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Brienne delivers both girls on the same day.

Her daughter arrives in the new morning, with sun-streaked fog settling over the field outside the abandoned farmhouse where Sansa finally persuaded Brienne to stop for the night. Brienne labored until sunrise, keeping quiet by biting a strip of leather and squeezing Sansa’s hand when the leather wasn’t enough.

Sansa is still a child in so many ways, though her hollow eyes look worldlier than any child’s should. But from the moment she spied Brienne’s swollen stomach beneath her tunic when they were caught in a rainstorm, she has seemed more adult than Brienne expected.

“I asked,” she said, defensive, when Brienne once wondered aloud how a girl still so young knew so much about birthing babes. “I wanted to know what to expect.”

There was a question in her tone. Perhaps a judgement: why didn’t you? Brienne didn’t know how to explain to the beautiful slip of a girl that the things they could expect out of life were always going to be different.

Brienne supposes that her septa prepared her for the world as best as she could. She had seemed cruel about it, Roelle, but she had readied Brienne for the path that anyone would have seen for her. An unfeeling husband. A cold marriage. Duty. Always duty. It wasn’t Septa Roelle’s fault that the gods had other plans. It was Brienne’s fault, or the fault of the gods, or the fault of whatever madness seized Jaime that night in Kings Landing and drove him to her room and drove him to kiss her and then take her to bed. Septa Roelle prepared Brienne for a world in which no man would ever want her, for any amount of time. She could never have conceived of a world in which a man would want her for just long enough.

When Brienne’s daughter is born, it is obvious, Brienne is sure, who the father is. The babe’s eyes are blue, not green, and her nose looks remarkably like Brienne’s father’s nose, but aside from that…the babe’s skin is not as pale as Brienne’s, and her hair is tufted curls of spun gold, even matted down and sticky-wet. She is a beautiful child. Brienne knows she is exhausted, and she has a mother’s love already, but she cannot see how anyone would argue. Sansa is the one who wraps Brienne’s daughter in a blanket. She coos softly to the babe, and then she surprises Brienne, nestling herself and the child into Brienne’s arms, so that both of them can hold the bundle together. The agony of the birth seems hours away already, and Brienne can feel herself drifting, but that frightens her. She remembers her own mother, pale and gasping for breath on the birthing bed. Her father had been crying, but trying to hide it. The two bundles in her mother’s arms hadn’t moved at all, wrapped in blankets, and even as young as she was, Brienne knew better than to ask after the babies for which she had been so excited. Her mother spoke, but said only vague things that confused and frightened Brienne, and then Brienne was ushered out of the room. Her father later told her that her mother had fallen asleep soon after, and never again woke. Childbirth is a dangerous business. A business Brienne never wanted for herself. She wonders if this is what her mother felt, at the end. A peace, after so long in pain.

“Sansa,” she makes herself say. “We have to go. We have to keep moving.”

“You need to rest,” Sansa argues, but Brienne shakes her head.

He came to her door. He did not seem in his cups, but he did seem despondent, and not quite himself. A kind of drunkenness, she would later decide.

“She can’t even look at me,” he said, and Brienne understood. Brienne hadn’t seen much of Jaime’s interactions with his sister, but she knew that Cersei nearly ordered Brienne killed for the loss of Jaime’s hand. And she knew that the Lannisters were increasingly losing their grip. Cersei and her son and her father had all been like caged, pacing lions ever since word reached them that the northern army had survived whatever trap the Lannisters had planned at the Twins. The Starks had married Edmure Tully to Roslin Frey and absorbed what little remained of the Frey forces. Roose Bolton was dead. Walder Frey was, impossible as it seemed, also dead. Tywin Lannister had failed, and now there were rumors from across the sea of a rising force, and every day the Lannister family’s hold over the country seemed to lessen. Brienne considered herself lucky that she had escaped Cersei’s early wrath over Jaime’s lost hand with her life, but it twisted a knife in her belly that Jaime had avoided her ever since, apparently in favor of a sister who wouldn’t even look at him. He had promised Brienne that he was going to help her bring Sansa home, and yet he had stayed away instead.

“It is a difficult time for her,” Brienne said, diplomatically. She watched Jaime carefully as he paced.

“A difficult time for her? I’m the one who lost a hand. She looks at me as if I cut off hers.”

