Author's Note: Hello everyone! This is yet another attempt to pave the way for my multi-chaptered fanfics to finally go on and push past the writer's block. I don't know if this will work, but I pray to the Seven that it will.
I'm still no native, yet again no beta, just me and my mad obsessions.
It's actually "inspired" by the drawings I chose for a banner (I hope this worked now...) - a headcanon that begged to be negotiated in different ways, if you will.
Once again, this is supposed to be in canon, but has no greater implications as to overall happenings of the books. Which is why I took the liberty to simply have Jon alive for now... or raised from the dead... or whatever.
I hope you'll enjoy anyway. :)
Jaime still didn't get used to the life up North.
Well, in fact, he refuses to get used to it. He doesn't plan on staying here. He is only here because it is the bloody right thing, or well, because the wench constantly reminds him that it is, even if he doesn't want to hear it.
Jaime has no intention to stay here longer than necessary – just like he has no intention to die in this bloody spot covered in snow and ice. And if he is to leave his life here in the cold after all, Jaime made sure of it that his body is burned to ashes on a windy day so it carries away from this godforsaken place.
And Castle Black is anything but a castle, to be sure. It's anything but the Red Keep. Wet stone floors, frozen stone stairs to stumble over, the smell of mold, and the wind screaming at them even in the middle of the night when he would rather like to sleep.
"Remind me again why I am putting up with this situation, wench," Jaime sighs, one leg dangling off the bed lazily, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
At some point Jaime reckons he should be glad that Lord Commander Jon Snow agreed that it'd be a very dangerous idea to put Brienne anywhere close to a bunch of men who vowed celibacy in a world that's too unforgiving to keep up such a vow, short before the Others will start their march, even when it is about a woman like Brienne. The one good decision Jaime accounts to the lad thus far. Well, and that he gave little objection to it when Jaime said that he'd share the private room with her, to make sure that none of the crows crept their way too close to her in the midst of the night.
Even if Brienne can take down every single one of them, if a flock of crows attacks, even the wench may have her dear trouble.
Thus, they share that room, like they did ever since they started their way up North.
Brienne looks up from the small oven giving little to no light – but at least some heat – where she just put in a few more logs of wood, wrinkling her nose, "Because the Others will come little time from now. Because we can be of help in the fight against them. Because we have at least one sword of Valyrian steel to put to use. That is what we are here for."
Jaime heard those words so often by now, as though they became a prayer he doesn't believe in, and simply lets Brienne recite again and again to remind him that it's a prayer after all.
"What about the whole 'We must do it because it's the right thing', I wonder?" he chuckles softly.
Because that is usually the ending of her sentence. Just like anything in her nature is about bloody honor, chivalry, doing the right thing… and more bloody honor.
"You always tell me that it annoys you," Brienne replies, her face not giving away anything.
"And since when does it matter to you if I am annoyed at something you ponder on endlessly?" he huffs.
"Why do you ask me to remind you of something you already know?" she counters.
"Aha, you're getting better at it," Jaime grins, bemused, lazily toying with the lacing of his linen shirt.
"Better at what?" she frowns.
"Showing that you have more wit than you usually let on," he shrugs, to which she rolls her eyes at him, going on with some nonsense task of gathering scattered around things.
Since, in fact, he could care less about what the room looks like. It's enough that he bothers to take over watches in the bloody snow alongside Brienne - and that even though he didn't volunteer for the job. If he leaves his muddy boots or soaked furs somewhere, the crows are the last people who get to tell him that he is supposed to tidy up a bit.
"Some things truly never change," he exhales, amused.
"And you are a living example of it," she huffs.
"Ahaha, now that was the living counter example. Some months back, I would have said that it is a thing of impossibility that Brienne of Tarth would speak to me in such a fashion," Jaime smirks at her.
"Well, some months back, you wouldn't have thought it possible to find yourself on Castle Black either, yet here we are," Brienne shrugs her broad shoulders.
The unexpected is the new expected now, he knows.
"Touché," Jaime chuckles, enjoying the lightness of the conversation, as though it was weightless, something he honestly didn't think was possible with Brienne, who used to search sincerity in every word she or anyone in general spoke. "Are you done pretending to clean up this rat hole any time soon, you tell me?"
"I am cleaning up a bit," she shrugs her broad shoulders at him.
"For whom?" he leans back on the pillow with a grunt.
"I don't want the room to look like a mess," Brienne insists.
"No one cares a crow's shit about how the room looks like – because no one is supposed to be in here other than us. I think I made that clear enough," Jaime huffs.
