Chapter Text
Most days, she managed.
She kept her head up and her shoulders square and did her duty to the king, just as she had sworn she would. She focused resolutely on her work, on their new monarch’s safety, on doing whatever she could to ensure a better future for the people of the Six Kingdoms.
Most days, she could ignore the furtive looks that Tyrion—and even, on occasion, Bronn—slanted in her direction across the small council table when they thought she couldn’t see.
But that day was not most days.
That day, during their routine discussion of the ongoing repairs to the city, Grand Maester Tarly informed them that excavations and repairs had finally begun in the castle dungeons, starting with the caverns at the very lowest level of the Red Keep.
The caverns where Tyrion had found him. Found them.
A familiar knot twisted in her chest as the Grand Maester explained that, as part of their work to connect the castle to what would eventually be the new city sewers, the builders had already unblocked all the doorways and started clearing away the rubble.
The rubble that had taken his life.
Jaime.
Brienne dropped her eyes to the dark, glossy surface of the table, pressing her palms into her thighs and willing a placid expression to her face. When she was certain no trace of emotion remained to betray her, she lifted her gaze once more, only to find the Hand of the King looking at her from his position at the head of the table.
Tyrion’s brow had lowered so far that it completely obscured the tops of his clear green eyes, which were, to her surprise, completely devoid of pity. Instead, they flickered with a puzzling blend of concern and uncertainty and guilt.
He kept looking at her that way for the entirety of the meeting, long after talk had shifted to the ports and the fleet and the stonemasons’ progress on the reconstruction of the city gate, his jaw periodically twitching as though he wanted to say something.
But Brienne knew he wouldn’t.
He’d been so careful not to speak of it. He would hardly speak to her at all, in fact, outside their dealings in the small council chamber or on matters that directly involved the security of the king.
The only reason she even knew Tyrion had been the one to find their bodies was because of the raven that had come to Winterfell after Daenerys’s death—the raven that had summoned them to King’s Landing. Before it arrived, Brienne had thought she’d cried all of the tears she had inside her, but she’d been wrong.
To her horror, she had nearly cried again when Podrick divulged everything he’d managed to learn only three days after Lady Sansa had been given dominion over the North and Bran Stark hailed as king of the remaining Six Kingdoms. He had been reluctant to tell her, that much was clear, but he also seemed to understand that she needed to know—and that it would be far easier to hear it from him than from someone else’s heedless lips.
So, over an ill-advised cup of Arbor Gold, he’d explained that Jaime had been captured on his way back to King’s Landing, that Tyrion had freed him and smuggled him into the city in order to ring the bells in surrender and get the queen to safety. Tyrion had also arranged to have a boat waiting in some secret place where a tunnel from the dungeons opened onto Blackwater Bay. A boat Jaime had intended to sail to Pentos, where he and his sister could start a new life. Brienne still remembered the ache in Podrick’s kind brown eyes when he’d added, “with their child.”
The words had slipped like a blade between her ribs, and she’d had to look away while she fought against the rising tide of her tears.
It had almost been worse than hearing how they’d been trapped in the bowels of the keep, how Tyrion had found them there, crushed by bricks that had fallen from the ceiling, dead in each other’s arms.
Almost.
Brienne never asked Podrick where he had heard the tale—some northern soldiers, she suspected, or perhaps Lord Davos—but it was too painful not to be the truth.
She had never asked Tyrion about it either, although she often wondered whether he had arranged for someone to take his siblings to Casterly Rock, to be entombed in their ancestral home, or if he had kept Jaime’s golden hand. She knew he had Widow’s Wail—she’d seen it in his chambers, once, slung over a chair, when she had gone to consult with him about the final two appointments to the Kingsguard.
He’d seen her looking at it, she knew, but he hadn’t acknowledged it. He wouldn’t even say his brother’s name.
No one would, not within her hearing, but it was there inside her mind, nonetheless.
Jaime.
It lingered like an infinite echo, resounding in time with her footsteps as Brienne left the small council chamber and walked out into the sun. She intended to return to the White Sword Tower, but her feet took her to the godswood instead.
She didn’t stop walking until she arrived at a familiar stone terrace overlooking a steep, wooded slope and, beyond it, the shimmering blue water of Blackwater Bay. Brienne didn’t know how that little scrap of land had escaped Drogon’s fiery destruction, but she was glad it had. Other than the newly greening trees, their pink blossoms dancing against the sky, it still looked much the same as it had the last time she’d been there.