“Well,” Brienne started, but she didn’t finish. She found that she wasn’t in much of a mood to help Jaime complain about his sister. Jaime looked at her, but she had nothing left to give him.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Jaime said suddenly, laughing, though his expression crumpled at the same time. “To come here and expect sympathy from you.”

“Sympathy?” Brienne asked.

“A sympathetic ear to listen to my troubles, at least.”

“I’m sorry your sister won’t fuck you,” she somehow heard herself say, and Jaime laughed again, louder this time. His smile towards her was soft, and it reminded her that she did like him, however annoyed she had been with him lately.

“Thank you,” he said, rather grandly, bowing his head in a pantomime of gallantry, his bandaged stump pressed to his chest.

Brienne would never understand how they went from that to the act that conceived her daughter. Jaime ordered some wine brought up, but not very much. Brienne drank, but it was not enough to cloud her judgement. It was enough to allow her some freedom, though, and so she laughed and talked with him as if they were true friends. Perhaps that was the mistake. Jaime had been rejected and turned away by his sister. Coldly, he had said, and perhaps Brienne was too warm.

They compromise. Brienne falls asleep before she can argue much, but when she wakes, hours later, she makes Sansa mount their horse, and she presses her daughter into Sansa’s arms. She herself walks, holding on to the horse to keep herself on her feet, because she does not want to imagine riding the horse in her state. Sansa keeps her going by talking ceaselessly, more and more desperate the longer they walk. Brienne is certain she has never been so tired.

She supposes she is lucky; it was an easy pregnancy. Sansa told her often of how Lady Catelyn’s stomach grew so swollen with Rickon that she had to remain in bed for weeks before the birth. Brienne’s stomach did grow, distended and shocking to her, but she was still able to dress in the clothes she had always worn, and she never adopted the waddling walk that Sansa recalled from Catelyn’s later months. It was even a fairly quick birth, Sansa assures her. Brienne is inclined to agree, because she survived, and because she is able to walk so quickly afterward, though she still feels weak, and she knows that she is still bleeding.

The sun has only just set by the time they see the lights through the trees. Riverrun. Brienne is sure of it. She urges Sansa ahead on the horse, finding that she cannot go any further. Sansa goes, taking Brienne’s daughter with her, and Brienne sags against a tree, and does not open her eyes again until she hears hoofbeats approaching. It’s Sansa, with her brother the king on the horse in front of her.  

“There she is!” Sansa cries, and she leaps down on her own to help Brienne to her feet. The King in the North joins her, and he is whispering “thank you, thank you” into Brienne’s hair as he hugs her, and supports her, and keeps her standing. The exact opposite of what Brienne was so sure was going to happen.

Afterward, Brienne could not have said why it happened, but in the moment it was the only thing that made sense. Jaime surprised her with a kiss, leaning across the small table at which they were seated. They were both too tall to sit comfortably at it, and their legs kept bumping into each other, and when he kissed her she was so surprised that she jarred her knee against the underside of it. He laughed into the kiss, pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why’d you do it, then?” she asked.

“I’m not sorry I did it. I’m sorry you hurt your knee.”

“But…why?”

“Why not?”

“I’m not your sister.”

“No,” Jaime said. A snort of a laugh escaped him, then. “I’m very aware of that. And that’s exactly what I need.”

Need. Brienne liked that word for some reason. Need. It was a momentary thing, she knew. And it wasn’t a need at all. It was a want, but he’d dressed it up prettily, made it seem like it was something he relied on. Brienne liked to be relied on. Counted on. Needed. So few people had ever needed her, and there was some part of her that was eager to give him whatever he wanted, just for saying it. Need.

When he leaned in and kissed her again, she kissed him back. Tentative and clumsy, but as well as she knew how. Soon he was tugging her upward. He did not seem to mind that she stood over him. He did not seem to mind that she was not soft, like his sister, or beautiful, like his sister. He kissed her hungrily, which was not a description Brienne would have ever understood before, but there was no other word for it. Hunger. She was on her back in the narrow bed before she had the time to marvel that she had never been kissed before.

Jaime tried to pull off her clothes, but he fumbled with the laces, and she could see that he was embarrassed, so she helped him. Perhaps that embarrassed him more, but he seemed to forget it when she reached for the laces on his breeches and pulled at them. Perhaps it was hunger, that she felt. Perhaps it was need. Mostly, she was afraid that the moment would end. That one or both of them would come to their senses.

