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"Brienne Tarth," the receptionist repeated back to her, eyes fixed to the computer screen. "Here we are. All right, Brienne, you can take a seat, it will be just a few minutes wait. There's also a quick form to fill out for new patients, both sides, just bring it back when you're finished."
The receptionist smiled blandly at her, didn't so much as blink at Brienne's face. She must have seen it all, Brienne thought, working in a place like this.
She took the clipboard and pen and turned to survey the waiting area for a moment before heading over to a seat in the far corner. Wedged into the chair with its tasteful grey upholstery, she rested the clipboard on the purse in her lap and took quick stock of her surroundings: the swinging door she'd come in through; the corridors leading off either side of the reception desk; the wall of tinted glass windows to one side of her showing the courtyard two floors below and the building block opposite. There were four other people sitting around the spacious waiting area with its neat arrangements of modern furniture, one of them seated opposite Brienne was a young girl with her mother. Brienne let her eyes slide over the other patients without lingering, doing them the same courtesy she liked people to extend to herself.
Years ago she might have chosen to sit in the corner as a means to avoid attention - a futile move, of course, since a woman of her size couldn't avoid attention no matter what she did. These days, the matter of where she sat was determined more by a need to keep all exits in sight, and two walls at her back, than the severe self-consciousness that had plagued her teen years.
Really, she thought, her teenage self had no idea how good she had it; back when pimples and bad hair and a deep aversion to being called on by the teacher were her biggest problems.
After a final glance at the clock on the wall, Brienne dropped her eyes to the form. It only took her a few minutes to fill out, restraining a wince as she once again wrote her father's details in the emergency contact box.
Once she had settled back in place after returning the clipboard to the front desk she realised none of the other patients had even been called yet. The little girl was playing some kind of game on a tablet while her mother watched the daytime talk-show playing on the television mounted in the corner. The young man sitting nearest to Brienne was listening to glam rock with one earbud in.
Brienne was about to pull out her phone, resigning herself to a long wait, when she saw him.
He had come out of one of the consultation rooms down the corridor to the right. She only just happened to glance up and there he was, heading for the desk and speaking to the receptionist, pulling his wallet from his pocket.
She sat across the room, staring at the back of his head and half-profile she could see from her position. For a moment he turned his head to look towards the windows and she saw his face in full.
What was he doing here, in a clinic specialising in reconstructive cosmetic procedures? The man she was staring at so blatantly looked as beautiful now as he ever did; better, if anything. His hair was no longer buzzed regulation short, falling in thick golden waves around his perfect face, which was sporting an attractive, carelessly unshaven look like he was some model in an ad for men's cologne.
He looked amazing, and her eyes drank him in for those few seconds, her heart in her throat. He finished scheduling his next appointment and turned from the desk about to leave. She almost said his name before she remembered herself. Remembered the years that had passed since she saw him last. Remembered what she looked like now.
She cast around quickly for a paper or magazine to hide behind in case he looked her way. What kind of waiting room didn't have magazines?
"Tarth?"
Too late. She looked up, remaining seated despite the sudden urge to jump straight to attention. But as soon as she met his gaze she had not even the wherewithal of a former soldier - she was suddenly that awkward, ugly, acne-prone girl in the back of the class, sweating with terror at being called up to the blackboard.
"Brienne Tarth." He came over to where she sat, smiling down at her.
"Jaime. I mean - Major Lannister. Hello."
"Captain Tarth. At ease," he joked. "Fancy running into you here. Do you mind?" He gestured to the empty seat beside her and without waiting for another stammering response, sat down. "I hate to be the one to break it to you, Tarth, but we're actually both civilians, now."
She shrank back from his sudden proximity but there was nowhere to go in these small chairs. Jaime Lannister sitting right next to her, apparently for a chat, as if they were merely two old friends catching up.
She just went on staring as he talked. Had he seriously always been this handsome? It wasn't as if she'd forgotten what he looked like, it was just - well, things had been different then. She'd been different.
She'd been his subordinate, for one thing, and perfectly well aware of how inappropriate it was to notice such things about a superior officer.
"I heard you'd resigned after your last deployment," he said, looking at her scar now, the mottled purple minefield of her cheek. "I guess it was a rough one." She flushed anew as his piercing gaze left the scar to search her eyes.
She dropped her eyes to her hands, watching them twist nervously in her lap. "So... what are you doing here?" she said.
"Same as you, I imagine. Indulging my vanity. Though it's difficult in my case, of course, improving on perfection."
Her eyes shot back up to meet his again. "Sure you're not in for an ego reduction?"
He laughed and then spoke truthfully, as if insulting him had earned her the right to hear it. "It's the stump." He nodded down at his right hand - or the prosthetic he wore, rather, obscured by a black glove. "The scarring is still quite bad - you remember what a hack job it was. Literally. It's a little too Frankenstein's monster for my taste, and it's been causing trouble with some of the newer prosthetics I've been trying out. So here I am. They're going to see what they can do with it."
