Jaime finds himself in Tyrion's prison cell, his hand ghosting over his new metal hand, the one thing that keeps him grounded these days, the one memorabilia that is worth the feeling of nostalgia, bringing back bits and pieces of sapphire blue he searches every night he lies awake.
Because she is gone, gone on a mission, with nothing but an unspoken promise made through a blade of Valyrian steel and a black armour supposed to offer the protection he cannot give to her, since he cannot have her back in battle.
Because he is still here.
She moves while he stays.
Because he let her go search Sansa – and he turned back to the Red Keep.
"Why are you still here?"
Jaime frowns at his brother's words, turning his head to him, "I thought you'd enjoy my company. I'm quite disappointed, little brother. I could imagine more interesting and more comfortable tasks than sitting on the wet ground and watch you as you go on pacing and pissing."
"You understood me. Why are you still here? Why didn't you just go?" Tyrion asks again. Jaime can't help but admire this short man. He is sharper in mind than even a blade made of Valyrian steel.
"… I want to know her safe," Jaime shrugs.
"Safe of what? Cersei? She likely did an air jump once news reached her that she is gone," Tyrion argues. "While I don't know your travelling companion well, I know that something must be about her if Cersei decides to pour so much venom over her."
At least he hopes so.
Because Tyrion saw his brother broken, with a hand lost, but at some point, he didn't seem broken anymore, Jaime seemed complete again, even more complete than he was before he was taken prisoner.
And to Tyrion, there was just one logical explanation needed, for it had healing blue in her eyes, bringing a laughter back to Jaime's face that Tyrion only remembers from their days as youths, before his older brother's world was shattered by corruption, by politics, by rebellions and being marked Kingslayer, by the hands of a woman whose fingers sank into him like claws and didn't let go, even if that only guaranteed his ongoing process of corruption.
But somehow, anyhow, this woman in mail, or so Tyrion reckons, did the impossible and stopped the infection.
Yet, here Jaime sits and watches Tyrion pace and piss, threatening to expose his body to the same evil virus all over.
"Safe of… what I'm about to do," Jaime replies.
Because he doesn't want to corrupt her mission, a mission painted in white honour.
Because someone has to fulfil the promises made.
The promises that came with so much sacrifice.
The promises that mean so much to them, though they might mean more to her than to him, because Jaime would still like to let go of all other promises if only to hold her close to him, touch her pearly complexion in the moonlight until the air is breathed out of him by the Seven, but Jaime understood that he can't and that he mustn't – because he feels that way.
Because the worst he can do to Brienne is to keep her in a golden cage, to keep her from her missions, force her into stasis. Because her blade is swift, her blade is fluid, like the water in her sapphire eyes. And Jaime won't purposely shatter her. Because Brienne must stay intact to carry on, to walk on, to fight and protect, and live by the old codices, make the old songs sing with the blade he has given her as a token of his understanding, of his care.
"What are you up to? I don't like the sound of that," Tyrion makes a face, but Jaime says nothing, just goes on glancing at his new hand.
Tyrion lets a sigh. The trial is not far away, when he will have to step in front of all the lizards and prove his innocence, though he has long since given up on the matter, because innocence is worth nothing if you have enough lies to counter. And the Iron Throne is made of nothing but lies.
"You shouldn't be here," Tyrion argues. "Let me tell you as someone who let go of such a thing to know it safe. It tears in just the wrong places, leaves you open like a wound that won't ever heal."
Wounds that will not heal, wounds that will get infected, and leave open space for devils to come back to him, wearing silks and velvet, who'd kill their own brother for a murder he did not commit, take his life for another life he did not take.
"I have to be here," Jaime argues.
He promised her.
And Jaime is done breaking promises.
He wants to give the blade to connect them a meaning.
It is supposed to keep oaths, not break them.
"You won't change anything anyways, so why do we even bother? You will just watch me burn, or getting hanged, or cut in half, or whatever else our dear sister breeds out for me, while you could have found a bit of odd-shaped happiness somewhere far away from this godforsaken place," Tyrion argues.
"I never thought that you'd put my happiness above yours," Jaime huffs.
"I would already only to piss at Cersei's leg one last time. I've seen the rage in her eyes before Joffrey choked to death at the woman's mere presence. I loved it," Tyrion grins. "Seeing her suffer is maybe even better than wine."
"Oh, that surely means something," Jaime chuckles softly.
"You should go, Jaime," Tyrion tells him again.
"It's too late anyways," Jaime shrugs.
"It's never too late. She hasn't left long ago. You can still catch up," Tyrion argues. "Take your stallion and just ride like a madman. Do it like they do in the old tales. You are a knight. Knights are allowed to be all bloody romantic. That is what knighthood is all about after all."