It was dark in the room, and Brienne was glad, though Jaime cursed when she put out one of the candles and made it still darker. He fumbled in the dark to try and light it again, but Brienne kissed him until he forgot it, and she could pretend. She wasn’t sure what she was pretending. If she ever kissed another man in all her life, she was sure she would imagine Jaime when she did it. Perhaps she was pretending that she was changed. Jaime’s weight was on her, and then he was kissing her skin. Her neck, her breasts, her stomach. She understood in a vague sort of way what was happening, but she was still surprised when his mouth met the spot between her legs that made her want to cry out. She kept herself quiet by pressing the back of her hand over her mouth, and in the morning she would find her teeth had left marks there.

Jaime spoke several times. Amused or perhaps amazed as he realized that he was doing something for her that no one ever had. He seemed smug about it, too, and he said several things about how he didn’t even need a second hand with a tongue as talented as his, and Brienne wondered if perhaps she should be embarrassed by how needily she responded to that, but she couldn’t feel anything but bliss.

Septa Roelle told her that it would hurt, when a man entered her for the first time, but there was nothing so bad. A bit of discomfort, but it was only from the newness of it. Jaime was over her, gentle, and his words had gone from smug to sweet, and Brienne could hardly keep up with him even so. After, his arm gave out, and he practically fell atop her, which made him laugh, and made her laugh as well. She could feel heat on her skin as she came down from the high of her pleasure. Jaime seemed uncertain, after, in a way he wasn’t when he had been inside her.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “It was…yes.”

He kissed her again. A firm press of his lips against hers. He hummed into it, like he’d thought of something he wanted to say, but then he didn’t say it when he pulled back again. She found herself looking at him in the moonlight that filtered in through the curtains. Her eyes had adjusted, and his gleamed a bit in the reflection. Like some shadow creature had stolen into her room. He was smiling at her, and she smiled back. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her in this light.

In the morning, Brienne wakes feeling rested. Lady Catelyn sits by her bedside, holding Brienne’s daughter. When Brienne sees her lady, she nearly cries like a child herself. There is a new scar on Lady Catelyn’s neck, but it is the only sign of the massacre that almost occurred at the Twins. Lady Catelyn is looking back at her, smiling, and Brienne wonders how she can. She is holding the evidence of Brienne’s failure in her arms, and still she smiles.

“I’m sorry,” Brienne says. “I couldn’t find Arya.”

“Never apologize,” Lady Catelyn replies. “I’m the one who sent you out there alone. I’m the one…” She trails off, and she looks down at Brienne’s daughter, and Brienne understands. She manages to sit up. Struggling against the exhaustion that threatens to drag her back under.

“Lady Catelyn, you don’t need to fear,” she says. “I…it was a mistake, what I did. I will admit to that. But it wasn’t…whatever you are thinking. I…it was not by force.”

The relief in Catelyn’s frame is obvious, and she leans forward, over the bed, and pulls Brienne into a tight hug, one arm holding on to the babe and the other to Brienne. Brienne does cry, then, perhaps for the first time since she woke and found Jaime gone from her room.

“Have you given her a name?” Catelyn asks, and Brienne nods.

“Yes,” she says. “If it please you.”

In the morning, Jaime was gone. Brienne had expected it, and yet she cried anyway, the tears surprising her. When next they saw each other, in the throne room for some court function that she was pressured to attend, he spoke to her as if nothing had happened, and Brienne resolved not to mention it. She had known all along that he would not be hers to keep, and she had made the choice to keep kissing him anyway. She should not be so bereft.

Knowing it was foolish didn’t stop her from feeling it, and so she resolved not to think about it any longer. She avoided him. Threw herself into trying to figure out a way to get Sansa back to her mother. She befriended Jaime’s brother, who was not nearly as kind as Jaime made him out to be, but who at least admitted he did not want Sansa in the capital any more than she did. Jaime urged caution to Tyrion, but never to Brienne. He watched her, sometimes, when they were forced to interact, but it was always with the rest of his family present, and he rarely spoke to her.

She noticed her stomach, first. A softness she’d never experienced. It did not take her long after that to surmise what had happened. She considered telling Jaime, but if he or Tywin knew that she carried his child, she would never be allowed to leave. Tywin would force them to be wed, and she would have to endure here, give birth here, while Jaime continued to pine after his sister and the Lannisters continued to abuse their power for their own aims. No, her child would not be a part of that, she decided. She went to Tyrion, instead, and told him that she needed to get Sansa out of the city sooner than she’d expected. She did not tell him that she was with child, but later she would look back on it, and she would be sure that he had known.

