The crack of ice on metal cut through the air.
A roar of pain followed, and Brienne knew where Jaime had gone.
Rage carried her, raw and red, orange as the fire that lit the sky, yellow as the light that lit the skulls of the dead that died writhing in agony in the purification of dragonfire. Her rage was turned white, white as the snow that steamed beneath her feet, white as the ash that blew around her, white as the flame that burned within her down to her toes to drive her beaten body over hills and rises, through the dying and the dead, through the ashes and the flames and the screams, through the rivers of blood that burned and froze beneath her feet to reach him.
The red stones of Widow's Wail lay scattered, Jaime a lump on the snow. The White Walker raised his bloody spear, and Brienne threw herself in front of Jaime's body. Cold split her open. Her whole awareness was pain, white pain and dark sky and red blood, yet the battle-fury in her still lived. It burnt through her pain, burnt through her exhaustion, burnt through her fear.
You will not have me. Red. Orange. You will not have us. Yellow and white. While I live, Winterfell will not fall.
Rage propelled Brienne's sword.
You will not have him.
The White Walker and his spear shattered, and his wights fell to dust.
He is mine to protect.
But there were other White Walkers, and other wights. What life remained in her was theirs to pull from her body. They advanced upon her, waves of black and blue.
No rage could beat back a wave of death.
Only life.
Here was that burning brand of hope, wind beneath wings. Daenerys swooped down on Drogon, a hot shadow. Amidst the clamour of dying men and undying bones, Dany's battle cry was a living song.
You will not have us.
Flame swept through the sky as Drogon razed the dead, the roar of his fire wild and welcome.
While we live, Winterfell will not fall.
Brienne's own hot hope suffused her. Dany and Drogon had burned a path to safety. She lifted Jaime's body, noting the long gash in his side, his hand mangled and bloody. She slung him over her shoulder, strapping what was left of his sword to her waist.
She'd never fought while carrying such weight before, but she had a spark of hope now, and the rage that had moved her so quickly to his side, a welcome heat that burned through her sword arm and echoed in her battle cries as she slaughtered the few wights that had managed to escape Drogon's fire.
You will not have me. You will not have us. While we live, Winterfell will not fall. Her blood beat with the words. You will not have him. He is mine to protect.
But soon, it was only the fury of her battle-rage that kept her standing; she was too injured to fight any longer. She could not fight with a man on her back. Against her, Jaime was warm, but she felt the hot rush of blood pouring from his wounds—his blood, so dear to her, though he would never know. He was alive, and she would fight for him. Now, fighting meant retreat.
In Winterfell's halls, screams of agony and despair echoed. Everyone who could fight was fighting; everyone who could not was here, or in the crypts. Jaime's room was far from everything, as he was still far from everyone's regard. This was an advantage now: fewer steps from the battlefield for her to climb, to walk, to nearly stumble as her strength bled from her. With every step, black encroached upon her vision. Pain crackled white-hot in her side. Jaime's weight on her shoulder was lead, his blood pouring in waves down her back and chest.
She shouldered the door to his room open and eased him onto the bed, blood pooling beneath him. The supplies he had gathered lay in a haphazard pile on the table beneath his window.
They'd gone to Sam's makeshift infirmary. Jaime had gently needled her all the way—"Should I take special care to hurt myself, or will you do that for me later?"—in that carefree tone he hadn't used since he came to Winterfell. As if he hadn't just knighted her, as if death wouldn't take them.
She bandaged her own wounds as quickly as she could. She'd attend more carefully to them later, after Jaime was safe. In the quiet of his room, war still echoed. In the warmth of the fire she brought to life to boil wine, she was colder than ever. Jaime lay unconscious, his still form waxen. She worked quickly to strip him of his armour, slippery with blood. He was soaked with it, red and coppery and hot.
It was not battle-rage that kindled in her then, but a crushing fury; she saw how death waited to speak a lie—that he deserved this fate. Brienne's anger rested in the truth she knew—that he did not.
You will not have him.
She would fight to the last with all her truth.
