Author's Note: There are a million beautiful fics out there about the ways in which Jaime might have survived those falling rocks after all. This isn't one of them. Instead, I'm gonna assume he's alive and kinda blast past the how and why to just… write some nonsense, because it's what my brain told me I should do today instead of packing for my vacation.

Split into three parts, because it started to get longer than anticipated and also if I post PART of it, I'll feel more accountable about finishing.

Fic and chapter titles borrowed from OAR and their song 'I Go Through.'

It seems that Winterfell is barraged by news, ravens coming in such rapid succession that Brienne and her lady experience a bit of whiplash. Missandei, executed . Then Jaime, captured . That one catches Brienne's attention more than she cares to admit, but she hardly has time to dwell on it before there are even more ravens.

The city, burned . Cersei, dead beneath the Red Keep . It says nothing of Jaime, and Brienne spares a thought for whether or not he's still alive, whether being captured kept him from the very death by his sister's side that Brienne had begged him not to run to.

Sansa, of course, is focused on other matters. She's pondering whether she needs to gather any remaining troops she can find, maybe even call on Tormund and the wildlings, to go South and take the throne that Daenerys Targaryen has won with fire and blood. She doesn't want it for herself, Brienne knows, but she doesn't want it in the hands of someone who does not deserve it.

After all the news they have received, it almost seems as if the Dragon Queen is worse for the kingdom than Cersei herself was. But they barely even have time to raise their banners before a raven with news of Daenerys's death at the hands of Jon Snow comes instead.

There is a collective sort of relief, even with Jon and Tyrion as prisoners. At least they are alive . At least they have a chance .

Brienne says nothing of the lack of mention of Jaime. She can only assume it means he's not alive, and she has already mourned for him, has been mourning for him since the moment he fled Winterfell.

Still, she allows herself to mourn just a bit more, and then they are called South, to decide what to do about the Unsullied and the crown and the "traitors" held prisoner in the South, and there's time for mourning no more.

Decisions are made, and Brienne is loath to admit that she finds each more baffling than the last.

Bran Stark, who has told them time and time again that he is something different now, is chosen as the king. The North and the North alone is allowed to remain independent, though Brienne wonders why it is necessary, when her lady's family will now rule in the South.

Tyrion is forced back into his role as hand of the king, and for all that Brienne supposes she likes Jaime's brother, she's not quite sure that he's done much to demonstrate he is competent in such a role.

Jon Snow, on the other hand, is forced into exile, and it makes her stomach twist into knots. She thinks of Jaime then, for the first time able to do so without tears pooling in her eyes. The way that he killed Aerys for the good of the kingdom comes to mind. Hasn't Jon Snow done the same thing, killing Daenerys? His punishment seems unjust, but she finds it is not her place to question it.

And then there is the most baffling thing of all. For all that Brienne has laid her life on the line to protect Sansa Stark, she is released from her service.

"The North is safe now. I am safe now," her lady assures her, but Brienne's chest feels heavy, and she wonders if she's done something wrong, to be dismissed like so. It's as if Sansa can sense her thoughts, clutching her hands and assuring her, "You have served me with honor. You have saved me, more times than I can count. But Stark men do not fare well in the South, Ser… please, say that you'll serve my brother now instead. Had my mother known he was alive, she would have included protection for him in her ask of you, I am sure of it."

And so, Brienne finds herself a member of King Bran's kingsguard - the head of it, in fact. She refuses to call him the Broken, though Tyrion's name for him seems to have caught on among her constituents.

It's all that she had dreamed of - being a knight, serving a king that she believes in, despite her early confusion at him being chosen above all others. And still, she doesn't feel complete. She thinks mayhaps, there will always be a hole in her now, a hole that could only be filled by someone she can never have there to fill it.

Or so she believes . And then one day, Jon Snow has headed towards his exile, the Stark girls have headed home, the Unsullied have sailed away… and King Bran gets that look in his eyes, the one where he knows something, and he states simply that after is now .

The words mean nothing to Brienne, but they seem to resonate with Lord Tyrion and Ser Davos, and when Davos says he'll bring back Ser Jaime at once , Brienne thinks she has misheard. It's only Podrick's concerned eyes, cast in her direction, that convince her she's heard correctly, and her emotions are barely contained as she asks, "Do you mean to tell me that Ser Jaime is alive ?"

The answer to her question, it turns out, is a resounding yes. But if the Unsullied had wanted Daenerys's lover dead for what he'd done, imagine what they might have wanted from a man who killed her father, then betrayed his daughter. Trying to save Cersei and his unborn child, it was treason, there was a reason no one could know. Tyrion had shuddered when he'd said as much to her, and then had gone on to recount that Jaime had been too weak to defend himself, too close to death when they'd found him, and well…

It's all a lot of words to Brienne. Her heart pounds as she wonders what to do with this new information. She's just made peace with him being gone, just finally allowed herself to let go, and now she has to actually face him once more?