Margaery and Loras Tyrell were the ones who surprised Brienne the most. Margaery was set to marry Joffrey, but that didn’t stop her from helping to convince Sansa to trust Brienne and Tyrion’s plan. And Loras was the one who promised to sneak Sansa away on the evening they were meant to run, under the guise of escorting her to Margaery for a meal and a conversation. Brienne was no longer the girl who wept bitter tears the night Renly wed Margaery, and she was grateful for any help that they could offer.

She went to see Jaime in the White Sword Tower one last time, the night before they were set to leave. Joffrey’s wedding was happening in the next few days, and Brienne knew that they had to be away before that, but leaving without saying goodbye to Jaime seemed…

She wore a loose-fitting tunic to see him, and breeches. She still had not begun to grow much, but she felt like she was huge, obvious. She was relieved when he didn’t notice.

“I need to take Lady Sansa before the wedding,” she said.

“It’s not that simple,” he replied quietly, looking attacked in a way that annoyed her. “My father and sister are watching us carefully. If you…”

“You never intended to let her go, did you?” she asked.

“Cersei?”

“Sansa.” At her scorn, he seemed surprised. Hurt. She could not let it reach her. She could not remember how she had felt when he touched her. “You find excuses not to help me. Every time.”

“They aren’t excuses. It’s a delicate situation.”

No, a delicate situation was what Brienne was in. It made her furious, suddenly. How irresponsible of him, to come to her room. To kiss her, knowing as he must have that she had not been kissed before. That she would be reckless and allow him to do whatever he wanted to her, because she had been so little loved that even if she wasn’t half in love with him, she would have been curious enough to do it. He was sad and lonely and went to the one person he knew who was likely sadder and lonelier than him. How dare he?

“Forgive me then,” she said. She could hear the cold in her own voice. Would it make him want her again? If she was cold like his sister? Cruel like his sister? “For putting you in such a difficult position.”

“Brienne,” he sighed, and he tried to move around the table to get to her, but she stepped back, firmly.

“I should have known better than to rely on an oathbreaker to keep his promises,” she said, and that stopped his advance for long enough that she was able to leave the room, and go to her own, and pack her bag. He never tried to follow.

It seems almost too good to be true. Robb Stark does not imprison her or order her executed for her part in freeing Jaime. He thanks her, instead. He holds Little Catelyn in his arms and makes jokes about Brienne’s daughter growing up great friends with his own son, Eddard.

“She is a bastard,” Brienne reminds him. Not coldly, but practical. She cannot afford to forget the reality that she and her daughter now face.

“Not a bastard,” Robb answers easily, meeting her eyes when she tries to avoid him. “A Tarth.”

“Your grace…”

“A Tarth,” he repeats, and perhaps he knows, too, the way Lady Catelyn surely must know. The way Lady Sansa surely must know. But he looks at her with kindness, and she nods, and Catelyn Tarth is officially named.

Lady Catelyn and Queen Talisa help Brienne as she recovers her strength. Talisa is kind and generous with her time, and unlike any queen Brienne has ever imagined. She and Lady Catelyn tell Brienne of the news that has been trickling in from Kings Landing: Joffrey dead at his wedding. Lord Tyrion arrested for the crime. And then there is more news. Oberyn Martell dead. Gregor Clegane dead. Tywin Lannister dead. Tyrion Lannister escaped. Weeks pass, and each raven from the city seems to bring tidings of some new horror.

What of Jaime? Sometimes, she wants to ask. She doesn’t.

He saw them on the boat. He was running to the dock, his sword at his hip, and she wondered if he would force her to draw against him, and so she did not wait to find out. She bent down and pushed away from the wooden dock, sending their small boat out into the water. Margaery must have not been successful in covering their departure. They would have to move quickly once they got to the opposite shore. She picked up the oars.

“He’s coming,” Sansa whispered behind her. “He sees us.”

Brienne did not wait. She threw all her strength into it, rowing them away from the dock.