"Oh yes, very clear," she rolls her eyes. "The lad still jumps whenever you pass him by. That was not very kind of you."
"I said it once, he didn't listen. I pointed that out to him," Jaime insists.
"You chased him," Brienne corrects him.
"Only out the door," Jaime replies with a sly smile.
"It was still not necessary to do it in such a fashion," she shakes her head.
"I swear by the Old Gods and the New that if you pick up one more piece of whatever it may be to stuff it somewhere else, I will tie you up somewhere," Jaime grunts, fed up with watching her at this useless task. Brienne picks up something else anyway, the horsey-toothed minx she is.
"You meant to say?" she asks, raising an eyebrow at him.
That definitely is an attitude Brienne only started to display some short time ago – but Jaime can't say that it displeases him. In fact, he likes it a lot that he is now no longer the only one jesting. That means he has to feel less bad about the matter if he teases her.
"I meant to say that you are supposed to get yourself to bed at last. I'm waiting."
Brienne looks at him for a moment, blinks, but then moves towards him with the tiniest of smiles, understanding.
And that is the other thing he never thought about as a mere possibility, didn't even bother to think about, dared to imagine.
That he'd find not only a travelling companion in Brienne of Tarth, but actually… the one companion for it all.
It was no grand moment, really, on the way to the Wall, in some inn he can't remember the name of. They had gone to sleep next to each other like they had so many nights before. It was mere chance that either one rolled to face towards the middle of the bed, instead of the opposite walls – so they'd lie back to back.
He could barely see Brienne in the dark, just a bit of her edgy outline because of the moon shining through the small window, and a faint milky blue glimmer in her eyes, but that was all. He could only feel her hot breath against him, and for a moment Jaime wondered why they always slept with the backs to each other instead of face-to-face.
Until Jaime recognized that lying facing each other meant a way closer proximity, even if the distance between their bodies didn't change.
Just the distance of their gazes.
They had just laid there for a long while, looking at each other without really seeing much of the other, and neither one turning away as their breaths suddenly quickened.
And that was when it dawned on Jaime that he wasn't turning back around because he didn't dare to. Because he didn't want to give her the feeling that he'd turn his back on her. That, oddly so, he didn't want her to feel… rejected.
That he didn't want to reject her.
… And that he didn't want her to turn back around either…
It really took him by surprise once the thought crossed his mind, brushed over it like a silken shawl. Just like it took Jaime by surprise once he realized that she was looking at him, looked him right in the eyes this whole time, probably thinking the same things walking circles inside his head, stomping their tiny, invisible feet.
Had she been looking at him like this before, he wondered, when he had his back to her?
At first it was a peck, a rash move forward, towards her. And the moment Jaime drew back, there was no single thought on his mind, a complete blank. He just saw two blue rings supposedly her eyes, now thinner because her pupils had widened, staring back at him – and only felt her hot breath against him, coming out in quick puffs.
"Jaime."
"Brienne."
Two names, two words that hold a strange kind of significance for either one, to either one.
As though, only between them, the names suddenly made sense.
Because she used to call him Kingslayer.
Because he used to refuse calling her by her name to pay her back.
And it was as though those two names were the keys to a lock Jaime didn't know kept him from someplace to go.
The second time it was no peck.
Neither was the third.
She responded to him wordlessly, as though she was guiding him that "someplace".
Jaime never dared to imagine that he'd enjoy another woman's reactions to his touches, after he was used to only a single one's. Brienne reacted all differently. It was really just that – a blank to write on, a text in a different language that begged to be put down on paper. He got reactions from her, so delicate, nowhere close to where he'd once gotten similar reactions from Cersei. When he touched Brienne's hip like he used to touch Cersei's, she didn't move at all, but when he pulled her closer to him in another way, she drew him into her with a kind of passion as unfamiliar to him as her touches, as his own touches on her freckled skin.
It was as though she tried to get as much of him on her and her on him that Jaime would have been surprised if his mind had been capable of surprise at that second, but it was a feeling, deep down, a feeling indescribable, not to capture, that allowed no other thought but one.
"Brienne."
Once Jaime let that one thought overtake all the rest, an even stranger thing happened. Passion mixed with anticipation, with thrill, want to explore, want to discover, no matter how ungainly these lands may appear, in the midst of the night, it was fascinating to explore her with his clumsy left and his even clumsier stump – and not be pushed back but to her, wordlessly begging to go on.
