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She manages to drag him all the way into the courtyard before collapsing, screaming for help the entire time.
The snow cushions their fall, hugs her legs and his body, limp in her arms. She is warmer, so she hugs him to her chest, armor be damned. Clutches his remaining hand in hers, to keep the fingers from becoming frostbitten. He will not want to lose another hand, and she is his protector.
She is his protector.
The swirling flakes attempt to claim her charge, but she fights them off. A familiar story, her fighting for him, and him for her. Dancing with bears and revenants, mummers and monsters.
“Fight for yourself, now,” she says aloud. He will do it, if she tells him to. This she knows. This she trusts.
It is an eternity before Sam Tarly finally comes running out into the cold, huffing, and she could strangle him. Every moment is crucial, if Jaime is to recover fully.
Sam stops dead in front of them, gaping in helpless horror. It must be bad, then, but Jaime has survived worse.
“Do something,” Brienne demands, squeezing Jaime’s hand tighter. Hold on, Jaime, Sam will fix you. “He’s hurt, do something.”
“Lady Brienne,” Sam chokes, thick tears collecting at the corners of his eyes. “I- I don’t- I don’t think there is anything to be done.”
“Lies,” she hisses, “I’ve seen you heal all sorts, and you will heal this.”
Jaime is slipping off her lap, heavy in his plate, so she lifts him to her. Her hands, slick and sticky with blood, squeak across the metal. She apologizes softly for jostling him, cradles the back of his head. The golden curls spill between her fingers, flecked with silver, and white, and red.
Samwell doesn’t move. The tears are rolling freely down his round cheeks, tears he has no right to, tears that boil and scald and bubble up within her until they burn their way right out of her mouth.
“Coward, craven, help him!”
She thinks she may be shouting, hears her own voice faint over the sounds of her palms slipping on Jaime’s breastplate, the snow crunching beneath their bodies, the winter wind whistling past. There is metal in her nose, her mouth, cotton stuffed in her ears. It’s all blurring together, Sam’s dark form and the white snow and Jaime cloaked in red, in gold, in red.
“Brienne?” For a moment, she thinks— but the voice is too high, too young.
A small, slender form. The skinny blade strapped to her waist. Dark hair and the same grey eyes that judged her charge so long ago. Catelyn’s girl.
“Arya,” Brienne croaks, “Arya, please, Sam won’t help him.”
The girl approaches, snow crunching beneath her boots, breaking like bones. She presses one, two fingers to Jaime’s throat, gentle. Brienne’s heart beats once, twice, three times. Jaime’s must too, or maybe it is slower in the cold. She breathes in, out, in, and out again, her exhales sending clouds up into the endless black sky. She is the only star left here.
“Mercy,” Arya seems to say, but that can’t be right. Jaime is right here, cradled in her arms, and she is his protector. She charged him to live, to fight, to take revenge. He promised. He would not break his oath, not now, not after everything.
“Jaime,” she keens, brushing the hair back from his pale face. He is so beautiful, even now. “Jaime, wake up. We have to get you inside.”
He had mended her on the Quiet Isle, while the brothers had sewn up her stomach. Had held her together, in her failure, in her misery. I owe you a debt, she thinks. This is no different from then. She will mend him like he did her, if only Sam would begin to sew closed his stomach. Then they could have matching scars, like the swords at their hips.
He is still. He must be so cold. Jaime never did like the North.
Lady Catelyn comes to her to put a hand on her shoulder, or maybe it is Sansa. We found her, Jaime. Get up. Rise, and live, and fight with us.
“Look down,” Catelyn-Sansa says, soft as a bell, “look at him, Brienne.”
“I am looking,” she says. She twists a curl beneath her fingertips, smiles at the jut of his cheekbones and his proud chin. He is so beautiful, her Jaime.
“You must look down.”
There is snow, wet on her face. That is good, that it has melted. Spring will be here soon, Jaime. I will show you Tarth and you will pester me to jump into the waters of Shipbreaker Bay, like Gal and I used to. We will race Glory and Honor across the cliffs, and dine with my father at Evenfall. He will love you, I know it, Jaime. When they truly know you, everyone loves you. Me most of all.
“Mercy, Brienne, look down.”
“You must, you must, you must,”
“Lady Brienne, please—”
“—down.”
“Look at him, Brienne, look—”
“No,” she mumbles over the cacophony, no, no, no, no. Jaime, Jaime, Jaime.
She draws a line down the straight of his nose, brushes the falling snow from the crows-feet at the corners of his eyes. Green eyes, opened to look at her. To smile. He is always smiling, her Jaime, even now.
Her Jaime. She had never let herself think it, never let herself hope for it, but it was true. He was hers and she was his, and they had chosen each other over, and over, and over again.
“Jaime,” she thinks she is crying, now— no—knows it. “I love you.”
And she looks. Forces her head to break from his face and travel down his broad shoulders, his chest, his arms. His hand, still in hers, and his stump, bare, wrapped in pale scars and honor. It’s getting harder to see, but she does, she does, she owes him this.
Owes him to see his stomach, opened from hip to opposite rib, twisted metal wrenched apart to reveal red, red, red. The blood has crystallized in the cold, thousands of miniature rubies encrusting the wound, spilling forth. Coating him, inside and out, like Jaime was only a rock needing to be cracked open to reveal a geode. The red snakes of his entrails worm their way from the gash to turn their faces to the cold, winter air, extending from inside him, reaching for her like Jaime used to with his arms.
Like he will never reach for her again.
She wails, lets her grief rise up and out her throat, lets herself drown in it. Lets herself, if only for the moment, believe that this is the end, the pain to end all pains. Lets herself die with Jaime in the snow, holding hands and wreathed in blue flame as they rise to the heavens together.
When she is done, the Stark girls will help her to her feet. They will carry her, and she will carry Jaime, and they will help her send him off the only way they can, now. The flames of his pyre will burn blue, and she will cry, and she will go on.
And someday, many years from now on a warm spring day, Brienne of Tarth will go quietly in her sleep with a smile on her lips.
Her daughter, now Evenstar, will know she has not yet left.
“My mother is here,” she will say, “if you listen. Her and her gray knight. You can hear them now.”
“What are they saying?” Someone will ask, a friend or a lover or a child.
“Nothing,” Brienne’s daughter will tell them, blue eyes glittering, “They are only laughing. Laughing, and holding hands as they plunge together into the sapphire seas.”