Whatever scars he still bore, they were currently hidden from sight.
She only knew what it had looked like before the medics had performed the emergency amputation that they had claimed was necessary to save his life. She'd believed it. She'd been the one in that dank pit of a cell with him, watching him fade a little with every breath. He'd been half dead by the time their own forces had moved in and finally retaken Harrenhal. But still he had roused enough to beg them not to do it. Of course they had anyway, and in so doing had ensured the end of his military career.
Brienne swallowed hard, willing the memories away so that she could respond. "The doctors here are meant to be the best in Westeros," she offered weakly.
His expression was shrewd. "Let’s hope. And you? You're looking well."
She scoffed.
"And you still take compliments as graciously as ever."
When did you ever compliment me? she wanted to ask. From the moment her troop had been assigned to his command in the Riverlands he'd given her nothing but grief, confirming every single deplorable rumour she'd ever heard about the man.
The receptionist called someone's name then, and they were promptly shown back to one of the consultation rooms. Brienne had arrived a bit early and had expected to wait, but it was now two minutes past the hour.
She frowned. She disliked poor time management.
"I'm next, I think," she said to Jaime. Major Lannister. "You don't have to keep me company. I'm sure you've got somewhere else to be."
He stretched out his feet and folded his arms. "Not really."
She sighed, her expression some awkward blend of grimace and smile. "So... how have you been?"
"Still a true adept at small talk, Tarth. Nicely handled."
"Still deserving of a medal for putting up with you and your inane blather."
"That’s ‘your inane blather, Sir’."
"We’re civilians."
"So we are. Do go on and insult me as freely as you like."
"You look good, too." His eyes lit up and she hurried on. "I was afraid it might not suit you, civilian life - it wasn’t your choice, after all, being discharged. But you - you seem to be doing well. I’m glad."
"RIght. And you? You did choose to walk away. You were about to make OF-3."
The fact that he had been following her career left her stammering for a reply. "I - I work in security now. It’s… rewarding. Well, anyway, it surely beats slopping through mud and freezing rain for days on end, eating MREs and hauling a thirty kilo pack around."
"Bullshit. Nothing beats running around in the mud and rain with a thirty key pack on. I even miss MREs."
"No you don’t."
"All right, the MREs I’ll give you. The rest of it, though - those were the very best of times, Brienne."
They were.
Until a moment’s distraction lead them right into a trap. Until the concussion grenades went off. Until she woke up a prisoner in an underground bunker ringing with the sound of Major Lannister screaming.
Jaime, he had told her, some days or weeks later. My name is Jaime.
But before that - yes. Those days had been the best of her life. She never quite found that same fulfilment in serving, performing her duty to corps and country, in the years since.
It wasn’t the incident that had left her scarred, as people always assumed - that wasn’t why she left her life in the armed forces behind.
"So why did you quit?" he said, as if having heard her thoughts. "If anyone was bound for a couple of stars and a corner office, I was sure it was you. You had lifer written all over you, Lieutenant By-the-Book."
She couldn't even muster an eye-roll at the nickname. She'd had so many worse ones over the years.
"Sorry," he amended, "Captain By-the-Book I should say."
She'd still been a lowly lieutenant back when they served together. Her promotion had come through along with her reassignment, while he'd been bundled off with his discharge papers to the veteran's rehab facility.
And then she had seen three more years of active duty before she left it all behind.
"Just Brienne is fine."
His response was dubious. "You still look as if you've got your epaulettes on under your shirt. So what happened?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing did that to you? What was it, shrapnel?"
Her mouth twisted, as close to a smile as she could manage under the weight of all this buried history being hauled up to the surface.
"Teeth, actually," she said.
It didn't really hurt to admit it - what hurt was how the look on his face changed.
She hated that look; had seen it on too many other faces. Of all the people in the world, she couldn't bear to have him looking at her like that. She turned to watch the activity at the desk, sending a silent prayer to the Seven that she would be called up soon.
"You know, it's been nice chatting, but this isn't a coffee shop," she said, unable to bring herself to be quite so rude as to simply tell him to go away. Some habits were hard to break.
And no, he wasn't her CO anymore, but apart from that small detail the years had changed Jaime little. He was never one for taking social cues, and once he had a notion in his head, he was like a recalcitrant terrier with a rabbit in his mouth. He simply refused to drop it.
"What happened?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Like hell it doesn't."
He said it loud enough to make her look around self-consciously; the woman sitting with her daughter gave them a curious look. For a moment Brienne had almost forgotten where they were.
"Even if it does," Brienne hissed back at him, "sitting in a doctor's office with a man I barely know is hardly the setting for the baring of my soul."
His voice rose even higher in indignation. "You barely know me?"
"I just meant... Maj- Jaime, we haven't even spoken in four years."
"So?"
"We're just two people who used to work together."
"Right. Well. That's fucking unacceptable. We'll have to do something about that."
The way he smiled then was like a promise - or a threat of something that sent a sudden wave of heat flooding through her.