She doesn't know how to make sense of it. She paces her quarters, knowing that at some point she'd thought of what she'd say when she saw him again, but they seem to elude her now. She goes to the practice yards to try and clear her head, but her sword is so accustomed to Oathkeeper, to a gift from him , that she cannot think clearly.

Does he even want to see her? She thinks she can't have meant all that much to him in the end, if death with his beautiful, cruel sister had seemed better than a life with her.

It is impossible, disentangling her complicated feelings for Ser Jaime Lannister. She is glad he lives, of course she is, but with how he looked at her that night in Winterfell… She cannot be sure that he's similarly glad of that fact. He had been a man on a suicide mission, and he had made it very clear he didn't want her to save him.

She does not know what sort of reception to expect from him, and she is in turn not sure how she will act once she sees him . Rushing to hold him in her arms would be foolish, when it seemed that was a place he couldn't escape quickly enough for his liking. Slapping him across the face sounds almost cathartic, but she's not sure she could ever. And even if she could, he must be suffering enough, with the woman he really loved dead and gone.

There's nothing more hateful than not being able to save someone you love. Her words, more or less, and well… Jaime had thought he was hateful enough before all that had transpired. No, perhaps she should not inflict her own pain upon him. It would be unbecoming, and Jaime Lannister is far more than just that moment, that culmination of all that had passed between them.

He is more than anyone knows, anyone but her , and it's only then that Brienne realizes what she can do to help sort her feelings out. Rather than think on him emotionally, she sits down in front of the White Book, and she sets to work completing the pages about Ser Jaime Lannister.

When she finishes his page with Protected his queen until her last breaths , she is feeling much better about things. It all pieces together better, when she writes it down and looks at it as a whole.

Seeing it there in front of her, laid out in black and white, Brienne thinks she should have realized that he would never really be hers. He'd been Cersei's, reading between the lines of his story made that plain as day. Still, she had wanted him to be, in spite of herself - but she will be fine. The world is better for still having him walk among the living.

It stings, though, because while he may not have really been hers, she was his. Brienne couldn't imagine herself ever giving herself to someone else so completely again, and Brienne she thinks seeing him again will only make her sure that it will always sting.

But perhaps her reminiscing has made her prepared to let him back into her life, at least, even if she hopes to stalwartly stop him from getting back into her heart .

Brienne had not counted on having to re-learn how to be around Jaime Lannister, but that's exactly what she has to do just a few days later, when he's brought into the Red Keep, before a meeting of the small council. Brienne's back is ramrod straight, and she stares straight ahead, deliberately not looking at Podrick or Tyrion. She can feel their curious eyes on her, but she owes them nothing.

She owes Jaime nothing, either, but perhaps she was right to have guessed he wanted nothing from her, because she knows what it's like to have his eyes on her, and she hasn't felt them come her direction, not once since he entered the room.

"Ser Jaime," Bran says, in that level, far-away tone of his.

"I thought you said that would be no after," Jaime replies, and if his hoarse, pained voice has an effect on Brienne, she doesn't let it show. She doesn't focus on the low rumble of it, instead on those odd words again, the mention of after that she doesn't understand.

Sometimes, she thinks no one understands Jaime Lannister better than she, and then other times she remembers that she really must not have known him all that well after all.

"I asked how you knew there would be an after. The three-eyed Raven cannot tell one what is to come - if one knows, then everything will change," Bran replies.

When she'd heard that Jaime was alive , it had been so easy for words to bleed together, for her to fixate on that one thing. Now that Jaime's here , now that he's in the room, though, she cannot seem to stop listening. She also can't steadfastly avert her gaze, no matter how much she'd intended to, and when she takes in the sight of him she almost gasps .

He is thinner than she remembers, his hair and beard unkempt, and he seems to have lost much of his muscle mass. His golden hand is gone . She still sees the faint outline of bruises on his skin, bruises she for a fleeting moment in time might have pretended to kiss the pain away from…

But that is not now . That is something she is sure will never be again, so she wonders where Ser Davos had hidden him and how he feels about being back now . She rips her gaze away and keeps to her own thoughts, although she notes that he seems less than keen to be here after all. He denies Bran's offer to join his kingsguard, to go home to Casterly Rock, to do anything , really, as Bran must have known that he would. Finally, Jaime is turned over to Tyrion's care, and they are all dismissed.

Jaime has not looked at her once in all of this, Brienne is sure of it, and that helps to propel her from her chair. Back straight, chin raised high, she turns to flee from the room as fast as she possibly can.

"Ser Brienne," she hears his voice call faintly, and she'd not been expecting that , not with the way he'd paid her no mind during the entire council meeting.

She decides to act as if she's not heard it, and walks resolutely out the door.