“What are you doing, you foolish woman?” he shouted after her, but he was too far to reach them, and no one else had yet followed him. Brienne stood and turned to look back at him, and she could see little of his face. It reminded her of that night. Only moonlight lit him, and his expression was in shadow. He was panting from the run.

“You weren’t going to help me,” she said, accusing. “I’m keeping my oaths.”

“Brienne, please just,” he hissed at her, but then there was a second hissing, another sound, and something slammed into Brienne’s back, just below her shoulder. She gasped, and Sansa screamed, and pulled Brienne down. She was trying to manage the oars, but Brienne took over. Another arrow whistled past. Jaime was shouting at the guards to stop. There was no pain yet, and so Brienne would row as fast as she could. As long as she could. To get as far as she could before they had to stop.

Sansa had her hand on Brienne’s back, pressing against the wound, and Brienne rowed, and rowed, and did not look back.

News comes from the front: a Lannister delegation wishes to meet to discuss peace terms in the name of King Tommen. Lady Catelyn is staunchly against it, but Robb calls Brienne into his solar so that it can be discussed.

“You took the Kingslayer back to Kings Landing,” he says. The Blackfish grunts in annoyance to be reminded. Lady Catelyn looks furious that he has brought it up. Talisa smiles encouragingly. Robb doesn’t do anything. Just looks directly at Brienne when he speaks. Watching her. “You said that he was trying to help you return my sister to me.”

“Yes, he was,” Brienne says, because no matter what else is true, Jaime did try. Not enough, perhaps. But she knows he wanted to.

“And yet when you escaped, it was the other brother who helped you.”

“Along with the Tyrells, yes. No one was pleased with how Lady Sansa was being treated, but Ser Jaime and the Tyrells were trying to avoid clashing with Tywin. Lord Tyrion was…less concerned with his father’s opinion.”

“Yes, apparently,” The Blackfish puts in.

“And the Tyrells? Do you think they want peace?” Robb asks.

“I don’t pretend to know what they want. Lady Margaery was always kind to me, and she told me that she hated to see Lady Sansa in pain. That’s as much as I can say.”

“The Tyrells will want power,” Lady Catelyn says. “Which they have, now that Margaery is married to Tommen. How long that will last…I don’t believe we can say. It depends on Cersei Lannister.”

“She may understand that she’s in a precarious position,” the Blackfish says. “That may be why she’s reaching out to us. She needs allies.”

“They tried to kill us once, Robb,” Lady Catelyn says. “Don’t let them get a second chance.”

When they reached the shore, Brienne allowed Sansa to bandage her shoulder. Sansa was squeamish about the blood at first, but only for a bit. She had steady hands, and Brienne thanked her, praised her, until the color came back into the girl’s cheeks.

They bought a horse from an innkeep with more than half the gold that was left for them in the bottom of the boat by somebody—Tyrion, most likely—and they made quick time. Brienne’s shoulder throbbed and her stomach swelled the longer they rode, but she would not slow or stop for anything. If she was taken back to Kings Landing alive, they would know about the babe. If she was taken back dead, Lady Sansa would be trapped there. This was the only chance for escape.

They slept in empty barns and hidden in thick bushes more often than not, because it was too much risk to get a room at an inn, though occasionally they were both too tired to think much of their safety. One night they were hit by a rainstorm, and they packed up their sodden campsite and managed to find an inn with a room available. In the firelight, Sansa noticed the way that Brienne’s tunic stuck to her stomach, and then that was that secret discovered. Sansa asked questions, like a much younger child. She wanted to know if the father was a man that Brienne loved. Brienne answered yes, though she hated to admit it, even without a name attached. She didn’t want Sansa to know about Jaime, but she also didn’t want Sansa to think that some violence had been done to her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sansa asked. “We could have taken him with us.”

“He would not have wanted to come,” Brienne answered. Whispered into the space between them in the narrow bed they shared. She wondered who Sansa was imagining. Some stablehand, perhaps. Large, with shovel-like hands. A weak chin, hidden by a bushy brown beard. Yes, that was the sort of man who would foist a bastard child on a woman like Brienne. Not Ser Jaime, with his beauty and his cruelty and his obsessive love for his sister.

Ser Jaime arrives in Riverrun within a moon after Catelyn’s birth. There is little warning for Brienne, who spends most of her days now with Lady Catelyn and Lady Sansa. Guarding them, she claims, although it more and more feels like just trailing after them, aimless. She is thinking about returning home to Tarth. Her father would like to meet her child, and with Catelyn legitimized, perhaps she does not need to worry about his reaction. He will ask questions, but Brienne has time to think of how to answer them, and it would be good to be back there, where she can have a purpose.