It was astounding to hear his name rolling from her broad lips, her big hands jittery as they dared to explore him as well, hesitantly, shyly, to hear her say his name without the smallest echo of "Kingslayer".
"Jaime."
"Jaime."
"Jaime."
It was music.
A new song.
A tune that only rung between them and no one else but them.
There was a moment of hesitance, short before it happened, but, still no more words were spoken. She just nodded and pulled him impossibly closer to herself. She pulled him into her.
A beat.
A wince.
A kiss.
Two breaths ebbing into one.
One.
Two.
Three.
"Jaime."
"Brienne."
"Jaime."
"Brienne."
That night had been filled with a new kind of passion. Jaime never checked the door for possible intruders. Didn't have to think about making it quick, making it silent. They took their time getting used to each other, exploring each other, without giving any other verbal cues than each other's names, each other's voices, sometimes swallowed by a kiss, sometimes ringing out like a prayer, sometimes a faint whisper, other times a muffled cry… and sometimes, curiously so, a small laugh, a chuckle, mouth buried in the nape of a neck, trying to contain the smile.
There suddenly was ease where there once was neck-breaking tension.
There suddenly was tension where there used to be habit.
Muffled laughter where there were muffled cries of ecstasy.
Cries of ecstasy where there used to be stealing out of the room.
Because, at the end, there was no stealing away, but sleeping still entangled, and waking up entangled as the first beams of light announced the new day. It felt as though they had made the unspoken promise of staying by each other's side on their journey physical to the point that both knew there was no backing down from that solid promise anymore.
It was the strangest thing, unexpected, a thousand words left unsaid, but curiously those two they uttered throughout feeling as though they were enough to express them all.
So, ever since then, it had gone on like this. Nothing much had changed between them, except for what happened in the now truly shared bed. They still bickered, riding their horses next to each other, though Jaime still jested more than Brienne did, she just put an end to it, to be fair, but if Jaime was to name one thing that changed between them other than what they did underneath the sheets, was that the wench grew more confident in talking back, mixed with a kind of sarcasm he didn't know of her until that very night when they had started laughing right in the act once or twice, and thereafter, more than once. It felt easier. When the path up North got steeper and rockier, the conversations grew lighter and lighter.
All of a sudden, there had been more smiles, simple as that.
And that in a situation that didn't deserve smiles.
A situation that sounds more like a suicide mission than a tale of final success, of songs written in their name to outlive them both.
Ever since then, she and Jaime had shared their bed in every aspect of the term, and when that crow dared to walk in on them in the midst of the night a few moons back – after Jaime had specifically told them to stay the Seven Hells out of their chamber, he did cast he lad out with, let's say, forcefully.
Not that he was afraid of them knowing – Jaime is truly past the point to care if the little crows want to make some fun at their expenses, at the Kingslayer and his Whore. In contrast to them, he hasn't taken the Black, and doffed the White to leave himself with perhaps a dark kind of Grey, which means that he can indeed leave Castle Black if he feels like it. And if they piss Jaime off enough, they know that he'll have his and Brienne's horse saddled within an hour's time, head somewhere down South, and leave the Others to their meager, blunt swords. So no, he was not and still isn't afraid of them knowing, the Seven Hells, they are loud enough in the night for all of Castle Black to hear. It's just that Jaime knows that Brienne doesn't like to be seen by others in such a fashion, and since her being extremely uncomfortable is counterproductive to the cause, he makes damn well sure that the chamber door stays shut when they go to bed.
Gladly, that led to the lads giving their chamber a wide berth since.
He watches on as Brienne walks around the room to douse the candles until they are both dipped into darkness, his senses shifting to hearing her shuffling across the room, only to stumble and curse under her breath, "And you tell me again that I'm not supposed to tidy up the room a bit. And for the record, I know that this was your boot."
"I take it back, I'm sorry. Wait, let me light a candle," Jaime offers, already bending over to the nightstand to light the candle there, but that is when Brienne suddenly shrieks, "Don't!"
"What? Why?" Jaime makes a face as he feels the bed dip from the wench's body sitting down on top of it.
"I found the bed, there is no need," she says, still in a hurry, her breath hitching.
"We might just as well light a candle, if you are so clumsy tonight," he teases.
"But you said you wanted to…"
"Since when are those two exclusive?" Jaime frowns, not liking the sound of that.
"Could we just… do that instead of talking?" she asks, still not really comfortable using the usual terms for it, which reveals her as the uncertain, young woman he knows her to be.
Which he learned does indeed have a certain kind of charm.
