Notes:
This work did not want to have a cohesive plot, but I needed to get it out of my head.
In this universe, the White Walkers do not exist, Jon Stark is the legitimate son of Catelyn and Ned, and Samwell Tarly is a maester at the Northern Citadel.
Jaime can still feel his feet, so he might not die.
He can't, however, see more than a few steps in front of him. Blowing snow buffets his face, and the thick wool he wears is no defence against the cold. His nostrils are frozen shut. Jon, the tiresomely honourable ass, doesn't even have the courtesy to shiver in sympathy. He just trudges along beside Jaime. Each step they take is heavy with ice.
The Frostfangs loom behind them, cold and hard, capped with white. Their hidden mouths scream all the world's wind. Jon and Jaime have just climbed free from one of them. Scrambled and scraped, with Ghost's help.
The wolf's claws click on the barren, frozen plain. Jamie's ears ache with the wailing of the wind, but at least the ground is flat and solid. At least he isn't hanging off the edge of a crevasse, waiting to drop into oblivion.
Jaime lifts his head to breathe. His mouth fills with hard flakes of snow; they crunch in his teeth and freeze his gums. Ice pellets patter against Jaime's fingers. He doesn't feel them.
"Cut it off."
Jon's trudging turns into defiant striding. The wind howls, ice blowing cold and white against him, Longclaw's pommel tight in his grip. He walks ahead of Jaime for a few more steps, then stops, turning back to him. Ghost pads next to Jon, and he ruffles his fur, scratches behind his ears, pats his tail. "That's your sword hand."
In the early hours of their return journey, Jaime's hand had begun to turn a sickly grey. Now it was the dark grey of wet stone. Jaime could feel its weight: black ice, frozen blood.
He remembers his hand had been cold, once. His hand is beyond cold. There is nothing.
"Yes, my sword hand that's now useless, since we were trapped in that bloody crevasse for so long, thanks to you." He gestures with his left to Longclaw, strapped to Jon's side. "Now do it. I know you're the only one who would-"
"Other than Sam," Jon interjects.
"Yes, other than Sam. But since he was the one who advised you not to go," and here Jaime rolls his eyes at Jon's look, "he would also probably do his best to save the damn thing. You're both so bloody good it makes me feel sick."
Ice and snow is falling thickly now, pellets piling on their clothes. They crunch with every gesture, every word. The Northern Citadel is half a day's travel away. They won't make it in time for Sam to save Jaime's hand; it's going to be hard enough for them to make it back alive. So there's only one thing for Jaime to do.
"I just have to make you say yes. The thing with you Starks is, that's not hard to do." Even in pain, he manages to find the strength to grin. "You can't resist the allure of fulfilling yet another of your godsdamned oaths."
Jon straightens his back, adjusts his furs, draws in a deep breath.
"As your commander-" Jon stops at Jaime's eye-roll, shooting him a glare. He then continues, "As your commander, I order you to wait. You should at least give Sam a chance."
Jaime draws himself up to his full height. "And as your brother, I'm asking you. Cut it off. We'll both die if you don't. How can I belittle your training tactics if I'm dead?"
Jon's hand leaves Jaime's wrist and he steps away, turns his back. "Do you care so little for yourself?"
Humour isn't working, Jaime can tell that much. He can add tiresomely serious to honourable. And dull.
Jaime rolls his eyes, this time inwardly. The things I must do to convince my closest friend to cripple me. "Do you care so little for your own family? You have a chance to see me suffer as they have suffered."
Jon's determined, stubborn stance is gone, replaced by shoulders taut with cold anger. "You had no part of that, Lannister. We're brothers, we've been brothers for so long, we shed all sins when we came here to train. Don't let the burden of your family name be mine to carry."
"Whatever my legacy," and here Jaime spits, his saliva turning to ice, "might have to do with this, a dead man can't carry anything. I'd rather you weak than dead, Stark. Cut."