"It's about blood and gore and honour," Jaime argues.
"And honour is perhaps the most romantic idea of them all," Tyrion argues.
And Jaime can't help but silently agree.
Honour is romantic.
Because it is something you strive for, not knowing its shape, not knowing if it will ever be granted to you, and you can't bring yourself to let go, even if you do anything to make yourself so corrupt that you no longer have to care about the vows.
Honour is like love.
Perhaps it even is love in the purest sense, for it seems to shine so brightly white that it blinds, and doesn't love make blind, too?
Or rather, doesn't love, doesn't honour blind you so much that you finally see? Once white fades away and colours return?
"While I can't say that I am a man who ever was of honour, or who was ever out for it, I can't deny that I liked the word itself," Tyrion goes on, glancing around his tiny cell.
"Care to enlighten me?" Jaime chuckles, amused. He is no man of words, his brother is. And in his own way, Tyrion found honour, just in a different shape, or so Jaime understands it.
Steel doesn't have to be forged into a blade to be a weapon.
"It stands for many things. Straightforwardly, it means glory, renown, fame earned, dignity, triumph. The usual things," Tyrion explains, folding his hands in his back as he goes on walking, if only walking circles. "But it may also mean beauty and excellence. It may refer to the beauty of a woman, and even if rather misogynist, reaches back to a woman's chastity, which I think is way too much of a big deal, still. Yet, it remains that one's dignity, one's triumph and glory is put right next to a woman's beauty and excellence. And that within a single word."
Jaime just lets Tyrion's words rain down on him as he calls Brienne to his mind, summons her forth like a pallid ghost shining like a pearl.
"At the same time, it is no static thing. It is the act of gaining respect, a gesture, at least it can be, aside from being given a title, a rank that grants a certain amount of honour without ever having done a thing for it. You can gain honour. It isn't necessarily something given, but that man can give himself, or that can be given to him," Tyrion says. "So yes, I find honour quite an interesting concept, while it's still too bloody romantic for me. For that, I'm too much of a pragmatist."
"What? Don't you dream of a new world?" Jaime asks, eyes closed as he keeps playing through his memories of her white face, her almost white hair, lit by nothing but the moon.
"I dream of a world full of tits and wine. That's as far as it gets," Tyrion shrugs. "And I don't dare to dream far when I piss in a bucket and am sentenced to death."
"I reckon she would agree with you on that one," Jaime says, curling his lips.
Because she lives in the fractions of a moment and opens up this place for white light to come out of it.
"Is she doing what I think she is doing?" Tyrion asks.
"I don't know what you think, obviously," Jaime shrugs, but then grin. "But yes."
"Then it's good," Tyrion sighs with a small smile. "I give a bat's shit on what Cersei may say, but my little lady had nothing to do with any of this, I'm sure of it. This whole thing is a farce, a tragic farce. So maybe it's good that at least one knight is on the quest of righting the wrong."
Jaime nods.
Exactly, of repainting the black reality in the white of her honour, the alabaster that shines out of her steel-like body, her armour.
"So? Will you go? Once this here is dealt with?" Tyrion asks.
"Maybe," Jaime shrugs.
"I hope for some of your devotion and undying will to return to you. Maybes are not reliable in this world. You either do something or you don't. You either die or live. You either kill a little shit of a King or you don't. Of course what others make of it is another matter, but for yourself, you should bypass maybes," Tyrion advises him, but then curls his lips into a frown as he studies his older brother glancing out the window, then the wall, following the sun's trail, the trail of time passing by.
"What are you doing?" Tyrion asks.
"Waiting," Jaime shrugs.
"For what?" Tyrion grimaces. Jaime says nothing, waits, pricks his ears, and that is when it dawns on Tyrion that his brother is up to something indeed, waiting for a moment where the guards are gone as they change position. At once Jaime starts to work on his new metal hand – and takes out one of its pieces to quickly trust into Tyrion's palm. The dwarf puts it away in a hurry, knowing better than to keep such a white-shining object within view as steps come closer again, in the seemingly endless cycle of a guard's watch. Back and forth and back again.
Jamie moves closer to him, so his words are no more than a breath to the rest of the world, "You shouldn't be here. And that is why we have to get you out of here. I promised her. So if you can't work out another solution, you can use this to unlock your chains and the lock of this cellar. Walk to the end of the corridor once you know them asleep. You will find a staircase, and at the end of it a door. Walk through and someone will get you out of this godforsaken place."
"Varys?"