The memory of Jaime leaning against the rail to her left, arguing with her as the two of them looked down the hill at Lady Sansa, was so visceral and crisp that it felt as though he stood beside her now. Like she might be able to touch him, to feel the soft brown leather of his coat, if only she stretched out her hand.
But then, it often did.
How could it not, when she lived where he’d lived and slept where he’d slept in the Lord Commander’s chambers? When she sat at his table in the White Sword Tower, in the very room where he’d given her his sword and her armor, where she’d pledged to find Sansa for Lady Catelyn and for him. When she wrote in the book he’d written in, walked the halls he’d walked, and stood where he’d stood for more than twenty years, guarding the king.
Brienne hadn’t fully comprehended how difficult it would be when she had consented to Sansa’s request that she remain in King’s Landing as Lord Commander of her brother’s Kingsguard. She had been too busy ruminating on her many other concerns about accepting the post—the fact that she was in the sworn service of the new Queen of the North chief among them. If she was going to spend years of her life guarding a monarch, Brienne would have preferred it to be the young woman she had already vowed to protect.
Sansa, however, had been insistent. “You have fulfilled your oath, Ser Brienne,” she’d said. “I have nothing to fear in the North, but I’ll rest easier leaving my brother in this city knowing someone I trust is here to defend him.”
Even then, it had taken Tyrion throwing his support behind Sansa’s plea, as well as offering assurances that he intended to make drastic changes to the rules governing the Kingsguard—changes he wanted her to help shape—to convince her to agree.
Brienne still hadn’t decided whether it had been the right decision, whether being in King’s Landing was better or worse than being at Winterfell, where the memories were fewer but would have cut more deeply.
In all likelihood, it wouldn’t have mattered. Brienne knew she would always carry him with her, even without a city or an oath or a sword to remind her.
It’s yours. It will always be yours.
Brienne heard the words as clearly as though Jaime had been there to speak them aloud, and she curled her fingers instinctively around Oathkeeper’s hilt.
As she stared out at the bay, his voice washed over her again and again and again—words that cut, words she thought she’d forgotten, words that meant more to her than any others she’d ever heard.
And she didn’t try to silence them.
You’re much uglier in daylight.
Has anyone ever told you you’re as boring as you are ugly?
You move well, for a great beast of a woman.
No wonder Renly died with you guarding him.
Jaime. My name’s Jaime.
Get behind me.
I’m taking her to King’s Landing, unless you kill me.
I hope I got your measurements right.
They say the best swords have names.
Goodbye, Brienne.
Well, I’m proud of you.
I’d be honored to serve under your command, if you’ll have me.
Arise, Brienne of Tarth, a knight of the Seven Kingdoms.
I’ve never slept with a knight before.
She’s hateful, and so am I.
Brienne squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn’t stop his haunted face from swimming before her in the dark.
A tremble shuddered through her chin as she recalled the shock in his eyes when she had reached for his face, the soft rasp of his beard against her palms, the way his thumb had stroked her wrist just before he pulled her hand away. She would never forget how utterly broken he’d looked as he said those final words. How broken she’d felt as she watched him ride through the gate.
Blinking against the sudden burning threat of tears, Brienne shoved the memory away. But that only made way for a swarm of others—too many to hold at bay.
The wind on her face as she paddled down the Trident, Jaime’s stream of insults rising to her ears from the bottom of the boat. The mocking slash of his teeth as their blades kissed on that bridge in the middle of the riverlands. The agonizing sound of his scream when Locke took his hand. The tears sluicing down his face when he bared his soul to her at Harrenhal as the steam rose and swirled around them.
The strain in her limbs when she pulled him from the bear pit after he offered her his own back so she could climb out first. The golden light in the White Sword Tower when he first placed Oathkeeper into her hands and the red glow in his tent at Riverrun when she tried to return it. The frantic, demanding question in his eyes when they locked with hers at the Dragonpit. The low pitch of his voice when he unsheathed his sword and urged her to kneel before him. The steadiness and safety she felt fighting with him at her back, even as they were surrounded by death itself.
The warm, firm length of his body molded against her, sliding inside her. The gentleness in his fingers when he swept the hair back from her brow. The look in his eyes, burning and intent on her face. The fond curl of his lips just before he pressed them, hot and greedy, to her own.
No matter what had happened afterward, those moments—the feeling of something long-denied sparking between them, forging them together—hadn’t been a lie. It might not have been enough to overcome the darkness he’d seemed so certain he still carried, or the pull of his golden twin, but it had been real.