And then Robb’s squire enters the room, and he tells Brienne that she is wanted at the gate. She goes, and Robb and the Blackfish are waiting for her.

“A party of Lannisters,” Robb tells her. “They’re here to negotiate peace terms on behalf of King Tommen.”

“Oh,” Brienne says. She wants to pretend like she has no idea why she has been summoned, but her stomach flutters all the same. A foolishness that she’s glad the king can’t see, though she has to wonder at what he does. She wonders at what Lady Sansa has guessed, and at what Lady Sansa might have said, and what Robb Stark thinks.

“The Kingslayer sent a messenger to announce his coming. He asked after your health. I told him you would be at the meet.”

“Yes,” Brienne says. “All right.”

She does not have time to worry. She does not have time to prepare. She thinks of her daughter, safe in the castle with Talisa and Sansa and Catelyn. Jaime need not know. No one will say a word to him, Brienne is sure. He need not know anything at all.

The three of them ride out together to meet the Lannister party on the bridge, but Jaime rides alone. He looks remarkable in his Lannister armor, though worn down, and haggard. He locks eyes with her immediately, but then looks away, and she is relieved. She looks down to the end of the bridge, where some of his men wait. She finds it easier to watch them and pretend at alertness than to look at Jaime so close.

He and Robb speak cordially of the last time Jaime was in Stark and Tully hands. There is an amusement in Jaime’s voice that Brienne is glad to hear, although he is tense and distrusting all the same. She can see him often, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, and she finds she grows tense as well.

“Why are you here?” Robb asks at last. “Let us have the terms and be done with it.”

“The king wishes to have peace.”

“The king is practically still a child. If there’s anyone who wants peace…” Robb points out, and it makes Jaime laugh. A harsh, barking sound.

“You think my sister has sent me to negotiate for peace? My sister wanted your head, your mother’s head, and the head of your sister. It is the Tyrells who have their influence over Tommen now.”

“So it’s the Tyrells who want peace.”

“It’s any sane man in the seven kingdoms who wants peace. This has gone on long enough.”

“An easy thing to say for a man on the losing side.”

“You haven’t sacked Kings Landing yet, and you won’t, as long as the Tyrells hold with us. Which they will, as long as Tommen continues to be their creature.” Brienne sneaks a look at Jaime, then, hearing the bitterness in his voice. What has happened in Kings Landing since she left? Part of her does not want to know. Part of her does not care. But Jaime cares for Tommen. She remembers that. Remembers the way he talked about the child and his love of kittens. He’d seemed wondering about it, every time he mentioned it. Amazed that someone so gentle could have been born of him and Cersei. Now, he looks beaten down by it. By the months that have passed since she saw him last.

“The peace terms,” Robb says, and Jaime nods.

Brienne knows little of war, and less still of the kinds of things that wars are fought for. But the peace terms offered are generous. An independent north with a strong trade agreement. An arrangement much like the one that Dorne has with the rest of Westeros. Robb is not a child any longer, and he knows to hide how pleased he is, but Brienne knows he will be.

“My sister,” Robb says, once the terms have been delivered. Jaime’s expression is impossible to read.

“The Lady Brienne stands behind you. I know she would not have returned here without Sansa.”

“Arya,” Robb fires back, and Jaime winces.

“She has not been seen in Kings Landing since before your father’s death. I’m sorry. My father and sister tried to hide the fact of her disappearance, but the truth is that they never had her. You’ll have to content yourself with Sansa. Thanks to Lady Brienne.”

“Believe me, we are well aware of the role Brienne played, and what she sacrificed to bring my sister home to us,” Robb snaps. He looks at Brienne when he says it, and he smiles in an encouraging way that probably makes her flush, if she knows herself at all. Jaime is watching her now, openly, not pretending not to. Brienne meets his eyes, and there is too much there. She preferred looking at him in the dark.

“I would speak with her,” Jaime says. “Alone. If you please, Brienne.”

There is nothing Brienne could want less than to speak with Jaime alone, and yet there is also nothing she wants more, and so she finds herself nodding, and hating herself for it. To still be so easily drawn in by him. Robb meets her eyes and does not look away until she nods at him as well, and he nods in return. A worried crease between his brows.