"Dead men can carry pasts because men are forgotten," Jon replies, lifting Longclaw high..
Bone and sinew snap.
The Frostfangs close their teeth around Jaime's wrist.
o-o-o-o
Brienne's eyes roll back into her head. She turns inward. Slips away from the furs supporting her, the cold ground underneath, the smell of smoke and stars and fire.
She is tree and sky and world and night and suddenly her turning stops and she is still for a moment, feeling in the dark.
She is not Brienne anymore, she is Wolf. And Wolf is wandering the white winter forest, that green and blue smell of winter, the cold, the red of fire, the grey of smoke, the smells and sparks.
She leaps and catches now, small meat in her jaws, blood thick and warm and wet and good, sweet and she is hungry. Flesh tears easily, bones crack and she licks out their marrow, rich warm salt.
When she is in her wolf's mind she is smaller. Her bulk becomes graceful: loping legs and soft fur and gleaming teeth and night-black nose. Strength of character is strength of claw and sinew. Mind shifts to that soft snow beneath her paws, turning now to ice, now to hard-packed pellets that crunch and stick.
Ice falls from the sky and strikes her fur. The moon is a ghost of white shadow, frozen among the stars. The great winter mountains dance their dance of snow and glaciers. She lopes towards them.
A wolf-song flings itself into the night, wild and despairing. She runs towards it.
It is not the large wolf she sees who is hurt, but rather the men who lay beside him. One dead, frozen and unmoving. The other just as still, but his chest moves. Barely. The last trickles of blood drip out onto a frozen pool underneath his maimed arm, ending at the wrist.
The larger wolf—Ghost, he says to her, with smell—grasps the dead man's shirt in his teeth and pulls, scraping him across the snow. The man is dead, that was for certain, but there is still a chance the other can live. Though he is not her kin, there is no reason not to help another living creature. So she follows Ghost's lead. She tastes the foulness of sweat and blood and fear.
It takes hours to drag them across the frozen wastes, snapping at carrion-eaters and ice birds. She follows Ghost blindly. She is glad for her rich meal, for it takes a great deal of energy to drag this inert form, this block of frozen meat, across the packed snow. But eventually they reach what Ghost considers home. They enter a settlement of strange humans; if they were friendly to Ghost, they might be friendly to her. She was saved by humans; this was one way to return the favour.
Ghost leaves the dead man's body outside, after a few gentle nuzzles, small licks and a plaintive whine.
Later, she hears a desperate howl of anguish.
She'll return, she decides, to see if other other man lives, and to make friends with the new wolf she's met. It was only fair; she'd done a kindness and deserved to be repaid. He is not dead yet. He breathes, a crumpled form, skin a mixture of grey, white, and red. She had known brothers and sisters who lost toes, paws, ears, tail to frostbite, and though his arm was saved, the rewarming would be painful.
An animal didn't take his hand; the wound is too clean. The arm is light grey, hard to the touch, smells like cold and blue almost-death. The blood in it is frozen. She circles the prone form a few times, sniffing. He might still die; he has the smell of it on him. There is nothing she can do.
She warms herself by the fire and grooms her paws. She must be gone before dawn. She can't risk being seen. She is her own creature, with her own human pack. The man is alive. He is somewhere warm. He has more of a chance to live than if he was still out on the frozen plain, bleeding out dead blood from his maimed arm.
o-o-o-o
Travelling home is difficult. She limps, tries to run, limps again. She has travelled too far, too fast, under too much strain.
It has been hours. She is exhausted. She is too cold and too tired to register the trickles of blood that follow her as she crosses the vast expanse of white, ice and snow blowing in her eyes and ears. The cold is a smell that gives her strength and joy when she is well; now it is a stench that haunts each step.