And while Jaime usually loves if she insists, something doesn't feel right about this, and Jaime wants to get down to the bottom of it.
"No, not before you tell me why you want the candles to be out," Jaime tells her.
"They always are," she argues stubbornly.
Jaime blinks once, twice. Upon reflection, they really always are. He never noticed until now that Brienne always douses the flames before she climbs into bed with him. It was their kind of ritual, in fact. He never thought anything of it until she insisted. Before, he thought it was just… well, a thing she did in passing, but now…
"What does it matter if they are not?"
He doesn't even have to see her to feel the quiver reaching from her chin all the way up to her chest.
"Brienne."
"If you don't want to do it, just say so," is the answer he gets, but not the answer he wants.
"I do want to, you know I always do. But why don't you want to unless the candles are out?" Jaime insists.
She swallows.
He waits.
"Because all women are the same once you blow the candle out."
The words hang in the air like the smoke of the doused candles.
"Did he ever say that to you?" Jaime asks, his voice demanding.
"Who?" she asks.
"That red-haired bastard Connington," Jaime barks, gritting his teeth, fists clenching.
Just to think of that little shit makes him want to punch him yet again.
"Ser Ronnet? No," Brienne shakes her head.
Sometimes he still wonders why she bothers to call him "ser" after what he's said to her, done to her.
… Just like he wonders how she ever grew to address him like that again, knowing his darkest hours, having lived through some of them.
"Because that's what he said to me once. Oh, the Gods show mercy and never make him come up with the idea to take the Black, or else…," he growls deep in his throat, but Brienne interrupts him before he can get to it, "He never said that to me. He barely talked to me at all, back when… It doesn't matter."
"Then where do you have that from?" Jaime wants to know.
Needs to know.
"It is known," she shrugs.
"By whom?" he makes a face.
"Everyone, it's what people say. It's… a common truth," she whispers.
"And you think that I think that?"
"I think I know what I look like, that's all. In the dark, it's… not so bad. I mean, it's…," she mutters, and Jaime can hear the tears suddenly welling up in her eyes, in her heart. "I thought it was good. I thought it was alright, then. I…"
The light hits her face unexpectedly, and Brienne winces as the small flame on the nightstand.
Her eyes search his, glistening like citrines in the dim candlelight because of the small tears standing in her big eyes.
"Please," she begs. "Put that out again."
"No."
"Jaime, please. I'm not up for a tease or some jape, I just…," Brienne says, her voice quivering, but he interrupts her, "That is no tease and no jape. I'm perfectly sincere. That light stays on."
She bites her lower lip, the muscles in her face tensing, as though they were daggers, raising to strike if necessary.
"I know what I look like. I don't need the light to remind and mock me. The people have the right of it when they say that all women look the same in the dark – if the dark can make you… can make you… and me…"
He sits up, turns to her, blinking.
His stomach hurts.
"You think that… that this is why I lay with you?"
"I don't mind if you did, if you do. I know what I look like. I know that. In the dark, you don't have to see it, I don't have to see it. That's good. That's… it worked, didn't it?" she speaks in a hurry, trying to force out the words before they choke on her tears.
Jaime claims her lips with a force he never used thus far.
Because it doesn't work.
Not anymore.
He can feel Brienne staring at him, but he can also feel her moving with him, getting drawn into his touch. Jaime pulls away after a long moment.
"Does that mean you still… want to?" she asks.
"I still want," he says simply.
"Then let me…," Brienne mutters, meaning to bend over to the nightstand, but he keeps her in place, in his arms, "The candle stays on."
She swallows thickly.
"And it will stay on from this night forth."
"What?! Why?" she cries out, trying to jerk away from him, away from the candlelight, but he keeps her close to him, he doesn't let her escape, but cups her chin instead, "Because I want to see you."
Brienne averts her gaze anyway.
Stubborn thing she is.
"There's nothing to look at. You know best. You've seen it all already. Where's the point?"
"Where's the point in hiding?" he argues.
"Well, I won't get any prettier," she huffs.
"Just like you won't get uglier," Jaime chuckles softly, but that seems to attract her further into the darkness, edging away from him.
Even among the moths, she is a singular kind, the one that isn't attracted to the light, but darkness instead.
Be it the darkness of the room.
Or the darkness of a man like him that didn't make her turn away from him – against better judgment.
"Of course I will," she hisses, touching her scarred cheek, fidgeting. "I already did."
"Brienne."
