Brienne was drawing her sword. She still had Oathkeeper.
“Do others come up here?” he asked, tucking his thumbs into his sword belt.
“They have. But there have been no others since you first came.”
“Have they tried?”
“A few. I watched one man drown in the ocean. Another died in the meadow. A third fell from the mountain.”
“A grim life, watching men struggle towards you, only to kill them or send them away again missing pieces of themselves.”
“You are missing no pieces.”
Only from my heart, he thought, but did not share that. “Then I suppose I am grateful.” Jaime drew his sword. “You will do me that kindness again, I hope.”
They fought for an hour and halfway into it Jaime realized he had grown better than Brienne. She moved more slowly than he, her instincts were not as well-trained as his own, trapped as she was at the top of this mountain with only him to fight these years past. He did not strike the killing blow the first time, or the second, instead stepping away or turning his sword a moment too soon. As the battle went on, he saw Brienne realized it, too, and her pale face darkened as she gripped her sword and charged. He stepped to the side and sent her falling to the ground, Oathkeeper clattering out of her reach.
Jaime stared down at her, crouched on her hands and knees at his feet with her back to him, and he saw her surrender, the pale skin of her neck laid bare for the kiss of his sword.
“Do it,” she whispered into the grass and he sheathed Honor instead.
“I will not kill an unarmed woman.”
Brienne looked up at him and he saw she was ashamed and angry. “Do it,” she said again, urgently, and he shook his head, unable to speak. He hurried for the path down, desperate to be away, and she yelled, “do it!” after him, her voice strangled with pain. Her cries lingered in his ears for days.
***
For a year Jaime stayed away from the island, though he could have returned at any time and defeated Brienne. He spent the year performing small kindnesses for those who had no kindness in their lives, paying back debts for those who had no way to pay them, and dreaming of Brienne knelt before him, ready to die by his blood-lined sword.
He sought out septas and governesses and begged them to tell him the tale of the beautiful wild flower over and over, and though they all looked at him strangely, they did as he bid. The tale was the same each time, none of them mentioning a protector, no matter how often he asked.
At the end of the year away Jaime wrote a single letter, to his sister. He begged her forgiveness for not being a good uncle to her children, he asked that she give his love to Tyrion herself, and he wished her a happy life. At the end he wrote, She is a flower and a maiden both. I'm going to see her one more time and if the stories hide one last truth, then you will meet her, too. If they do not, then know that I died willingly on the mountain with the woman I love.
When he climbed to the top of the mountain for the seventh time, he found her wearing the blue armor, her face twisted with pain.
“Will you talk with me first?” he asked and she nodded. They removed their swords and sat down in the middle of the ancient space, facing each other from only a few feet away.
“The stories say it's been over a hundred years.”
“It has.”
“You have not aged.”
“I have not.”
“What happened?”
Brienne shook her head and looked sad. “I cannot speak of it. It's...it's part of the spell.”
“Must it end this way?” he asked, despairing.
“It must.” She pressed her lips together and her beautiful eyes grew dark with tears. Jaime leaned forward and caught one with his thumb and she shuddered under his touch.
“This is cruel,” he said. “You live forever alone or the one who loves you must kill you, all for a maiden's virtue.”
She swallowed and looked away. “We must fight,” she whispered.
“We don't have to. I could leave and then return again tomorrow and for all tomorrows to come.”
“You cannot leave until we have fought.”
Jaime frowned and stood, heading for the path only to discover it was not there. He strode for the edge of the plateau and discovered there was nothing around or below them, as though they had separated away from the world itself and were floating in the sky. He heard the sound of steel being loosed.
“You will die if we do not fight,” she said, her voice a plea.
“You will die if we do,” he replied.
“It is not death that I fear,” she whispered and he turned to face her. “You are the only one who can set me free.”
Jaime drew his sword, his hand sweaty on the hilt. “Fight your hardest,” he begged. “I cannot do it if you do not try.”
Brienne nodded and then she was upon him. She fought more viciously than she ever had, savage in her attacks, pressing him harder than any man he had ever battled. Jaime defended blow after blow until his arm was heavy with the fury he had absorbed, until her own strikes slowed down, grew weaker, and he knew the end was near.
