Winterfell is a dreary place. Jaime remembers it being dreary when he'd visited in the summer, all that time ago, when he'd ridden here as kingsguard for the hoary bastard who fucked and beat his sister, and winter has not improved the state of things. In the south winter was an idea, words clutched in a raven's claw, as real and deadly as a slight chill on the wind…but here winter has already come, blotting out the sun and strangling the land beneath an endless snowfall, thick with the kind of cold that made proud men scurry like mice through dark halls looking for fur and fire to warm themselves. Nowhere is this more evident than in the godswood, a copse of snow-weighted trees at the heart of the castle; he struggles to unlatch the gate with his only hand, and as soon as it shuts behind him every shadow becomes a monster from his nightmares: Aerys shouting at the city from atop his castle, old Robert with his fist dancing across Cersei's jaw, and his father. His father, neither dead atop his own shit nor armed and armored at the head of his host. Tywin is merely there, watching.
Jaime curses himself for a coward. There are only shadows. He tries to clench his golden hand—so cold now it aches to touch—and curses himself for that as well. There was a time when he would have strode forward despite it all, even if every man he's ever killed waited for him in those trees. That time is gone—gone with his youth, with summer and the memory of what it's like to be warm—but he strides on anyway, because it's all he ever learned to do.
Bran Stark is in the godswood, he's been told. Bran Stark is in the godswood, and Jaime cannot bear another moment in this godsforsaken castle until this is done.
He half-expects a boy, a long haired boy with broken legs lying on a litter, but it's a man waiting for him. He sits in a wheeled chair in a glade at the center of the woods, overlooking a still pond beneath a white tree with a hideous face carved into the trunk, and does not tear his eyes away from the water until Jaime is close enough to reach out and grab him. When he does turn his head to look at Jaime, his eyes are calm.
No, not calm, Jaime thinks. He is unafraid.
When he realizes this Jaime is struck through with envy, struck with an ache in his right wrist that reminds him all over again what exactly it is he's lost. I used to look like that. And I never will again. It makes him want to scream. To roar.
"Jaime Lannister." His voice is deeper now. Still tinged with youth, but flat and toneless in way youth should not be.
He watches Jaime from over his shoulder. His chair still faces the pond. Jaime faces the handles on the back of the chair.
"Lord Stark." Jaime's eyes fall as he speaks. "I…"
Bran waits, while Jaime struggles.
"I…do not know what to say."
"Has that ever stopped you?"
Jaime looks up at what sounds like humor in Bran's voice, but his face is still flat. It's a hideous face, Jaime decides. As hideous as the face carved in the tree behind him.
"An apology," Jaime begins, "seems like a platitude, at this point."
Jaime isn't sure what he expects to hear after that, but it isn't Bran intoning: "I am not Lord Stark."
Jaime is taken aback with surprise. "One of your brothers is alive?"
Bran shakes his head. "There is a Lady Stark in the castle, watching us from the window with an arrow trained at your neck," he says, pointing a gloved finger at a distant wall, "and another seeing to her bannermen deeper within. But the Stark men are dead. There is no Lord Stark here, and there may never be again, unless Sansa can succeed in enforcing Dornish custom."
Bran Stark turns away from Jaime then, and begins wheeling himself through the snow. At first Jaime thinks Bran intends to leave him like that, but then he calls over his shoulder: "Come, Jaime Lannister. I will need your help climbing the stairs."
Jaime follows after Bran on impulse, eye on the castle walls, unable to spot a window with a Stark girl in it. He gets close enough to grab hold of the handles on Bran's chair, to push him the rest of the way, but decides against it. He will need to strengthen those arms, after all, if that's how he intends to get around for the rest of his life.
#
They leave the chair at the base of the tower. Jaime carries Bran, his real hand warm against Bran's back, his golden hand frigid beneath the backs of his knees. Bran's ribs press into him despite the layers of fur between them, one of his arms thrown around Jaime's shoulder so that he can keep his head up.
"There," Bran says once they reach the top, pointing to a bale of brittle, ancient straw in the back of the room. Jaime sets him down on top of it, and while he settles himself Jaime forces his eyes not to turn away from the spot on the floor where he rutted atop Cersei. He wonders, if he looked close enough, whether he could still find the marks from Cersei's knees in the dust.
The window is right next to that spot, and once he sees it he cannot look away. He realizes all at once that Bran has a perfect view of that window from where he sits, and without thinking Jaime steps so that he stands between them.
"You don't want to apologize," Bran tells him. "You want to make amends. Right?"
"Yes," Jaime whispers, his eyes still on the window, his back to Bran.
"Well. There it is. Jump."
The word hits Jaime like cold water. He walks up to the window despite himself, puts his hands on the sill, looks over the edge and down at the snow so far, far below. Would a fall from here cripple him further, rob him of his legs like it did Bran?
No. The fall would kill him. This Jaime knows with all his heart.
"You want me to kill myself?" Jaime asks, still refusing to turn and face him.
And then Jaime is screaming, only the screams never leave his head. His lips remain sealed as his hands grip the side of the window, his knees brushing up against the sill as he starts to climb. He tries to throw himself back and away, screaming that he does not want this, that he'd rather throw Bran out the window again than do this, but it's like he's another person, someone else trapped in this skin moving on strings…
And then he really is jumping away from the window, landing hard on his back and scrambling towards Bran, turning to face him. Bran looks down at him with the same expression he'd worn in the godswood.
"This isn't about what I want, Jaime. If I wanted you to go out that window, I would make you. This is about what you want. Bran Stark will never forgive you so long as you live. So if you truly want his forgiveness, you must die. Do you want to die, Jaime?"
Jaime thinks it's a bad sign that it takes him so long to decide on an answer.
"I'll do it for you," Bran offers, after the silence has stretched, "If you need me to. If you ask."
Jaime, still on the ground, searches Brans face for…what? Something; anything. Triumph, amusement, tenderness. But Bran is expressionless. Calm.
No, Jaime realizes, no. He's not calm, and he's not brave either. The little fucker just looks bored.
"I don't want to die," Jaime admits, then adds: "Not now. Not like this."
"Then get up and take me back downstairs."
Jaime gets up, but is hesitant to get any closer to Bran, thinking about how he'd almost walked himself off the tower. "Your a monster," he accuses, breathless.
Jaime feels an irrational, pointless sense of victory when Bran smiles. "And you're a cripple who fucks his sister and abandoned his family. Now, come and pick me up."
Jaime does, carrying Bran down to his chair and wheeling him back to the castle proper. Throughout the long winter, the great war, and what comes after, neither one of them ever goes up that tower again.