"Varys. He's also making sure that the guards have a much deeper slumber these last few days."
"Why didn't you do that on the first night I spent here?" Tyrion grimaces.
"We didn't have everything ready by then. And I wanted to know Brienne away safely," Jaime replies in a hushed voice. "I don't want her to be linked to this."
"And what about you?" Tyrion asks. Jaime shrugs, "If I were to leave, too, it might fall back on her."
"Do you think she'd care?" Tyrion asks.
And Jaime knows she wouldn't.
She travelled with a Kingslayer, all by herself, a Kingslayer who wanted to kill her at first, something that she was always aware of.
Brienne is not unfamiliar to fear, to threat, but she always fought it, and, up to this point, always won.
"I think I care," Jaime argues.
"And that is why I don't want to be a man of honour. You are too bloody altruistic," Tyrion makes a face. "Ride fast, ride swiftly, don't look back, and King's Landing will forget about you all too fast. This place is built on forgotten things, forgotten people, forgotten graves. As painful as it may be, people won't miss a Kingslayer, just like they won't miss an Imp."
"Cersei might send after me," Jaime argues.
"But there is the wonderfully awful circumstance that she is after me foremost. She wants my head. I think that will keep her preoccupied for a while," Tyrion argues. "Because I do believe that you don't belong here. You belong to white snow further up North, on a bloody quest for things that I only understand from my books. The White of the Kingsguard seems to be a rather dull kind of cream after all. Why not search some real white instead?"
"Oh, I bet the family will be delighted," Jaime snorts.
"I reckon we all have been huge disappointments anyways," Tyrion shrugs. "Cersei is… Cersei, foolish in her greed. You are a Kingslayer denying your heritage in ages since the fire of honour and knightly duties burns in you relentlessly, a flame that even the loss of a hand did not douse. And I am… the imp, the little monster Father would have liked to toss into the sea if not for me bearing his name. We are not at all what we were wanted to be, and yet… we are here, still."
"Well, we don't choose our family," Jaime chuckles softly.
"Just like we don't choose our love," Tyrion agrees, making the older man blink.
They share so much more than people would ever know.
"Will you go?" Tyrion asks.
"What? Will you not if I don't? That is foolish, you know?" Jaime asks.
"Oh, I will once the chance arises. As I said, altruism doesn't suit me, but I'd rather know you away from this place. This place is an infection, a festering wound that will be burned out with an iron poker soon enough," Tyrion grimaces. "I think this city will burn far sooner than later. Be it the arrival of a woman from across the sea, a woman who bears the dragon in her banner. Be it the man who almost had us by the siege. Be it a last stand by the common people who are fed up with the highborns stepping on their hands, their feet, their backs, their toes. Or be it a giant comet raining down on us to take down the world entire. But I think this will be the first city to burn – so you should go while you still can. Ice and snow don't burn as fast as velvet and silks."
Jaime flashes a crooked smile.
"You should go now," Tyrion says. "You really should."
Jaime gets up.
"Oh, and by the way?" Tyrion looks at him.
"Yes?" the older brother looks at him.
"One fine hand you have now," Tyrion grins. "Who's had the idea?"
"You know that," Jaime argues with a smile.
"If you ever come to see her again before I do, tell her that I am more than impressed with her skill," Tyrion tells him.
The skill to heal with metal.
"Will do," Jaime says, before he bows down to embrace his brother, for what will likely be the last time in a long time, if not forever.
No more words are spoken as he calls for the guards to let him out, though Jaime feels a bit more certain, since he knows he left a bit of whitely shining steel for his brother, a chance, however small it may seem.
"Your Grace! Your Grace!"
"What is the matter? I do not seek to be disturbed, I told you," Cersei hisses.
"But your Grace! The Imp is gone!" the servant who just entered her room in a hurry cries out, trying to catch his breath and not her fire.
"What?!" she shrieks atop of her voice, turning around, whirling around like a storm.
"The cellar was found empty this morn, Your Grace," the servant says.
"What did the guards do?" she barks.
"They laid sleeping. It may have been that something was mixed into their drinks the eve before, but we don't know," the servant tells her.
"Find him! Search for him! Bring me his bloody, ugly head!" she cries out.
"Yes, Your Grace," the servant nods.
"And order the Lord Commander here presently," she adds, gritting her white teeth.
"As you wish, your Grace," the servant nods frantically.
"Be quick about it!" she curses. The servant jumps up in the air and then out of the door. Cersei rushes up to her study, and in a surge of fury, flings all of the papers from the table, sends the parchments flying high in the air, sends black ink crashing to the ground, staining the tiles, her shoes, the hem of her black dress, followed by a thud and then a shatter.