She sent yet another look to the receptionist, who was dealing with another patient who had just emerged. Brienne's appointment, meanwhile, was supposed to have started nine minutes ago now. Surely she was next. Surely.
She had not come to this clinic today prepared for anything but a potentially upsetting consultation about her facial scar.
She had certainly not been prepared to have an increasingly uncomfortable conversation with Jaime Lannister. She'd never been prepared for Jaime Lannister, period, or the myriad absurd, impossible things he made her feel.
It had been four years since she'd seen him. Four years, and she still couldn't quite convince herself she wasn't in love with him.
A woman in colourful nurse's scrubs appeared and called a name - and Brienne almost jumped out of her seat before realising it wasn't hers. Heat prickled under her skin as she gripped the arms of her chair and willed herself not to be so foolish.
It was the girl and her mother going in. Brienne made herself actually look at her this time; the disfigured child with what looked like burn scars covering part of her face and down her neck, disappearing under her purple jumper.
Her hand lifted to her own cheek, feeling the ugly, tortured skin there. A simple reminder, as if she needed one, that there was a reason she was here.
"Brienne. Look."
At his prompting, her attention was drawn back to the man sitting beside her, and she was surprised to find him with his sleeve pushed up and his left hand removing the prosthetic, apparently uncaring of where they were or who else might see.
When the false hand lay discarded in his lap he rubbed his hand over his bare stump, and all the while her eyes took in the evidence of what they had gone through together.
"There are others," he said quietly. Matter-of-factly. "Other scars."
"I know," she said. Then she took a breath, and added, "I know what you did."
She'd never really had the chance to tell him that she knew.
It had all come out in her debriefing; how Major Lannister had talked right from the start. Brienne had nothing but her name and serial number to tell their captors, but Jaime had talked and talked. About his background, his rich family, his chequered career - and when he wasn't spilling information to the enemy, he was goading them, insulting them, egging them on as they beat him.
She blamed her pre-existing poor opinion of him for how long it took her to realise that as much as he talked, he never actually said anything.
"I know you did it on purpose. Took the brunt of it. They would have -"
"It was my responsibility. You were my lieutenant." He shrugged. "That's just how it works."
He was impossible, really. Impossible to work under. Impossible to find unattractive. And equally impossible to sit and chat with for ten minutes without sharing what had turned into an intimate discussion of their traumatic history despite their current location and her best intentions to the contrary.
They were somehow the only ones left in the waiting room now, the talking heads on the TV and the receptionist typing something into her computer their only witnesses as she took Jaime's maimed arm gently in her hands. The scar tissue beneath her fingers didn't feel any different from her own.
"Why did you wait so long to do something about it? It’s been -"
"Four years, I know. You’d have to ask my therapist."
The way he said it was entirely too flippant. She eyed him suspiciously. "You have a therapist?"
"No. Why, are you looking for a job?"
She tried to restrain her smile. Small though it was, she failed, and with a resigned sigh - resigned to the smiling as much as to him - she relinquished her hold on his arm. "I’d have to be a real masochist to be the keeper of your mental health, Lannister."
He grinned widely and spread his arms. "I’m complicated."
She snorted. "You probably just… wanted to wait until you could be sure you were doing it for you, not to please anyone else, or to make other people more comfortable. Because -"
"Because it’s my trauma, and fuck other people’s comfort with it."
"Not just projecting then. Good to know," she muttered, looking away again. She almost missed him lifting his hand till his thumb lightly brushed the sensitive scar tissue under her eye.
Quid pro quo, she thought as she tensed but managed not to flinch away.
"We both deserved more than, well, ending up like this, didn't we?" she said.
He leaned in suddenly, his face inches from her. "Yes. You're right. We deserve more than what these hacks can give us. So let's get out of here. Let's go... somewhere else."
"Where?"
"Somewhere more conducive to the baring of our souls. By which I mean somewhere we can at least get a drink."
"It's just gone eleven."
"Then let me buy you a fucking bagel, Brienne."
His eyes managed to catch and hold hers, and for a moment a yes was on the tip of her tongue. Yes, of course she would go with him. For a drink or a bagel or anything under the sun.
"Brienne?" Her name was called from the desk.
She snapped out of whatever spell he had put her under. "Sorry. I..." She took a breath and was brave. "I can give you my number. We can get that drink, talk some more. It's just - I waited two months for this appointment."
"Go, then. See the doctor. Two months is nothing - I've waited four years, another half hour hardly matters," he said, and as she stared at him he simply crossed his arms and sat back in his seat, prosthetic hand still unattached and lying on his lap.
"Impossible," she murmured.
"Brienne Tarth?" the receptionist called again, snapping her from her reverie and giving her an impatient look from behind the desk. "Dr Qyburn is waiting for you in room 3."
Brienne got to her feet, feeling Jaime's eyes on her back as she approached the desk.
"I'm sorry," she said when she got there. "I'll have to reschedule."