There is another scent. Smoke. The sun is nearly rising. All is quiet. Curling close to the nearest fire, she falls asleep. The packed snow slowly begins to melt from her paws, pellets falling away to mix with the blood that pools beneath them. Tomorrow she'll search for a hot spring. For now, she drowses, nose, paws, tail tucked warm in soft fur lit by orange coals. Safe. Home.
o-o-o-o
When Brienne comes back to herself, it is early morning. Night is fading, and the sky is pink and purple with the newness of sun.
Ygritte is beside her, putting kindling into the fire. "You slept in." She plunks herself down beside Brienne's prone form, fussing with her bedroll.
Brienne groans. "I know." Her head has begun to pound, her eyes feel gritty, and there's an odd taste in her mouth. "I had a dream."
"Oh?" Ygritte stirs the coals, moves to prepare mugs of mint tea. "Must've been interesting to keep you sleeping so long."
"An...animal dream."
"Oh. So it's started, then. A bit early, I think, but it's to be expected."
"Will it always make me feel like-" Brienne stops, gestures to her face, her body twisted in the furs. She swallows down her bitter saliva and continues."Like this?"
Ygritte pats Brienne's arm, smiles a sympathetic smile. "I don't know. I'm not a skinchanger." She passes Brienne a cup of tea. "You're the one with the wolf. Now drink up. This should make your mouth taste better."
They're not travelling today, though the weather is soft for the north. Brienne is glad of that; she and her wolf are both exhausted. Wolf is still asleep, curled up beside her. Her pads are bloody, and melting frost crusts her fur. There's blood on her pelt, too, the blood of the dying man.
It's not usual, that her first wolf dream should be so dramatic. But it was. She and her wolf had saved a man's life. Whether he'd know, whether he'd want to know, was another question.
o-o-o-o
He is proud and unashamed in his aloneness.
His head is high, as if he wears a golden crown, borne lightly. A soft weight that gentles him.
His eyes are bloodshot with their ungentleness.
And then he is not alone, and Wolf withdraws into the shadows.
Ygritte finds him there in his aloneness, her red hair unmistakable, even through wolf eyes. "Ghost feels it too. He'd not want you to be alone tonight." Her eyes soften. "I loved him too, Jaime. And Sam." She rests her arm on his uninjured shoulder, and he rests his head on hers. "I know he'd want you to be strong. Especially now."
Jaime is holding a sword in his good hand, balancing it delicately across his maimed arm. "I think his bloody honour would demand I be alone, to think on it awhile." He hefts the sword in his hand, runs his stump down the flat of the blade, hisses and pulls his arm away. "Are you a kingslayer if your king was not part of the Seven Kingdoms? Are you a kinslayer if your brother was not your brother?"
Ygritte's eyes flare. "The Free Folk don't care about kings. Kin, we do. He was your kin. I'd have killed him myself. It was a merciful thing you did, a kindness. "
"Yes, it was an act of great mercy." Jaime's fist clenches around Longclaw's pommel."And he's still just as dead."
o-o-o-o
Brienne watches the man crowned gold and wintering go without sleep.
A king-less silence envelops him.
He has the same routine each night: the chair, the lock, the sword. He paces the length of the room, back and forth, back and forth. He sits in the chair at his desk and stares at the wood of the table. His dirty nails scratch meaningless patterns into the wood. He looks at them without ever seeing.
Before he sleeps, she returns to herself.
Every night the circles under his eyes get darker. Every night he is more agitated. His agitation is a silent weight.
It is her wolf that watches, still and silent, soft fur and no teeth, one eye open as she rests in the corner farthest away from him.
The sword is in his hand again, blade sparking silver, gemstone in the pommel cold blue. A wolfs-head for decoration, fur carved grey and thick. One eye is missing. The socket black and jagged. The man's fingers trace the patterns in the pelt, over and over again.
He opens the shutters, breathes in the snow, closes them again. Wine is sticky at the bottom of his cup.
o-o-o-o
His grief is as abrupt in him as his anger.
And it must be grief. For in his eyes there is the same haunted look she understands herself, that of one abandoned.