Cersei looks down to see the metal hand Jaime gave back to her a little while ago, stating he had no use for it anymore, atop a broken seashell, the seashell she held in her palms the day he returned to King's Landing, or well, however much returned of him, because he returned without a hand, and without the love he had always promised her.
She stares at the white shatters of the shell, buried beneath the gold, black ink sinking into the fractures, working their way through the cracks like black tendrils.
Cersei's chest is caught up in a tremor.
Is that…?
A sign?
Could it be…?
"Your Grace, the Lord Commander, he…"
Cersei rushes to the door, pushes the breathless servant to the side, walks down the hallways, hearing her echoes taunting her until she arrives in his chamber.
And her air is stolen at once.
On the bed it lies, alabaster and shining.
The White.
Carefully arranged next to his armour, his golden armour.
The White he donned to be close to her, to make sure that only she could claim him.
The White that made him so glorious, so brightly shining.
The White that was a seashell.
Until it broke under a golden hand and is now consumed by black ink.
Black ink on her.
Her black ink that seems so much blacker in the presence of the White.
And outside the Red Keep, people jump at a cry of white-hot fury.
Brienne sits in the darkness, seated on a still moist tree trunk that consumed the rain that came down on them not long ago, making her uncomfortably cold.
Pod snores on his bed for the night. In fact he snores louder than her, which seems to be an advantage.
Though the boy is no good riding horses, or wielding weapons. It's no wonder. He squired a Lord, a dwarfish, impish Lord, so she can't really blame him for not having learned to be a knight. A knight can teach a squire to be a knight. A lord can only teach a squire to be a lord, or a servant.
Brienne sighs as she allows her cold fingertips to run over the sheath of the blade Jaime gave to her, the blade that is so beyond marvellous that it might even match him one day. It gives her a bit of security, to be honest, other than being a formidable sword, but Brienne finds it soothing to know that a part of him came with her, and not just the part of his little brother, in form of the snoring squire a few feet away from her.
Brienne just hopes that he is alright and that Jaime can fulfil the promise he made to himself and to her likewise, which is to free the small Lord who had nothing to do with the King's murder. Brienne saw what the others saw, the humiliation the man was exposed to during the wedding, but she saw no yellow gleam in his eyes, just humiliation, something she knows better than most people.
But the way Brienne reckons, it might be for the best, granted that Jaime manages the almost impossible task of breaking Tyrion out of prison and bring him to safety. She saw him in his glorious armour, in the White, and it fashioned him so well.
It made him shine the way she saw him shine in dim moonlight.
It made him about as glorious as he was when only inches from her, bare, holding no armour whatsoever, but still offer protection and security with no more than his body bathing in the moon's white milk.
Jaime is a knight, a knight of the Kingsguard no less. And he can serve his new King, still, yet another child he never held, but might still vow protection to.
For as long as he bears the White with pride, Brienne won't see a single thing wrong in it.
Because he doesn't see a bad thing in her searching Sansa, chasing her vows likewise.
They don't judge each other, that is the thing, will always be the thing that shines so brightly between them.
Brienne is pulled out of her thoughts of white capes and white knights, full of alabaster shining glory, to something of equal colour flashing through the darkness of the woods, as though it was an eye glancing at her, blinking. The tall woman is to her feet at once, but decides not to rouse Podrick out of fear that he will alert whatever roams close to their camp.
The boy is really no good. Yet anyways.
Brienne strides forward with the swiftness of a cat, making almost no sound as she wades through dry leaves and sweeps across old twigs, her hands clutching the lion on the scabbard of her sword, of her means to keep her oaths, the lion she traced so often the past few nights to call Jaime to her mind, summon him forth like a pearly shining spirit.
She can hear a silent grunt, and then a horse moving.
So there must be someone, since the noise comes the other direction, so not from their horses.
Brienne walks further down the mound until the gleaming white is so clear that she knows it not far from her. If only she could see something other than this white streak.
She can't tell foe from fellow in the darkness.
"Who is there?" Podrick suddenly calls out from behind, having been roused by the noises, or so it seems. And at once the white slate in front of her rises, startled.
A blade.
Brienne draws Oathkeeper, makes the blade sing the old songs, the moonlight shining down on the Valyrian steel to paint it alabaster.
She can tell the outline of a man holding this shining blade, so she charges into the night, but the ghostly blade parries, if a little clumsily.
"Wench?"
Brienne stops at once, Oathkeeper still clashing against the strange blade, but then the blade withdraws, a brisk wind rushes through the canopy, pulling some boughs aside to allow for the light of the moon to shine down on them at last, leaving two people dressed in black, holding a weapon of steel, though only one wields it with her hand, while the other wields it with his arm.