The Blackfish is reluctant to withdraw completely, and so he stands halfway back on the bridge, ready to charge to her assistance if she needs it. Brienne finds the idea somewhat laughable. With one hand, Jaime is no contest for her, and he knows it. Jaime seems to find it even more amusing. He has a grim, humorous set to his mouth that she well recognizes.

“A bit late for a chaperone to oversee our conversations,” he says when Robb is back inside the gates and The Blackfish is far enough away that he cannot hear Jaime’s low voice. “It’s good to see they let you keep your head after defying the king’s orders.”

“Not all kings are Joffrey,” Brienne says, and Jaime flinches at that, or perhaps at the coldness in her voice, and she is glad. There is a new fierceness in her, she thinks. A kind of feral camouflage that she’s much more willing to use than she used to be. Jaime is her friend, and she also loves him, but he is a threat, now, and she knows that too well to forget it.

“No,” Jaime says. “Fortunately for all our sakes, my second son is much better mannered.”

“And your sister?”

“Clings to her power tenuously in Kings Landing, but it won’t last. It doesn’t matter. I don’t serve her any longer. I serve the king.”

“You always served the king.”

“As a Kingsguard, yes. But not in truth. It took them stripping the cloak from my shoulders for me to start doing what I should have always done.”

She had noticed, of course, that he was wearing Lannister armor rather than his Kingsguard set, but she hadn’t thought…

“Why?” she asks.

“Why do you think? What use is a one-handed Lord Commander?”

“That didn’t stop them before.”

“And then I lost a king.”

“That was hardly your fault.”

“No. It wasn’t. Perhaps if the boy hadn’t been such a shit, he wouldn’t have paid with his life, but…the truth is that my sister wanted me away from Tommen. It was a calculated move on her part. It failed. Tommen sees her for what she is.”

“And what is she, exactly?” Brienne asks, because she’s not sure she can trust that Jaime knows himself what his sister has become. Or perhaps always was, if the stories are true. She was just better at hiding it before. Jaime smiles at her, but it aches, and she is sorry for her coldness. She hates that she’s sorry.

“When Varys told me that you were leaving the city with Sansa, I raced to catch you. Stop you, perhaps, or give you gold, at least, for your journey. Or go with you. I hardly know. I should have known I wouldn’t be the only one Varys would tell.” When Brienne fails to understand, he says, “she’s a monster, Brienne. I knew it before. I thought we were made of the same cruel cloth, but we aren’t. She’s the one who sent the guard. I thought…I thought they had killed you.”

“Oh,” Brienne says. “It was just an arrow. It wasn’t enough to kill me.”

Something breaks open on Jaime’s face, and Brienne is surprised to see it. It isn’t until just now that she realizes that he has been guarded with her, as well. A kind of defiant hunch to his shoulders. An intentional smoothness of his features. She isn’t used to Jaime hiding himself away, and yet he has, here.

“No. I can see that.” He tries to smile, but it seems uncertain, and Brienne doesn’t understand. “And the babe?”

She takes a step back towards the castle, which is a telling enough move that she should not make.

“What?” she asks.

“I am many things, but I’m not a blind man. I saw, when you stood in that boat.” He is holding himself quite tightly. His left hand is wrapped around the hilt of his sword, as if he means to draw it, but she knows he won’t. He uses it to keep him steady. She does the same thing. She shakes her head, and his expression crumbles. “I’m sorry,” he says. She is surprised to see how devastated he is.

“No, I.” She shakes her head again. “No, there was no babe. You saw wrong.”

“You’re lying,” Jaime says, and she is, and so she shakes her head again.

“No. Please, Jaime. There was no babe. I cannot…” She sees the way he’s looking at her, half-wondering, half-hoping. She feels that cold fierceness come over her again. “You cannot take her. I will kill you if you try.”

He has always been an expressive man, Jaime. Brienne spent too much time around him early in their acquaintance, and she supposes she is something of an expert now on the way his face changes. Small, minute changes that perhaps other people do not care to notice, but she does. And she can see the way it hits him. Her lack of trust and her intention to keep his child away from him. His awareness of the fact that he has a daughter. His awareness of the fact that his daughter lives. It all washes over his face like a wave. Like the storms that used to batter the coast of Tarth, frightening and thrilling Brienne at once when she was a child.