He is mine to protect.
She drew up his tunic to expose the wound in his side.
She would treat his injury as any soldier. If she longed to allow herself the futility of grief, it was a longing her soldier-self would not contemplate.
She stood beside Jaime's bed, staunching the flow of his blood, washing his wound, packing it, wrapping the thick linen bandage around his side, lifting him to wrap it tightly around him, tying it efficiently with a firm knot. Carefully washing and sewing the gash in his hand, every stitch precise. Bending his fingers back and forth against his palm, ensuring they were all in working order. Her honour demanded she preserve the life of a man who had kept his promise, and fought bravely. This was the self Catelyn had known, the self Sansa knew, the self the North witnessed as Brienne walked the halls of Winterfell.
In her fog of pain and exhaustion, her soul—and her heart—longed for him, and spoke in her imagination of what they did for him.
She stood tall. Death could take Jaime, but first, it would need to take her. Her sword was a blazing flame of all her rage. She sliced apart the cruel lie that Jaime's goodness was unknowable, and that now he should pass into that unknowable realm. She struck for the truth of Jaime's soul. This was the self those on the battlefield had seen, furious and triumphant, what Daenerys had witnessed, what they had shared while she flew above Brienne.
She sat close to Jaime on his bed, his bandaged hand in both of hers, and pressed his bruised fingers to her mouth. The beat of her heart and the tumult of her thoughts were fragile secrets that no man would wish bestowed upon him. Her tenderness was ugly to all who could not understand; her sensitivity was uglier than any battle cry, for it was incomprehensible. She kissed Jaime's blood-covered hand; she would have what taste of his life she could, and hold his hand, her heart splayed open and unseen.
She drew soul and heart back into herself, and turned her attention to treating her own wounds. She removed the linen she had used to staunch the flow of her own blood, and washed the wound with wine. It was an ugly, jagged mess, a deep slash that she was grateful hadn't been a puncture, but she'd have to watch closely to ensure it didn't go bad. She'd need to be careful in the training yard and elsewhere not to move or twist too suddenly, for she'd been slashed at an angle that made the wound susceptible to reopening. She bandaged it with a fresh strip of linen, then salved her black eye and the bruise on her cheek.
Each time she looked away from Jaime, she expected to hear his breath hitch, falter, slow, then stop, to see his blood staining the stone beneath her in rivers from his body as he bled for the last time. But death, who had turned the sky black as pitch, drew away from them. Though Jaime's breath hitched with pain, he breathed. The sky lightened, black to grey to pale blue. Through the window, the dawning sun sparkled on snow.
~o~
What normalcy there was to be had returned slowly. After days spent in rest and light sparring, she would return to Jaime's room, where he lay unconscious, and retain the armour of a dutiful knight as she washed and redressed his wounds.
When she returned to her room to sleep, her soul would return to his side to rage against death, and her heart to sit beside him on the mattress and feel his warm fingers in her palm.
~o~
Jaime woke the same day the raven brought news.
She came to his room with fresh bandages and ointment, and found him cradling his broken sword in his arms. A rumpled scroll lay beside him on the bed.
"It was poison." The soft afternoon sun lit his pale face.
He was a ghost of himself, and she was a frozen figure in the doorway.
"I'm sorry."
And she was. Cersei had felt envy for her, had coveted Brienne's freedom, but she hadn't realised it then. Cersei had certainly taken a vicious joy in tearing away Brienne's armour with a phrase. Perhaps I could've taught her the sword.
For Jaime's life, Brienne had raged against death. For his peace, she could not rage against his grief. It was his alone, for a woman she'd not known well.
It was the soldier's armour she wore as she walked, as she pulled Widow's Wail from his grasp to set it on the table, touching only what was left of the hilt. He was limp as she changed his bandages, touching only where necessary with the barest press of her fingertips.
