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“You can’t ever tell her.”
“I know.”
“She’ll be in danger if you do.”
“I won’t.”
A pause. “You’ll live amongst the other servants.”
“That’s fine.”
“You’re no longer who you were. That man died in the Riverlands, a traitor to the crown.”
A nod.
The older man stares him down, and turns to leave, the audience over. He moves to the end of the hall, hand on the door, and hesitates. A last call over his shoulder, his voice just a bit softer, kinder, than before.
“Protect her. Like you did her mother.”
The other man swallows hard, tensing at the words. “I didn’t protect her mother enough. But I won’t fail her.”
“Good,” says Lord Selwyn Tarth, and leaves.
He keeps his word, and protects his charge.
She grows, from a wailing infant to a chubby cheeked toddler, white blonde hair and sapphire eyes like her mother. She doesn’t understand the line between servant and noble, between hired help and family, and she puts her hand in his when they walk, her head on his shoulder when they sit, her smile directed up at him as he bids her good morning. She is a beautiful, brilliant, kind child, and even if she wasn’t who she was he knows that he would have loved her anyway.
“Did you know my mother?”
He pauses, looking down at her, her hands buried in the sand, her fingers wiggling underneath the neat little pile in front of her.
“I did,” he replies.
She looks up at him then, and sometimes those brilliant blue eyes of hers [perfect mirrors of another set he’s known] threaten to bring him to his knees in long buried grief. “What was she like?”
“Brave,” he answers, kneeling down, his fingers burying into the sand next to her. “Your mother was brave, and honourable, and fierce. She was the greatest knight I’ve ever known.”
The Evenstar dies when she is ten, fading into the early morning light with his granddaughter by his side.
He pulls her away from the body, murmurs to her that it’s time to let him go, and she turns to him sobbing, her tears soaking into his gambeson, her head pressing into his chest.
“Who do I have now?” she whispers, her voice full of pain.
“You will always have me, my lady,” he tells her, promising to himself to never let her go.
A distant cousin comes months later, once Lord Selwyn is buried in the Tarth crypts, buried next to his wife and his son and his daughter [his chest hurts when he thinks of her buried in the ground, I didn’t protect her, I didn’t save her]. The cousin is to serve as interim Evenstar until the young lady Alysane of Tarth comes of age, but there is something sinister about this man, something conniving and plotting and dangerous.
The cousin says it outright one day, breaking his fast in the main hall. “She’s a bastard,” he scoffs, addressing the maester. “The old man only legimitized her after Brienne died, out of sheer shame.”
His hand closes around the pommel of his sword, instinctive. He opens his mouth, then closes it. He is a servant. [The man you were is dead, says Lord Selwyn.].
“She was, in fact, legitimised,” the maester insists in return, but the cousin dismisses him with the wave of a hand.
“No. She is a bastard, and I am the rightful lord of Tarth. She can live here for now, but she will not inherit this place.”
Alysane looks up from her plate, her little face set hard and firm. “I am the future Evenstar, cousin,” she says, her voice only wavering a little. “You cannot put me aside.”
Her cousin laughs at her. “Careful, child, I tolerate you, but you should not push the limits of my graciousness towards you.”
His fingers itch to pull his blade. To threaten the heir of Tarth in her own hall, her own home… But he stays his hand. [the man I was is dead, dead, dead…]
Alysane stands. She is small, yet to grow into the height of her mother, but the strength she shows, the determination in her face is all Brienne. “I am not someone to be tolerated, cousin. I am the future Evenstar. You would do well to remember that.”
Her cousin’s face goes cold, dark. “Is that a threat, child?”
Alysane lifts her chin a bit higher, tries to hide the shaking in her hands, slipping them behind her back. “Not a threat, cousin, but a reminder.”
“You think because your mother managed to get herself raped by some sellsword in her foolish quest to be a knight makes you the heir to Tarth?! I would be failing our house if I let our lands fall into the hands of some lowborn’s get.”
Tears come to the his lady’s eyes, chin trembling, but still she stands tall. [you would be so proud, Brienne, look at her, strong and brave and bright]. “Apologize, cousin. I give you a chance to take it back.”