Their swords slid down each other and their bodies pressed together, their heavy breaths joining in the small space between them. “You must do it this time,” she panted.
“I love you, not the maid,” he said, hopeless and terrified.
“That's why you must do this for me.”
He wanted to kiss her, but he pulled back, turned the hilt of his sword to shove her matching one out of the way, then reared back and thrust his own through the armor he had made for her, straight into her heart.
Her blood spilled hot and alive onto his hand, mixing with his from the places she had cut him. Blood is the seal of our devotion, he thought wildly. He pulled his sword back out and threw it aside. As her heavy body started to fall he caught her, lowering her gently to the ground. He pressed his hands against the blood pumping slower and slower from the wound, spilling to water the grass in a red rain.
“I'm sorry,” he said and she smiled.
“Don't be,” she whispered even as the light fled from her eyes. “I'm not.”
Jaime sat with Brienne's body in his lap as it started to glow, a light so bright and hot it was like holding the sun. He held on tightly even through the burning in his arms and hands, until the body disappeared from his grasp and he cried out at the emptiness.
The light dimmed and Jaime blinked, blinded by tears and the white spots in his eyes. He squinted and prayed and wiped his face, and as sight returned the first thing he saw was the blue flower from his dreams, laying like a promise in his lap.
Take it home, she had told him years ago, so he picked the flower up and tucked it safely against his chest and he hurried for home, the golden sun lighting his way. It was a short trip to Evenfall Hall and the gates fell open to his touch. There were cobwebs and dust everywhere inside so he stood in the courtyard in the middle of the keep and set the flower down, not knowing where else to go.
Jaime sat down next to it and waited.
For six days, the flower remained unchanged. Jaime slept near the flower at night, he found food miraculously still preserved in the kitchens and a blanket to protect him from the afternoon rain and always he stayed near the flower and thought of Brienne and hoped.
On the seventh day after he had killed her, Jaime awoke to find the flower was gone and in its place was the maiden of the stories, her homely, freckled face more beautiful to him than anything upon or above the earth. She sat up and stretched, wearing a dress not quite the same stunning blue of her eyes, but Jaime knew nothing ever could be.
“Jaime,” she said, and his name on her tongue was a song. “You freed me.”
Jaime took her into his arms and he wept with joy and relief. “I prayed it would be you,” he murmured into her starlight hair. He kissed her milkglass skin, her thick, smiling lips. She was alive and he was drunk on her smell, her taste.
“I will always be yours,” she promised. Brienne gripped him with arms as strong as his own and Jaime knew they would never be parted again.
**********
When Joanna Lannister of Tarth was seventy years old and visiting her parents at the tugging of a dream, she discovered them in their chambers at Evenfall Hall in the morning, still and unmoving next to each other in bed with their hands entwined. When she returned with her own son, Galladon, they found Jaime's body alone, holding a flower of singular blue in his wrinkled hand.
“Where's grandmother?”
“She's with him,” Joanna said softly. “It's time for them to go home.”
For the first time in a hundred years, the path up the mountain was smooth and simple, a walk even a child could make, wide enough for a cart to pass. A crowd of children did, as well as a parade of carts, as the family of Jaime and Brienne made their slow way to the sacred meadow at the top of the mountain that had come to be known as Maiden's Heart.
The scrub grass had grown lush and green with time, but nothing else grew there though the ground did not resist their digging.
They buried Jaime, the flower clutched to his heart. When the last shovelful of dirt was laid over the grave, the ground shuddered and then settled under the many feet of their family, young and old alike. The air paused, the mountain holding its breath.
“Look!” one of the children gasped, a small girl named Dawn. Beneath her feet a flower had sprouted, an arresting mix of crimson and sapphire swirled tightly together on the petals. Another pushed up from the grass nearby, and then another and another and another, hundreds of them flooding the field in an array so dazzling some fell to their knees.
Dawn bent to grab the flower and Joanna rested a soft hand on her shoulder. “Tenderly,” she told her great-granddaughter kindly. “A flower picked with care will be yours to love forever.”
“Where did you learn that, Nana?”
“From a story, my love. From a beautiful story.”
Dawn smiled and the flowers danced happily together in the gentle breeze.