"I know my face, alright? I've looked at it in the looking glass often enough. How many times do I have to repeat it before the words do reach you? You don't have to care about my looks. You never did past a certain point. And that was good. That's what I appreciated. Because that is what everyone else sees of me. You saw… something else. You saw past it. So what does it matter if it's something you only see in the dark?"
"Because you say that the truth is that all women look the same in the dark," he tells her.
"Well?" she blinks at him.
"Well, I don't want to bed just any woman, I want to bed you," Jaime replies.
"You can tell me by the sound of the voice all the same, or whatever else," she shrugs her broad shoulders helplessly.
"I want to see you," he insists.
"Now stop being ridiculous," Brienne snorts with bitterness.
"I'm not, when will you finally hear me? Look, I… I suppose I owe you an apology for not realizing any sooner that you… jumped to that conclusion, but let me tell you now, Brienne: You jumped to the wrong one. I never thought anything of it that it was in the dark," Jaime insists, suddenly almost desperate for her to understand that.
For her not to get him wrong.
"Good, it should stay that way. Jaime, just think nothing of it. Let's just… let's just go on, please. It's good the way it is, the way it was," Brienne says, and again, with the kind of begging he never wants to hear from her again.
Because he found liberty in that he didn't have to hide anymore, not realizing that Brienne in turn thought she had to hide in the darkness of the night.
"If it was all good, then how are you crying, you tell me?" he questions.
"That is because you keep embarrassing me," she says defiantly. "And I'm not crying."
"Embarrassing? Brienne, I'm not trying to embarrass you. I'm trying to understand you," Jaime argues.
At some point he shouldn't be surprised that Brienne thinks that this is his intention.
"There is no need," she argues.
"There is need," Jaime insists.
"Why?"
"Because you are the only bloody thing I have in this bloody place, that's why there is need," Jaime quips, the words dropping out of him all at once before they can pass his mind.
Because they are so deeply ingrained that they require no thinking.
That is what it simply is.
She blinks at him.
"I don't want just any woman. I want you. And so I want to see you, and only so I will have you," Jaime says, claiming her lips, pushing her back on the bed before she can jump to the idea to fight him off.
She is the one thing that remained, the one person who stayed, no matter what he said, no matter what he did, what she said or did.
The one thing that stayed through any circumstance, through any trouble, Lady Stoneheart and the Brotherhood, and more, she stayed.
They somehow pulled through, but they did so together.
Jaime strips her out of her clothes slowly but resolutely, even when she tries to pull them back up, tug herself back in, away from him, he keeps going – for which Jaime will demand more credit once he got that demon out of her stubborn mind, since doing these things one-handed with resistance is not an easy task.
Her chest quivers, her breath comes out in shuddered, ragged intakes of cool Northern air. She wants to cover herself with her hands, but she doesn't know where to leave her hands without exposing another stretch of skin.
Jaime can see her desperation, and it hurts him deep down for not realizing that flame within her all the while.
He pushes her hand away from her breast again and again.
"Jaime, stop. This is embarrassing me. Stop it, please."
"Don't be embarrassed."
"But…"
He kisses down her neck, over her shoulder. He maps her, her traces, her outlines.
Her, just her.
"Jaime…"
He lifts her arm into the light a bit, "I love it how your freckles look like, the way they reflect in the light. Like small stars."
"Jaime, you're being ridiculous."
He kisses her lips quickly, again and again, to keep more words of self-hate spilling out of her broad mouth, cupping her cheek, bringing it to the light as well, tracing his long fingers along the line of her thick jaw.
"I love the look of your eyes," he breathes. "I love your eyes."
"No."
"Yes."
He runs his fingers down her arm, down her midsection, her legs. He maps her anew.
Because she isn't beautiful, but there are things about her worth to marvel at even in dim candlelight.
It just never dawned on Jaime that it wasn't enough to marvel at them without uttering a single word. He thought she got the message.
Because he never had to tell Cersei, for she plainly was and likely is still beautiful, but Brienne isn't, and that is why he should have told her all the while.
Brienne screws her eyes shut, her cheeks glowing a furious kind of red – well, orange in the candlelight.
"Brienne?"
"Are you done yet?" she asks.
Typical, he thinks to himself. She thinks it's just an air of madness in him, and once it's over, they can go on the way they know.
But to tell the truth, Jaime is done walking down familiar paths.
It's new paths he wants to travel - but with familiar company.
"Look at me."
"No."
"Brienne, look at me," he demands.
""Why?" she breathes.
"To make sure that you know that it's the truth I'm telling you."