When she was done, she stood. Jaime fell away from her, sagging. She reached for the sword, and Jaime's eyes followed her hand as it came to rest on what was left of the hilt. She could put her whole hand on it; it was not his skin, or his blood, or his heart. The blade was in sound condition, but the rest was badly damaged. The stones of the pommel had been scattered on the battle-bloody snow. A crack ran through the threads of woven gold ribboning the handle. The stag's head was gone, shattered into pieces and scattered into the cold. The empty bezel gaped.
Brienne had seen how the sword was half of him. It was what he had left of Cersei and his children, what of their hearts he'd brought to Winterfell. But the sword was Jaime's, too; his honour had sharpened into steel that sang as he'd drawn it and urged her to kneel, as he'd fought with her against the dead.
And now he was as broken.
She ached to fight for him against his brokenness, but a knight did not presume of her fellows.
She'd not presume to know what he wished.
"Ser Jaime." She spoke with her soldier's voice. "I'll take your sword to Gendry for repairs."
Jaime turned away.
"It doesn't matter."
Her soul raged against the sorrow that drew him away from his life. You will not have him. He is mine to protect.
Later, in sleep, Brienne's heart pleaded.
Live.
~o~
"We've no gems, Ser Brienne," Gendry said, his eyes narrowing as he examined the sword's hilt. "Or gold."
Arya's staff came whistling through the air, and she stopped short beside him. "How many swords do you have from everyone who died?"
He grinned up at her, the smile of a man who was besotted at the idea of nearly being knocked unconscious. "More than a few."
"Find them," Arya said. "Blue stones." She gave Brienne an apologetic smile. "You should be bossing him around, not me." As Gendry tried to hide his blush, she continued, "And we've no gold, but that's fine. Fix the cracks with one of the colours of her sigil. Melt a silver hilt. "
"Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?"
"I saw the way they fought together. I know Death, and I know how to fight. And I know something else, too." Her eyes softened as she looked at him. "You don't fight like that with someone unless you—"
"Thank you, Arya," Brienne interrupted. She nodded to Gendry. "That should do nicely."
"So." Arya patted his shoulder. "Get to work."
~o~
Brienne washed the stones that Gendry gave her, stripping them of the stench of death. He could've, as a matter of course, but she'd asked for them.
It was only practical, she said to herself, to save a busy blacksmith another menial task, but it was her heart that worked itself into every stone she touched.
~o~
Brienne left a full plate for Jaime, and turned from his door to see Tyrion striding down the hall, eyes full of sorrow and purpose.
She did not wait to listen to him knock, or rattle the latch, or plead with his brother to eat, but returned to her room. Perhaps Jaime's swordless brother could wound Death where she could not, convince that black shadow to leave him be. Perhaps the thread that bonded Tyrion's heart to his brother's could pull Jaime back.
In the pre-dawn light, she went to Jaime's door, still closed and barred to her. Tyrion stood in front of it with his face bent to the empty plate in his hand, hair askew, clothing rumpled, his Hand pin still somehow neatly attached. He looked up at her, eyes dark, his face scrubbed red. Beneath the darkness of his gaze shone a still hope, quiet as the light that spilled down the halls.
"He'll eat now, Ser Brienne." He held out the plate to her. "You have my word."
Tyrion's word was true, for Jaime began to eat. Then, there were nights he left his room, and ranged further still, as she learned when her fingers touched icy water that had seeped into the stone beneath his plate.
He would live.
~o~
The feast in the Great Hall was a mostly quiet gathering. They'd been wise to let themselves rest for longer than usual, and spend the recovery period getting to know one another.
Brienne watched as across the hall, Jon and Daenerys shared soft words. Dany laughed. Beside them, Sansa nudged Jon in the ribs. He filled his Dragon Queen's goblet full of more wine, then Sansa's afterwards, the two women sharing smiles. It was Dany who saw Brienne watching them, and looked up with a wave and another bright smile. It seemed that whatever tensions may have existed when Daenerys first came to Winterfell had fallen away. There were rumours that Jon and Dany planned to marry.