Cast aside in some great machination only the gods themselves could say anything about.
And they never do.
Always the sword he holds in his hand, always the pommel with its blue eye; sometimes he finishes the wine and sometimes he lets it sit to sour in the morning.
He takes out a letter, worn and crumpled. He makes as if to throw it in the fire, but stops. His hand goes to his maimed arm, his sword; he takes a silver key and turns a lock. The sword slides into an alcove, the letter on top. He turns the lock again with a heavy click, and sits down at his desk.
o-o-o-o
Sometimes he is not in his grief.
Wolf sleeps in her corner, and wakes when he enters.
She is hidden.
He is not.
o-o-o-o
Jaime is a golden king because he is not a king.
He is his father's son, his sister's brother, because he is not of their family, not anymore.
He took the golden crown as he took Jon Stark's life. The gold was silvery-white and cold as the blood in his veins.
He is a brother because he was not a brother; he is a kinslayer because he slayed one who was not kin.
He is a golden king and wears his invisible crown.
His crown is a sword he cannot wield.
o-o-o-o
Brienne is a woman without a body. A wolf without teeth and fur.
The woman without a woman's body watches the man who is not king.
Across that merciless distance of white, he rules.
o-o-o-o
She watches him through wolf-blue eyes. They are clear and open in the dark.
He calls for a bath.
The water is lightly scented, chamomile and musk.
His skin is earthy and sweet, and the soap smells of mint.
He washes with the grace of all the gods.
Scrubs at the golden crown of his hair, moonlight a silver dye.
Closes his eyes, tips his head back to sluice steaming water over himself.
Droplets catch on his eyebrows, eyelashes, glittering soft in the half-light.
They flow down the skin of his throat and catch in the hollows of his collarbone, pooling molten and gold.
He is calm and meditative in his nakedness.
Later, when she returns to herself, she is not.
o-o-o-o
Brienne journeys with her wolf across the snow and ice. Mental journeys, emotional journeys. Then, purely physical exercises. It is right, she is told, that her initiation into this world should require physically bonding with her wolf. If they are to be lifelong companions, bonded in mind and skin, they need to endure physical trials together.
First is the giant bonfire, that singes Wolf's coat and blisters Brienne's skin.
Next, the natural spring filled with ice and snow, that coats Wolf's paws with thick ice and covers Brienne's skin with chilblains.
The last is a journey they each go on alone. If they are truly attuned to one another, they reach the same place at the same time. If not, one dies, leaving the other behind.
o-o-o-o
Brienne's hand leaves a trail of blood as it scrapes across the ice. She is dimly aware that she is being dragged, somewhere, by someone, or something. What is forefront in her awareness is pain, thick and sharp and swirling, emanating hot from her hand. She can smell blood and the sharpness of animal. Something tried to kill her. She is not dead.
She can smell fire, smoke and cooking and the tang of many bodies in a small space. Buildings rising up like temples in the setting sun. She thanks the gods that inhabit them for her life.
She is still being dragged, by teeth, not hands.
o-o-o-o
It is a long time before Brienne wakes.
Her hand is wrapped tightly in linen, and on the small table beside the bed rests a massive direwolf claw, bigger than any she's ever seen, coated with blood.
The pain in her hand is still there, but much less than before. She tries to flex her fingers, but it is difficult.
When she wakes, she is not alone.
The man she has seen golden in his grief and anger and skin sits at the table across the room from her bed. His back is tense, muscles taut as he scratches out some missive or another. Her back is to her. He hears her rustling and rises from his chair, turning towards her. His face is taut with irritability and exhaustion.
He is different here, wearing the armour of his chosen bearing with a painful deliberateness.
With Brienne, he has chosen the coldness of detached anger. "We saved your life, but unless you have some other reason to be here, you can't stay." He gestures to her wound. "You're healed enough, and we've not got resources to feed another. Food is scarce enough as it is."