He scoffs at her. “What? What will happen? Your greying guard with one hand will stop me? You’re a bastard, my lady, now stand aside and let me rule our house as it should be ruled.”
[the man you were is dead, he is dead, don’t tell her, don’t -]
“The lady will do nothing of the sort,” he says [and it comes back to him in an instant, like old gloves or beloved shoes, sliding back into himself as if it’s been no time at all, back into his own skin and voice and body]
The cousin looks at him, incredulous. “You dare speak to me, guard?”
“Apologize to the lady. You have one chance.”
The cousin barks out a laugh. “And then what? You’ll strike me down? You’re a common foot soldier, a one handed one at that, and you…” He falters, suddenly off balance.
The guard smiles [a smile that, some have said, years ago, cuts deep and swift like a knife]. “Yes?”
The cousin looks panicked, his eyes going to his own guards, his mouth gaping wide. “You…no, no, it can’t…”
Alysane looks up at her beloved guard, confused. “It’ll be alright,” he tells her, her hand going to her shoulder, his thumb brushing away the one single tear escaping down her cheek.
“Jaime Lannister died in the Riverlands, years ago,” breathes the cousin.
The guard steps forward, hand moving from his lady’s shoulder to the pommel of his sword. “That’s what they say,” he replies.
“But - why? Why would you… how? And to guard your captor’s bastard?”
The smile drops from the guard’s lips. “Call my lady a bastard again, and you’ll regret it. She is not a bastard, she is the daughter of Brienne of Tarth, and the future Evenstar. You will show her respect.”
“She’s lowborn, some common man’s get. How can a bastard like her rule -“
Metal lands on bare skin, the cousin gasps and draws his mouth shut. “I warned you,” says the guard. “One more word and I’ll slice you from neck to groin. Get your men and leave Tarth, and never set foot here again.”
“You can’t -“
The cousin drops to the ground, blood pooling beneath him. He turns to the cousin’s guards. “I may have only one hand, and I’m not the fighter I used to be, but do you really want to risk fighting me?”
The guards exchange a single look between themselves, and run for the door.
He hesitates in front of her chambers.
He’s not sure what to do next, who to be next. He’s spent ten years in the skin of a common guardsman, ten years sleeping in a barracks and dressing in rough spun clothes, ten years serving as a simple guard [and yet, not so different from another time, years spent guarding doors and chambers and little lords and ladies].
He’s spent ten years avoiding the truth.
He knocks on the door.
“Come in,” she says softly, her voice barely audible through the thick wood of the door.
He steps inside her chambers, approaches her slowly. She’s sat on her bed, her eyes rimmed red, her cheeks streaked with tears.
She looks up at him. “Are you really Jaime Lannister?” she asks, and hearing his name on her lips nearly drives the breath straight out of his chest.
“Yes,” he breathes.
She shakes her head, confused. “But…why? Why have you been my guard all these years? You’re, you’re a knight!”
All the other words she could have called him. Kingslayer, oathbreaker, man without honour, traitor, murderer… and she chooses that one. [just like her mother]
“I was, my lady.”
“So why?”
He takes a deep breath. “I owed a debt. A debt to your mother. A debt I can never fully repay.”
“What debt?”
His words catch in his throat, suddenly lost in the years and the miles and the blood and the pain between now and that moment where he doomed Brienne, a stolen moment between two soldiers, where he wrapped her in his arms and ran his lips across her skin, where he pushed his body between hers, her kisses on his neck, her hands grasping at his back as he moved with her, inside her, his lady knight. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes.
“She saved my life, long ago. And I - I couldn’t save hers.”
He’d ridden hard from his camp, when the raven came. [Come at once. She’s dying].
He’d left his men, his colours, his house behind. All the way to Storm’s End, to a ship that carried him across the waves to Tarth, green lush mountains rising from a brilliant blue sea.
He bursts into the sick room, his skin dirty and his hair wild from hours and days spent on horseback, at sea, and he nearly falls to his knees to see her like this, pale and weak and gaunt, her eyes faded and the light within her gone dim.