Brienne shared easy conversation with Pod and Tyrion, and slipped away early with a plate of what passed for a celebratory meal. In the moonlight filtering through her window, Jaime's sword shone. The freshly-sharpened blade caught the pale silver threads of light, gleaming. Framed by lustrous silver and gold, the inlaid stones were the night's deepest blue. She strapped the sword to her waist, then went to Jaime's door, carrying his plate.
She expected that it would still be barred to her, but it was only a few moments after her gentle tap that it swung open and Jaime ushered her in.
"Ser Brienne."
"Ser Jaime."
Of course, there was more she could say. But she would not. It was enough that he was eating, and that he would live. Eventually, he'd emerge more fully from his grief, and perhaps then they could speak of all that had transpired. For now, she would give him his food and his sword, and leave.
As she brushed past him to set his plate down on the table, she assessed his condition. He was relatively well, despite the fact that he had gone without food for several days, and seemed only to leave his room at night for excursions of his own making. There was talk of that changing, that he had been seen speaking to Tyrion in the evenings. He was quiet as he ate, and it seemed he had regained some of his equilibrium .
He finished his meal, and said, "You've been feeding me well."
"Indeed."
"I would've, eventually. Even without Tyrion."
"Perhaps."
She wasn't going to ask after all that he had felt in his days spent alone. It wasn't her place to intrude upon his grief. She focused on the gladness she felt that he was as well as could be expected, that he had lived. And the gladness she felt at being able to do something for him, though he might not ever feel what it meant. Her fingers wrapped around the sword's hilt—she knew well the places where silver met gold, pressing them with her fingertips.
Jaime's gaze fell on the movement of her hand. He asked lightly, "Did you lose Oathkeeper in the battle?" But in his voice was a note of uncertainty, and his gaze looked almost fearful as his eyes fixed on the sword's hilt.
She shook her head, unstrapping the sword and holding it out to him."I think you'll agree that Gendry does fine work."
Jaime swallowed and nodded. "He does." His body held the same strain as his voice.
He is not a fearful man, and the blade has been his life.
He took the sword gingerly from her, setting it on the table by the window. It rang as he drew it from its sheath, shimmering against the dark wood. Moving his hand over the hilt, Jaime cupped the stones inlaid in the pommel, fingertips brushing over the handle, tracing where Gendry had drawn together the cracked golden handle with silver. His fingers stilled on the crossguard. He pressed his shaking thumb against the stone. His face reddened, then turned paler than she'd ever seen, white as the moon shining through his window. The energy that had always animated him, filling every movement with raw life, drained from him with the colour in his face.
A living ghost stood before her.
"Brienne." His voice was a soft, raw rasp of despair. "Why?"
He turned away from her to face the window.
"Why would you do this?"
The whole of the room filled with the hitching gasps of his breath.
She'd known what she'd wanted to do when she did it, and why. It wasn't her fault he was the fool who'd broken his sword. It was her fault she was the fool who cared for him.
You are mine to protect.
She brought all her strength to bear to speak as softly as she could. "You said it didn't matter."
He turned, his eyes fixing on her face. The blue of his wet gaze was a stormy sea; the dark within was deeper than his anger and more constant than his grief.
"Because it doesn't matter!"
The ghostly lion's claws could still wound, and his anguish was a haunting roar. They were for her only, because she could bear this pain that hurt them both. She could hear him, and she would listen. She knew the lion, and she knew the lion's ghost.
I don't matter. That was the truth that Jaime would carry with him into death if he could. A truth her heart had always known he felt.
It would've taken a look, a touch, a gesture in the heat of battle and she would've known what he meant to do. He'd purposefully withheld his intent from her until it was too late and all she could hear was his scream. Her soul burned for what she'd nearly lost. "You were the fool who wanted his sword broken by an enemy he knew he wouldn't be able to defeat alone!"
"And you were the idiot who saved that fool's life, and gave him a sword for his foolishness!" In his voice was that same raw despair as before.
"It was your own sword I had repaired," was her stubborn reply. She lifted her chin. "If you truly believe yourself so unworthy, than you will keep it, for I gave you nothing at all."