Her eyes pop open at once. Two rings of jade that should be sapphire blue glowing in the dark.
"I'm not Red Ronnet. I'm not the men from Renly's camp," he says, his eyes on her.
"I know that."
"I'm not them. And you are not to me what you were to them. When I look at you, I see you, I see Brienne. And I don't want that to change, ever again. I'm not pretending that you are someone else when you and I lay together. There is just you, just… Brienne."
She kisses him suddenly, almost feverishly, tears freely running down her freckled, starstruck, cheeks, soaking Jaime's own skin.
At last it seems as though she starts to comprehend, to hear him, hear him truly while he sees her truly.
And soon he finds himself buried within her.
Brienne tilts her head to the side.
"Eyes on me," he says, his voice labored, but lacking no impact. She snaps her head back around to him.
"Eyes on me. I want to see you."
"Eyes on me."
"Eyes on me."
Don't leave.
Don't hide.
Ever again.
Jaime gets to know her all over, caresses her with his gaze, maps her, traces her anew.
He never thought it'd be so important, but now he knows it is.
It is important because it's her.
Her and no one else.
Reaching their peak at the same time, eyes locked, seeing, looking, feels as though the lock their names opened shattered into a million pieces at this very instant, reaching beyond that "someplace" to this room, this moment.
His eyes don't leave her once as he lies down next to her, turns on the side so that they are face to face.
Jaime drinks her with his eyes, and he doesn't care that some many aspects about her are ungainly, homely, mannish. He looks at her beautiful eyes instead, which seem almost as green as his, focuses on the glistening stars on her skin, which only turn up in the dim light of the candle.
The secret beauty only he knows.
The secret beauty she has only for him.
His.
"Brienne?"
"Hm?"
"From now on, promise me that we'll have some candles on."
"What if we have no candles?" she asks, and much to his relief, with a bit of challenge.
"Hm, well, unless you little big minx hide them, I'd say we use candles for as long as we have some. Can we agree on that?" he chuckles softly.
"Jaime…," she exhales, rolling her eyes at him.
"I didn't mean that as a jape. This is no short-lived thought that'll fly away by dawn, I assure you. I meant what I said," he insists.
"I don't doubt it, it's just… look," she brushes her big hand over his side, strangely trying to reassure him, or so he reckons. "I understood. And I… you can't imagine how much I value it that you… that you… did what you did and said what you said… but… once is enough. You don't have to carry on with it. I got it. I assure you."
"You didn't get it if you think that."
"Why do we have to talk about it so much all of a sudden? Back when we first… we didn't talk much at all. That seemed to suit us both about just fine," she argues vehemently.
Because there is no hiding between them anymore.
They are bare in front of each other, but only for each other.
"Well, I realized that you needed more words to keep such nonsense out of your silly head," he says, tapping his index finger against her flat forehead teasingly yet affectionately.
He presses a kiss to her scarred cheek. She shivers to his touch, her skin all gooseflesh.
"Some things need big words. Some things deserve grand gestures… And as it seems, in your case, it's both of these. And I should have seen that sooner," he says.
A small apology – because he is sure that she knows that he never meant for it.
He can see it in her eyes.
"Please, don't. It's, it's just… it's me being…," she means to say, but he interrupts her, "Right, it's you. You and me. Us two against the rest of the world… and that lad that keeps giving us side glances in the common room."
She can't help the small smile, and while it's anything but beautiful, it still brings him to smile as well, because only she glows in the dark the way she does.
"So? Do you promise me?" he asks, having to make sure.
"… I promise you."
For a time, they just lay there, seeing each other, looking at each other.
Mapping each other new.
As two things that are one and two at the same time, independent, but together.
"Brienne?" he says after a while.
"Hm?"
"I love you."
She blinks.
He smiles.
The ease is about as thrilling as Brienne saying his name.
She tenses.
He holds on.
"… That's a relief," Brienne says after a very long moment, her eyes not living his.
Not leaving him.
"Relief?"
"Because… I feel the same for you. And I thought I was the only one," she admits sheepishly, though her eyes remain on his.
"No, you're not the only one," he chuckles. "Just us two."
She smiles, lowering her gaze, letting that sink in, or so it seems. She bites her lower lip, taps the joint of her index finger against her broad lip, as though she is trying to touch the words.
"Jaime?"
"Yes?"
She searches his eyes.
His eyes find her.
"C, can... Can you... say it once more, please?"
He looks at her.
She looks at him.
He smiles.
"I love you, Brienne."
She smiles.
"I love you, Jaime."