The tall man next to her bedside rises, his face grief-stricken and yet also angry, striding over to Jaime, eyes blazing. “Do you know what you’ve done -“
“Father,” she murmurs, pushing herself up on her elbows for a moment, her arms shaking with the effort.
The tall man closes his mouth. The anger does not fade.
Jaime moves past him, down to her bedside. “You - Brienne, I…”
Her arms give out, and she falls back into her pillows. “Ser Jaime, I don’t have…” she winces, her eyes drawing closed.
He touches her hand, her skin cool to the touch. He wraps his fingers around her own, squeezing them tight.
“It’s alright, Brienne. It’s alright.”
She opens her eyes again, meeting his own. “Protect her,” she whispers.
“Protect…?” He starts, confused, until his gaze falls upon the bassinet across the room, the wet nurse, the small bundle held tight in the servant’s arms.
His breath catches in his chest, the shock coursing through him [his hands on her body, his lips on her neck, her limbs and skin and warmth pressed against him as he moves within her].
“Wh-what?”
“Please. Please Ser Jaime,” she pleads, her voice breaking, tears pulling at the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t, I couldn’t-“
He shakes his head, struggling to breathe, squeezing her hand tight within his own. “There is nothing to forgive,” he tells her, his eyes locking with her own. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have…” he says, the grief pulling at him hard, the knowledge that in his desire, in his passion he’d doomed her, he’d given her a death sentence, all because he needed her, wanted her like nothing he’d ever known.
“Don’t - don’t let her be a Lannister,” she whispers desperately. “Don’t let them hurt her. Please, Ser Jaime. Promise me.”
He comes in closer, bringing his hand to her cheek, trying not to sob. “I swear it, Brienne, I swear it.”
Alysane looks at him, really looks at him, past the old tattered armour, past the grey hair in his hair and beard, past the tired and worn lines in his face, and sees what he must have been, long ago. A lion.
“You’re not just my guard, are you?”
He shakes his head, afraid that if he speaks he’ll fall apart.
“Is that why you’ve been here all this time?”
He takes a moment, clears his throat. “I promised your mother. I promised I would protect you. And that’s what I’ll do until I draw my last breath.”
After… after the light had left her eyes for the last time, after the tears and pain and the anger, after they’d put her body in the crypts beneath Evenfall, with her armour to protect her into the great beyond, after all of that, a nursemaid places his daughter into his arms.
“She can never be a Lannister. It would doom her.”
Jaime stares down, scarcely breathing. His daughter’s eyes open, already a brilliant blue, blue like her mother’s, blue like the waters of her home. Tarth.
“I know,” he replies. He traces the baby’s cheek, his finger moving across her soft skin, memorising every feature, every detail. Another child of his unable to carry his name. His chest burns with the pain of it.
“She will be a Tarth. She will be the Evenstar,” Selwyn continues, his gaze hard.
“Yes,” Jaime agrees.
“You will stay then?”
His arms tighten unconsciously around the bundle in his arms. “I swore an oath,” he states, as if daring the Evenstar to contradict him.
“You can’t ever tell her.”
He looks back down into his daughter’s eyes. “I know.”
She doesn’t call him father. She doesn’t wear his colours, or bear his name.
But at night when she goes to sleep she asks him to tell her a story, to turn out the lights and wish her goodnight, even though she is far past the age for it. During the day, she has him eat with her at meals, has her walk with him in the halls, has him give her advice and help and knowledge for when she will rule her house.
When she becomes the Evenstar, she names him her castellan, appoints him as her advisor.
And when her first child is born, a beautiful green eyed boy she names Selwyn, she puts the babe in his arms.
“This is your grandfather,” she whispers into her son’s ear as she places him into Jamie’s embrace.
[and when he dreams that night, already missing the feel of his grandson in his arms, he dreams of the waves and beaches of Tarth, of a tall figure striding towards him, her blonde hair blowing in the wind, her smile as she draws near, and he knows that despite it all, despite the pain and the guilt and the grief, he kept his oath. He kept his promise.
“I protected her,” he whispers as the figure approaches, as he wraps her in his arms.
“I knew you would,” Brienne replies.]