She waited, statue-still. Whatever he could speak of her or of himself, she already knew. Her care for him was a wall of light, the starburst of a whole and shining sun, the moon's crescent a blade she would wield as she stood atop it to beat back what shadows she could.
You will not have him.
He could throw himself at it with all the force of tooth and claw, but she would only bring the truth of his dark despair to light. If he ever sought to tear it away, it would not fall.
He is mine to protect.
Moonlight limned Jaime's face as he bent his head. His long, elegant fingers grasped the sword, clenched, squeezing as if to crush the handle, knuckles white with strain. In the quiet of the room she heard him swallow, listened as his breath quickened, then eased. He wiped his face with the back of his hand.
When he spoke, his tone was as teasing as his sidelong glance. "Do you believe me so unworthy?"
She knew something of the surface answer to his question, and so responded with the same simplicity.
"No."
His body and his gaze asked a far more complicated question, one she wasn't sure she had the strength to answer. Nor did she know how to accept what his asking implied.
Then his eyes widened and went to her side, where a dark stain wet the pale blue of her tunic. In the fervour of their argument, her wound had reopened. "Your answer should be yes—look what saving my life got you!"
When Jaime began to press a wine-moistened cloth to her wound, she stiffened, but didn't resist. After all, he was only returning the favour one soldier had done for another, and emotional exhaustion had left her physically drained.
"Your rescue would've been far more efficient if you'd come from the right." Jaime used a soldier's vocabulary, terse and precise, at odds with the softness in his tone. He drew her to sit beside him on his bed with a gentle pull. "You had a better opening, and a better escape route." His cloth-covered hand lingered on the edges of her wound, brushing them slowly. "Your approach was unwise."
The thought of responding with something sharp occurred to her, but it floated with the rest of the others in the thick fugue state created by his nearness. The warmth of his body, the scent of his skin, the touch of his hand. He reached for a strip of linen to bind her wound, and she felt the back of his hand with its rough hairs, and the back of each finger, brushing against her side, her stomach, her hip, as he wound the cloth, the brush of his fingertips as he tied the knot at her side. His palm was warm on the small of her back, sliding her tunic back down to cover her bare skin.
She moved to stand—and leave, the panicked thought intervened into her muzziness—but Jaime held her wrist fast. "There are more." His grip was firm, but his voice was soft.
"I assure you, Ser Jaime. I am well-healed by now."
He held her fast. "There are more," he repeated, with that irascibility she found endearing, despite all attempts she'd made to feel otherwise. "It's going to be difficult to do this if you keep bloody staring at me like I'm the idiot you think I am." Ineffably endearing. "Close your eyes."
She did. If she'd been staring, it was only because she wanted to understand perhaps a bit of the man whose internal conflict had precipitated this unusual evening.
But you do, her heart said.
She smelled the camphor and lavender, astringent and sweet, before she felt the warmth of the ointment and the gentle press of Jaime's thumb over her temple. "You got more than a few knocks to the head on Winterfell's behalf; and you'll get more. For those, in advance."
"Are you really going to be such a—"
"Of course I am." She felt his hand move to her shoulder and squeeze. "And you're going to keep your eyes shut and let me." The backs of his fingers brushed the raised scars on her neck and collarbone. Then she smelled something sweeter, and his fingertips on her long-healed wounds were soft and gentle, the ointment soothing. "I'm sorry for this," he said, his voice quiet.
Then, before she could respond, his hand moved to settle over her heart. He is. He really is going to be an utter idiot and say something he can't possibly mean.
"If my lady is amenable, I'd like to assist with the repair effort." His heart's voice, soft and unassuming.
She opened her eyes. "What are you doing?" Her soldier's voice, sharp.
Her soul's rage. Her heart's fear.
"Please." He clasped her hand in his, warm, and brought them both to rest over her heart. "Let me."
"Jaime. Why?"
She had no rage left to feel, nor the soldier's calm; it was only her heart that spoke within, pleading. Was this how it had felt for him, to be given such a gift?
"Why would you do this?"
"Why did you fix the sword of a broken man?"
"This is different!"
