A/N1: Title is from the song Forty Days and Forty Nights by the Rankin Family. There's really no other link to the song other than the mood/tone.

A/N2: Although the tone, mood, setting, and title are very similar, this fic is not a part of the He Wants (he wants) series. Hopefully that doesn't mean I'm not very creative! O.O I just wanted to take a different, more in depth look at the same situation.

Warnings: Canon-compliant coarse language.

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Night One: Brienne

The night is dark and filled with terrors.

She's heard those words far too many times since the Wall has fallen and the Others and their wights began endlessly throwing themselves against the battlements of Winterfell, an isolated and lonely island of life and light in a sea of darkness and creatures returned from the dead.

Brienne thanks the Seven for the dragons even if the sight of the wights' flaming bodies means Jaime, sleeping next to her now, may cry out in the night once again. She understands. She has her own fears, her own dreams: the man she loves dying in her arms, a monster's teeth ripping the flesh from her cheek, a kind woman transformed into the embodiment of cruel vengeance, driven mad with grief and from her own death. For Brienne, like Jaime, the dragons and the Others and the burning wights have simply joined her existing night terrors.

Brienne is there for Jaime when he wakes, screaming, just as he is there for her when she does the same.

Brienne shifts a little in the straw they've spread out over the hard floor, although Jaime's arm, flung across her waist, has her more or less pinned in place. Jaime mutters what she thinks is a protest that turns into an approving rumble when she stills. She wishes she could sleep, but she only continues to stare out into the darkness of the crowded room.

They are not alone, in their dreams or their sleeping quarters here in one of the small halls scattered throughout the castle. There is a fireplace at both ends of the room and there are soaring ceilings that disappear into black nothingness when what small fires they build die down. It still feels like the last living creatures in the North have been packed into Winterfell until its walls bulge, sleeping cheek by jowl wherever there is room. No one even stirs anymore when someone wakes, screaming, from their dreams.

The nights are endless, broken only by a few hours of sunlight that turns the black of night into a dull grey and is far too weak to warm even the tiniest portion of skin. Still, everyone spends what time they can in the light, such as it is, for as long as it is.

They have not yet lost hope, here within the walls of Winterfell. The dragons give them a sense of invincibility and even the Others cannot raise the ashes of the fallen to fight against the living. There are not as many funeral pyres as there had been before Daenerys Targaryen arrived with her great, flying beasts.

But those great flying beasts need to be fed as do the tens of thousands packed behind Winterfell's walls. Fifty thousand Dothraki screamers and ten thousand Unsullied have dwindled to less than half that, due not only to the Others but to cold and disease and growing starvation. Brienne herself is growing thin to the point of being mistaken for a wight herself, except her eyes are still their ordinary blue, the skin beneath her leather and furs is still warm, her blood still flows, her heart still beats in her chest.

And she is afraid, so afraid, even with Oathkeeper flaming in her hand, even with Jaime beside her with Widow's Wail a beacon of light and hope in his. Over the last few days, or weeks, or mayhaps months, they have learned to fight together like well-trained dancers: Widow's Wail in Jaime's left hand, Oathkeeper in her right, both blades burning in the darkness, only dimming when they slice through a wight or, on occasion, an Other, felling hundreds or thousands of wights at once, like trees tumbling before a mighty gale.

Later, once the wights have been pushed back yet again, they burn any remnants of their enemies that remain behind along with their own dead, and Brienne again blesses Daenerys and her remaining dragons. At least they need not waste fuel on funeral pyres. Winterfell is heated by the hot water that lurks beneath it, but they still need fire to cook what food they have. They go further and further afield now, in search of both food and wood to keep the kitchens working. They have stripped the godswood almost bare except for the weirwoods with their strange, unsettling faces, at the foot of which Bran can most often be found, looking almost dead himself.

Brienne shakes her head and rolls over, her back now to Jaime, who once again mutters a protest and shifts closer. She listens to the snuffles and snores and the soft words being whispered around her. She had her own private bedchamber once, as had Jaime, centuries ago or mayhaps only a few weeks or months. Time no longer has any meaning and sometimes, as she lays in the darkness and listens to the soft night sounds of dozens of living humans crammed together in this small hall, she wonders if she only dreamed of the sun and summer, of the beaches of Tarth and its beautiful sapphire oceans that sparkled in the heat and the sunlight. Are her memories nothing more than illusions she's created to give herself hope there is something other than this cold hell, that they can win against the Others and the cold and the darkness?