“You think I would take her?” he asks.

“If your sister ordered it.”

“Come now, Brienne. You know me better than that.”

She supposes she does, and yet she shakes her head anyway.

“I thought I did,” she said. “And then you took my maidenhead and disappeared, and ignored me.”

“I told you, my sister and father were watching us carefully! If they…”

“If they knew I was with child, they would have forced you to marry me, and I would have been trapped there. With you. And her. And you would have allowed it.”

Jaime’s expression crumbles again. Disbelief.

“You’re so certain,” he says.

“Yes.”

“I have spent the past moons doing everything in my power to make peace between the crown and your precious Starks. I have stood against my sister. My family. I am not the same man I was when I was captured in the Whispering Wood. I thought you knew that.”

“I thought I did too.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“You didn’t.” She regrets the words as soon as they are out of her mouth. She supposes she even sees the sense in what Jaime is saying. From where she stood, it looked like nothing, but she can remember the harsh whisper of his voice when he was in bed with her. The way he said that no one could ever know. The way he spoke to her afterward, eyes darting and voice low and pleased to see her. A secret, carried close. Ashamed, she had thought. Afraid that Cersei would find out and be disappointed in him. Angry. Betrayed. She never thought it could be to keep Cersei’s claws from her.

“I didn’t,” Jaime agrees. His voice has waned, the strength of his conviction leaving him. He looks down at his golden hand, and Brienne wishes to take it. Pull his eyes away. She doesn’t.

“Her name is Catelyn,” she says. “Catelyn Tarth.”

Jaime’s eyes close briefly, and his head hangs lower. His breath is shuddered.

“He legitimized her,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Does he know?”

“I think he must.”

“I should never have…”

“No. And I shouldn’t have either.”

“I was going to say I should never have let you think that I didn’t…Brienne, I was afraid. Terrified of them. Of what they would do.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I think so. I don’t know.”

“You trusted me once.”

“And I knew you. And you loved your sister beyond all reason.”

“Perhaps I did, but…”

“Did?”

“I’m not the man I was. I haven’t been, for longer than I was willing to admit. I hope you’ll trust that, one day.”

He has a weary sort of resignation to him, and Brienne knows that their conversation is coming to an end. She nods. She feels a real hope. Not for them, necessarily, she doesn’t think. There is no reason for them to come together, if her daughter’s name is granted and there is no reason to fear the stigma of a bastard name. But if Jaime truly has decided to stand against his sister, then perhaps there is hope for the realm.

“I will try, Jaime,” she says.

He nods again, and he reaches for his sword belt. Unbuckles it.

“I have something for you,” he says. “Not for your king. For you.”

He takes it off, and he holds it out to her, flat on both palms. The Valyrian steel sword that his father gave him.

“No, I can’t,” she says.

“It’s yours.”

“It’s too much, Jaime.”

“It’s yours,” he repeats, sterner this time, and she reaches out reluctantly to take it. When she does, he grips her hand with his, curls her fingers around the steel. She looks down at the belt. There are sunbursts and moons embossed in gold, along with the lion rampant. She looks up from the sword to meet his eyes, and he smiles, pained. “I was going to give it to you. To help you bring the Stark girl home. I had the belt made. Some armor, too. I wasn’t lying, Brienne. Not to you.”

She finds that her eyes are filled with tears, though she blinks them back quickly. Jaime’s fingers are very warm against her skin. She nods, and he nods in return. It feels like a promise being made, although she doesn’t know yet what either of them are promising.

At last, Jaime releases her hand, and he steps back. Without his sword to clutch, his left hand clenches into a fist and then slowly unclenches at his side as he backs away. He does not say anything else. He offers her a low bow and then turns and walks away, his shoulders slumped and his stride unwavering. She watches him until he reaches the end of the bridge. She is still holding his sword. Her sword, now.

“Why did he give it to you?” Robb asks, later, in the safety of his solar. The terms of the peace agreement were found to be acceptable, with a few caveats, and Robb will ride out to meet Jaime again on the morrow. Brienne will go with him.

“He said it’s mine,” Brienne replies. “That he had planned to give it to me to help me get Sansa home. When the time was right.”

“Do you believe him?” Robb asks. Brienne looks again at the sunbursts on the belt. The moons. She remembers his fingers wrapped around hers, and the look in his eyes when she met them.

“Yes,” she answers.