As angry and wounded as she was over the choice he’d made, in the end, Brienne couldn’t bring herself to regret her own. Even when the pain of his leaving and his loss was most acute, when allowing herself to remember felt like poking at an infection that refused to heal, she wasn’t sorry.
She’d loved him so much, for so long, and Jaime had, well…he’d wanted her, at least, even if only for a little while. And Brienne had never thought she’d be wanted by someone she cared so much about. So she’d allowed herself to have him.
The time they had shared, the best and the worst of it, would always belong to her. No one could take that away—not even Jaime.
A hollow, metallic plink sounded from below her chin, followed by one more, and then another, like rain tinkling on a rooftop. Brienne looked down and was startled by the sight of her own tears dripping onto her breastplate.
She let them fall freely for a few more seconds, feeling something loosen deep inside her chest, only moving to wipe them away when a distant crunch and then a nearer whir warned her that she wouldn’t be alone for much longer.
Brienne knew the sound well, so she wasn’t surprised when the king’s voice spoke from very close behind her. “He was right, you know.”
She turned to find King Bran in his wheeled chair, a smiling Ser Podrick—the king’s favorite escort—at his back.
“Who was, Your Grace?” she asked.
“Ser Jaime,” he said, and Brienne flinched. “We don’t get to choose who we love.”
A chill prickled through her limbs as she looked down into the king’s calm, dark eyes. She should have been used to his uncanny ability to pull things from the past; she’d watched him do it to others, many times. But she had never expected he would have cause to do it to her.
The king tipped his head slightly to one side as he considered her. “And you love him still, even after all that’s happened.”
Brienne folded her lips together, trying to decide how to answer. She couldn’t say yes—she wouldn’t, not out loud, not in front of Podrick—but she also couldn’t say no. It would be pointless and dishonorable to lie.
As though he could see inside her mind as well as her memories, King Bran nodded thoughtfully. “I’m glad.”
“Why, Your Grace?” She didn’t see why it should matter, especially not to him.
“Because he loves you, too.”
Her throat constricted around a thick lump of grief, but she forced herself to swallow it. She’d thought, for those few brief weeks in Winterfell, that he might have, but now…
“Maybe,” Brienne eventually murmured, the plates of her armor rattling slightly as she shrugged. “I suppose I’ll never know for sure.”
An enigmatic smile curved the young king’s lips. “Yes, you will. He’ll tell you himself.”
Brienne darted a glance at Podrick, who seemed just as nonplussed as she was. Had the king taken leave of his senses? Did his powers extend to communicating with spirits from beyond the grave?
“I don’t understand, Your Grace.” She shook her head. “Ser Jaime is dead.”
“No, Ser Brienne,” the king replied. “Jaime Lannister is very much alive.”
“That’s impossible,” she blurted, immediate and certain. But as the king stared up at her with his usual tranquility, his eyes as mellow and serious as ever, Brienne realized the folly of her words.
If he said it was true—with everything he knew, everything he could see—then it must be true. And if it was, if Jaime was alive…
A breath left her in a hot, noisy rush, and her chest gave such a violent squeeze she thought it might collapse in on itself. Podrick gaped at her over the king’s head, and when Brienne stretched her arm toward the stone rail, needing something solid beneath her fingers, her former squire twitched forward as though he intended to come to her side. She held up her hand, grateful for his intention but unable to bear it, unable to bear anything as confusion and anger and absurd, overwhelming joy tumbled together inside her.
“But Lord Tyrion found them,” Podrick said, his eyebrows bunching together as he looked between Brienne and the king. “They all said he did.”
“Yes, Ser Podrick, he did,” the king acknowledged. “After the city fell, Lord Tyrion went down to the dungeons of the Red Keep, to a place filled with dragon skulls where he had met his brother once before. Ser Jaime’s golden hand was sticking up from the rubble, and when Lord Tyrion knelt down to dig through the bricks, he found him there, sprawled across the queen.”
Podrick frowned. “But you said—”
The king patiently held up his hand. “He mourned them both,” he continued, “slamming a brick to the ground three times in his anger and grief before he began to weep. And then, when his tears had dried and he knew he could stay no longer, Lord Tyrion reached out to touch his brother’s face, and Ser Jaime opened his eyes.”
Brienne’s breath stilled as the king’s gaze, knowing and oddly soft, glided up to hers.
“He opened his eyes, and he said your name.”