"Jaime, I-"
He stops her with a glare. "You'll address me as Lannister, and you'll leave tonight."
"At least let my ribs heal."
"I'd rather not, but there's another solution." He points at her left hand. "Help me train. Your hand is as useless in battle as mine. It can't get any worse than being beaten by a beast of a woman, so what do I have to lose?"
"You haven't asked what I have to lose."
"You need to make yourself useful. Unless you want to die trying to limp home-"
"Fine. Tomorrow morning, then."
o-o-o-o
When Ygritte comes to him, Wolf is in the room. She slips into the shadows, silent and still.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Ygritte's voice cracks with strain. She's leaning on the doorway, a tired ghost.
"I know how much you cared for him, Ygritte, that's why I didn't tell you! I cared for him too, or haven't you realised that!"
Ygritte slides down the door frame, a heavy sack. She slumps down to sit on the ground, knees folded to her chest. "I didn't realise he was willing to sacrifice himself for you."
"I didn't think he'd let a bloody sword make him be so reckless." Jaime laughs- a dry, broken sound. "That's my job."
"He's the honourable git and you're the unsteadying force. It was the same with me and him," Ygritte replies. She smiles softly to herself, before she sobers. "So it was the same journey it's always been, then? Since he got the bloody thing?"
"Yes," Jaime says. He has the sword on his lap now. "It's not much of a rite of passage if trying to complete it means you die." He strokes the fur on the pommel, again and again. "Bloody Starks. Their secrets are worse than Lannisters."
She walks to him, puts her thumb in the empty eye socket, strokes the blue gem. "So what should we do?"
"Finish what he started. It's our rite of passage now."
o-o-o-o
He comes back bloody, broken. His left foot drags; his stump is angrily red. He breathes shallowly, eyes dull.
She cannot go to him. He is there and she can see him and she cannot go to him.
She goes to him with fur and tail. Presses her nose against his fingers, nuzzles into his palm. Live, Jaime. His memory is not worth your death. Please, live, Lannister.
He looks, and then he sees. A spark of—fear? Anger? Recognition.
o-o-o-o
He's bloodied himself, again. "You're hurt."
She looks away when he strips off his shirt.
"Yes."
He is salt-smell and gold-skin.
She moves to his doorway, holding a strip of linen.
"You don't want-"
He steps away from her when she looks at him.
"No. I don't."
"Lannister."
"Tarth."
"You can't bandage your back."
"No. I can't. Find Sam."
o-o-o-o
She remembers the taste of his sweat as he was dying, and the gold-tipped shadows at his throat.
Her candles burn low.
o-o-o-o
Ygritte falls with a great silence.
Her red hair fans around her as she topples from her horse.
They hear the pluck of bowstrings, the hiss of feathers, the thwack of arrows into flesh.
It is someone else; someone else falls.
Someone else falls. She is sure of it.
It is not red hair she sees, not white skin and grey eyes.
o-o-o-o
They will burn Ygritte's body where they burnt Jon's, beside the stand of new pines.
Soon, the air will be thick with the smell of ash, but in this chamber it is cool and dark.
It smells of mint and chamomile, of old wood and older light, something gold and warm.
Ice and snow strike the window and Brienne stares at white on white. Her body is an iron weight pressing against the cool glass.
Ygritte would not have cried for Brienne; she would have loosed a thousand burning arrows. Brienne chose, and was chosen. She was of Westeros, but adopted by Ygritte's people.
Tonight, she has only herself to choose. She is alone, in a strange room, in that strange quality of time outside of grief. She is an iron weight, swinging between numbness and hysteria. Death's unreality is a pain without pain.
She lights the nearest candle and watches it burn, dripping wax and filling the room with fragrant smoke. Ygritte's soul will burn raw and sweet, and fill the sky with perfumed light. The stars will be pine needles crushed underfoot, glowing green.
Brienne tips the candle. The flesh of her arms sears.
