Work Text:
"Brienne!"
His voice is sharp and she nearly falls over her own feet in her haste to leave the cave. She has Oathkeeper in her hand and looks around wildly for an attacker. She doesn't see one.
"Look!" he is kneeling in the snow and points at something.
She sheaths her sword and looks closer. There, in the middle of all the white there is a tiny blot of green. A little snowdrop. The first of this spring. She looks at him. He stares at the plant with a frightning intensity. He opens his mouth, but no words come. Makes a jerky motion with his hand as if to touch the flower. Then he looks up at her. His eyes are wide, the muscles of his jaw are flexing, his expression is rapidly changing from shock to delight and back.
"Green." he finally manages to whisper.
And she understands which words can't find their way over his lips: I had not dared to hope I would live long enough to see the green of spring again. It's what she feels herself.
He barks out a sharp laugh, presses lips and eyes shut, runs his hand over his face. When he opens his eyes again they are swimming in tears that are quickly beginning to fall. His laugh is rough and grows louder every second. She would believe him a madman if it weren't for her own tears wetting her face and the laughter working its way out up from her chest. It has been a long time she laughed out loud and it makes her feel light-headed.
She grabs his hand, drags him up and a bit away from the plant so they won't trample it down and begins to tug and push him around in the half-forgotten steps of Tarth's spring dances. These dances are made for groups and not for couples, a swordbelt is rather cumbersome when dancing and their heavy boots don't make their movements more graceful but their laughter and shouts ring through the cold air and - by the Seven! - she has never felt so alive.
Jaime's hood falls back, his hair flops into his face, his laugh is so wide he shows all his teeth and his eyes are brighter than ever.
"It's so green! Did you see it?" he shouts between bouts of laughter. "It's going to be green again! Not the endless white and grey and muddy brown, but GREEN! Ah!"
He flings his arm around her neck and stops their dancing to look at the snowdrop again. It doesn't give any sign it is aware of the levels of ecstasy it elicits from them.
"Man, look at it! Hardly bigger than a mouse but it sends us two jumping around like young foals."
She giggles and rests her head against his. She feels the giddiness fade to peacefullness.
"My mother had a dress in this green." she says dreamily. "Or I think it was my mother, I was so little I can't remember clearly. It had a huge skirt that spread over the floor when she sat down. I would pretend the fabric was a meadow and I would place little white pebbles on it, as sheep. Like I saw them in the valleys on Tarth."
She falls silent for a moment. "I want to see these valleys again. All green with the white blots on it."
He smiles softly at her.
"You will. And we will lie beneath trees and stare up into the their crowns. And see hundreds of shades of green up their. With tiny golden spots where the sun shines through. We will live."