"You save my life, you give me—which makes me see that yes, even if I bloody well don't deserve it, it must be true." She felt his finger brush her cheek. "It's not different."
It's not different for you, said her heart.
She waited for him to speak, and she felt his hand move to rest where it had been before, his palm warm.
"I'm sorry for this," he said.
If anyone had ever expressed sympathy for that particular failing of hers, she'd shrugged them off, thrown all her hurt and anger into her sword arm, fought for things she could have instead of things she never would.
"It doesn't matter."
He tensed, and his fingers pressed the rough weave of her tunic into her skin as he pulled her close. He gave a shuddering sigh that she felt at her back, then relaxed.
"It matters very much to me." His voice was a warm hand, his five fingers cradling her heart as if it were a precious sword he had shattered, and he would mend the silver hilt with his gold."I'm still sorry." He stroked her side gently with his stump. "If it really doesn't matter, and the sword you gave him was nothing, then you can let an unworthy man give you his unworthy heart."
If Jaime, in all his brokenness, had taken in her feeling, perhaps she could let her heart speak; now, it led her to shake off her fear and take his hand.
"You are mine to protect," she said, softly.
She could not heal his maimed arm as she had his sword, but she could say in touch what she could not say in words. It did not make him any less, and it did not make him any less beautiful.
He jolted when she kissed him there, and when she'd finished and placed a last kiss on the inside of his elbow, he looked at her as if she'd risen as a knight for the first time, and lifted his hand to brush his fingers on her lips. Then he took her hand in his, and it was her turn to jolt when she felt his mouth on the back of her hand, wet and warm.
"As you are mine, my lady." His eyes sparkled with mischief.
"I believe you know the proper method of address for a knight." It was the easy banter they'd always had, but different.
"I do," he hedged, "but you are also a lady, and more's the pity for any bloody fool who couldn't see you, glowing in your armour." When she rolled her eyes, he tilted his head at her. "They were fools, all of them in Renly's camp, not to see that."
"They weren't all fools. Renly was kind."
"He did a kindness for a woman who'd always deserved it. I know," Jaime returned, and when she looked at him, bewildered, he said, "Pod's a sweet boy, but give him too much to drink and he starts talking about things he shouldn't."
He interlaced his fingers with hers and stood, drawing her up with him.
"You should dance with someone who fancies you."
"I don't dance."
"Yes, you do."
"I danced on a single occasion."
"For that I envy your partner, and plan to outdo him," was Jaime's retort. His smile shone.
Ridiculous man.
There it was—a tiny piece of her heart drawn back to the whole by the gold of his feeling. This might be the way of it for a while: drawing away, pulling back, two swords dancing, two hearts matching their broken pieces, two souls burning to protect each other.
Jaime drew her to him, his hand coming to rest at the small of her back, his other arm wrapping around her waist to draw her closer, her head fitting on his shoulder. He began to sway gently, and they stayed like that for a while in the warm light of the moon, until against her throat she felt a vibration, and in her ear she heard him humming a familiar melody.
"You're not a ghost, Jaime." She couldn't help but remind him.
"No, and that's thanks to you."
In the warmth of his arms, lulled, Brienne finally thought to ask what had been gnawing at her since she realised it.
"How did you know my rescue was inefficient?" When he snorted, she squeezed his side. "You were unconscious!"
"Tyrion is Daenerys' Hand." He chuckled, and she felt his laughter vibrate through her. "We spoke at great length about a great many things, Daenerys and the war among them. I know if she hadn't seen you, and saved your life, you probably wouldn't have been able to save mine."
"I'm glad we're coming to the same opinion of the Dragon Queen."
They danced for a long while, until the moon was at its fullest height in the sky, and her skin was warm and tingling where he touched as they moved, reaching to caress her cheek, the curve of her neck, her shoulder, lingering. They stopped, and he said, "I'd sleep better if you were with me. Will you stay with me tonight?"
Nestled in the warmth of his bed, Brienne held Jaime in her arms.
Beneath the window, his sword glinted silver, blue, and gold.
He is mine to protect.