Pain is a feeling she can describe.
She sleeps with the agony of burning.
In the night, he observes.
o-o-o-o
She wakes to the dawn light, too hot on her skin. She dresses in her dirty clothes, rips the tangles from her dirty hair, wipes her dirty face. She can smell herself. There is nothing to wash for.
She'd learn more of her left hand if she could; but he's gone to the Frostfangs, on some misguided quest to make Jon's memory more honourable than his life. He'll die too; and this thought comes with the feeling of floating, not ungently, above the world, an almost-sleep within an almost-life.
She'll practice alone; Ygritte would be proud, Ygritte and Jon and Tormund and all the rest. Among old pines, she slashes. She lets her slashes become clumsier, fails to block the branches that swing towards her, lets the arm that isn't burned scrape against the trees.
The moon is high and full when she is done. She limps to the hot-spring, its black stone stained silver by the moon. The water films with sweat and blood and dirt. She is gratefully tired.
It is deepest night now, and there is no one to see her body marked by its grief.
He watches her, and he watches the space she leaves.
o-o-o-o
She's burnt herself, again. Before the sun has set she'll cut herself, again. Was he so reckless?
Was it like this for her, when she watched him?
o-o-o-o
The suicidal fool still hasn't seen Sam. It's been a week.
There's nothing for it, then.
He steps out of the shadows. "You're hurt."
"You're here."
His stubbornness is as strong as her shock. "I am."
"You're meant to be at the Frostfangs."
"I was."
"You're here."
"I am."
"You stayed."
"I did."
"With me."
"Yes."
"With me."
"You're hurt."
"You saw."
"Yes. You don't want-"
"No. Find Sam."
"No."
"How long?"
"How long did you?"
"Lannister."
"Brienne."
"You saw."
"I see."
o-o-o-o
When he sleeps, so does her wolf.
She does not wake til he has left.
o-o-o-o
She's in the strange chamber again, lighting candles for Ygritte, when she hears the door.
Ygritte's soul must've burned early, and the stars coalesced to form her body, for there's a redheaded shade standing in the doorway.
Her eyes are bright, her smile wide and beckoning."Brienne, you've not eaten, Sam's waiting, there's-"
"What-?"
Brienne is a shade herself. There is no blood, no feeling, no pain.
"I rode hard, as fast as I could; we got caught. I took a few arrows. Sam had to patch me up."
Brienne backs towards the window. "You died. You took an arrow to the chest and you died."
"Aye, I took an arrow to the chest, but it didn't kill me." Ygritte chuckles. "My ribs are as hard as my head."
Brienne's almost reached the window now, can almost feel the cool glass against her palm, can almost shrink against it.
"You died. We were going to burn your body. We were to build your funeral pyre. I saw the arrow that killed you."
"The arrow that didn't kill me. Sam will show it to you- if you'd like to see."
"Ygritte."
"Brienne. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you thought I was dead, but now I'm not dead. Sam's downstairs, with wine fresh from his apprentices."
o-o-o-o
"You know me, Brienne."
"I know you."
"Yes."
"You've seen me."
"No."
"With your wolf eyes. Felt me with your wolf skin."
"No."
"How is this any different?"
"This is different."
"I'm not different."
"You're not different."
"But you won't see me."
"It's different."
"It was easier to save my life when I wasn't real."
"No."
"Yes. Did you imagine that I wouldn't want to know who saved my life? That I wouldn't want to know who saw me so well?"
"I imagined that your life was your own."
"And yet you invaded it."
"I only saw what was there."
"And I am only seeing what is here."
o-o-o-o
Ygritte's arrow arcs against the setting sun. The first stars come out, twinkling silver. Brienne cuts wood to feed the fire that warms her chamber with salty smoke.
On sweet green rushes, two wolves sleep curled against each other, sharing dreams.
Notes:
Thank you for reading. I would be delighted to know your thoughts.