Tarth and summer are long ago, if they ever existed at all, and there is now only this: the Others and their wights, the dragons and flaming swords, the battle they're in and the one to come.

The room is lit only by the last embers burning low in the fireplaces. Someone coughs, others snore, some mutter fear-drenched words in their sleep. Then she hears a woman's soft laugh, a man's low, amused voice, and the sound of kissing and the rustling of clothes.

The night is dark and full of terrors ... and loneliness.

Here, at the end of the world, where the living meets the dead, the morality of the day no longer seems important, no more real than her memories of Tarth and the heat of the sun warming the freckles on her shoulders. People are finding comfort where they may, with whoever they can. Comfort, warmth, and mayhaps a reminder that they, at least, are still alive, unlike the revenants they face.

Jaime has no need to sleep next to Brienne every night. He has more than enough women offering him a warm place to lay his head ... and anything else he wishes to include with it. Brienne has seen them offer often enough, has heard them whispering in his ear in the Great Hall, or the halls, or the Throne Room, or the training yards. Jaime simply smiles and sends them on their way and spends his nights next to her, huddled close, and at some point in the night, his maimed arm is flung over her waist, his breath tickling her ear.

They used to call her the Kingslayer's Whore, centuries ago, when they first arrived at Winterfell and learned the Wall was in ruins and the dead on the march. Even then, there was no heat in it, no condemnation although she once overheard a group of men, snickering as she walked by, praising Jaime for knowing enough to take the largest and ugliest woman he could find as his whore because at least she's big enough to warm three beds at once, and she'll always be available because even at the end of the world, she's too ugly for anyone else to fuck. That was before Oathkeeper burst into hot, bright flames in her hand, and Widow's Wail did the same in Jaime's. No one mocks them anymore, all these years, or mayhaps only weeks, since those first days.

But it's still the end of the world, she thinks, bleak and cold and almost desperately lonely even with Jaime as close as he can get to her through their boiled leather and breeches. His nose is cold and pressed against the back of her neck and as he mutters in his sleep and snuffles closer, she tells herself again that she needs to find another place to sleep. Some day, she'll hide away in some alcove where she can keep warm and none can get close to her ... and then she'll truly be alone, without even Jaime's bulk pressed against her, warm and alive and comforting, even if he sometimes murmurs his sweet sister's name in the night.

She shifts, her bones aching from the day's battle and the cold and the hard floor softened little by the straw and blankets they sleep on. Jaime stirs then subsides back into sleep.

Somewhere in the otherwise sleeping mass of bodies she hears the unmistakable sounds of fucking. Once, in a different age, a thousand years ago, such a thing would have sent her scurrying away, her cheeks flaming even hotter than Oathkeeper, and she would have hidden herself away from such things.

Now...

She shifts again, Jaime's weight warm against her back. He nuzzles the back of her neck, sending sparks shivering down her spine.

She finds herself filled with yearning, fighting the urge to turn, to edge her fingers into Jaime's breeches, to take his cock in hand and see if what she'd been told centuries ago is true: are all women truly the same in the dark? He dreams of his sweet sister, whispers her name with a dark yearning that makes Brienne's heart freeze from something even colder than what the Others and their wights carry with them. Even so, even if his heart is back in King's Landing, mayhaps here in the dark, at the end of the world, she might be able to persuade him, might even be able to pleasure him and receive some pleasure in return, no matter how inexperienced and awkward and ugly she is.

But she knows he would leave her in the grey light of day. The only vows he ever kept before he met Brienne are the ones he made to Cersei. If she, Brienne, persuaded him to break faith with Cersei, then his honor would demand he leave her alone in the dark, surrounded by the sounds of other people seeking their comforts where and when they may.

It's the end of the world and she's never been kissed, not truly. And she's certainly never been fucked. And never will be if she insists on sharing her bedroll with Jaime every night.

Her lips quirk into a bitter half-smile.

She wonders which of them is protecting the other's virtue.

Brienne lets out a soft, sad sigh as the couple, somewhere in the darkness, increase their fervor.

"Go to sleep, wench," Jaime whispers, so softly she almost thinks she imagined it. "Day still comes far too early, even in endless night."

She gives a slight nod and closes her eyes.

Jaime nuzzles closer, his stump rubbing a soothing circle on her belly.

Not helping, she thinks with a grimace. Not that he would know. Or care.

She stifles another sigh and silently recites passages from the Seven-Pointed Star until she finally, blessedly, falls asleep.

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