"Jaime?!"
"Ser Jaime?!" Podrick calls out, still scrambling around rather helplessly.
"What are you doing here?" Brienne asks, the air leaving her lungs at once, her blue eyes on fire.
"Apparently, I found you. I thought I was alone here on the trail. The mule of a horse wouldn't walk as I wanted it to. I lost your trail somewhere further down the hill," Jaime replies.
"It rained," Brienne replies simply.
"I reckoned as much," Jaime agrees.
"But what are you doing here?" she asks again.
They had agreed that she would go and that he would stay.
And Brienne had arranged herself with keeping something glorious, sacred, private within her chest, behind her armour, for all days, because they have oaths to fulfil, by virtue of the sword he gave her to wield.
She had arranged herself with never seeing his face again, other than behind her eyelids as she called him to mind.
She had arranged herself with all of it, but not… with this.
"I followed my brother's example and simply left, too," Jaime shrugs. "I had to realise that there is still might in my body that I may just as well put it to better use, and that is to fulfil the promise we both made to Lady Catelyn."
There is still whitely shining steel that can be wielded, forged, mended.
There is still a blank space to fill. Maybe not in the Book of the Brothers, but on the white pages still left in his life.
White pages to write a new story.
Start anew.
Brienne just stares at him in the dim moonlight that paints him alabaster.
"And the promise I made to you."
She just goes on staring, the words blown out of her mind, leaving nothing but wan smoke.
"That is if you take me along of course. Though I must say I have all the attributes it takes for such a mission to be successful. I have good references, even though I was pushed around by one strange knight for a long time. Imagine what, it was a woman, and she kept a leash on me, but I am a fast learner, and I am very swift with my mind and tongue," Jaime grins at her, his ivory teeth gleaming through the darkness.
"You'll slow me down."
"Oh, that hurt. C'mon, you won't just send me back after all the risks I took, right?"
"… Going slower is fine for as long as we move forward."
"To fulfilling the oaths."
"Yes."
"Podrick?"
"Yes, Ser Jaime?"
"Be a good lad and turn around and go back to sleep," Jaime grins.
"What? Why?" the young squire frowns.
"I will kiss my lady now, and my lady values privacy greatly," Jaime grins. "So grant us that bit of space for ourselves."
"Ay," the boy says, turning around with a bit of sheepish shame, averting his gaze.
Jaime chuckles to himself. Even in the white moonlight he can see the blush growing on her cheeks as he closes the distance between them and claims her lips, claims them back, which are rose quartz in the ivory of the moon, touches the skin that is steel, white steel shining through any darkness. He finds her milky outlines without effort. Jaime doesn't even have to look, for he learned them by heart, thrust them into his heart.
"Once we reach town, we ought to find a septon. I want to make it a solid vow that you are mine and I'm yours, so I don't ever have to let go of you again."
"Didn't you say that we vow too much?"
"That vow is easy to give, it's impossible not to give, in fact, that is the thing."
"Why?"
"Because you are mine and I'm yours already, right?"
"Right."
"So, the next town, we find ourselves a septon."
"Yes."
Jaime claims her lips again, smiling against her teeth, against her white skin, their blades, still illuminated by the ivory moonlight, touching like they touch. And even if rough material is between them, there is no distance whatsoever. They fell back into place, back into each other the moment their blades met, the moment they touched.
And Jaime, at last, knows that he is right in his decision, his choice. He feels certain on the path he travels now, however uncertain it may be, however uncertain the future ahead of them may be, but the future lies beyond this night, and it is at that moment that they are glorious, bathed in alabaster.
And it is only that moment that matters – because that moment is them in all their purity that laid protected behind their armours, in an oyster's shell, to protect this last white pearl, as though it only waited for this moment to spring open and reveal itself into the moon's shine, the song of their swords, their hands, their lips.
The night is clear and so is Jaime, so is she.
Because she is what he gained by making sacrifices like a hand, his right hand.
Because she is his glory.
His triumph.
His beauty and excellence.
Is beauty and excellence that was forged out of white steel the world has never known.
Is beauty that lies outside any walls, any boundaries of convention.
Is his flexibility, his growth.
His deconstruction, reconstruction.
His forging hammer.
His anvil.
His blue flame.
His Valyrian steel.
She is the rank that annihilates all other.
She is what made it possible for him to give honour back to himself.
Because she is his oath, made him hers, and gave him hers to fulfil next to her.
Because she is his white honour.
His honour.
His love.
His.