"Will you give it back to me any time soon?"
"In a moment."
Jaime rolls his eyes. He never should have given Brienne his metal hand for inspection. At some point he couldn't help but wonder at her almost childish curiosity as she twisted the thing between her long fingers, ran her calloused fingertips over the ornaments, moved her arm as though it was a part of her limb, testing it like a small sword. It is during moments such as these that he feels as much older as he is in comparison to her.
"So? Have you placed your judgment yet?" he asks, now almost amused. Brienne wrinkles her nose as he hands the heavy golden thing back to him, "That is likely the most useless thing I have ever seen in my entire life."
"Thank you!" Jaime can't help but cry out, just as he can't help the smile.
Because it is useless, absolutely pointless.
"Well, you can smack someone with it. The weight would be enough to break a cheekbone," Brienne offers now almost peaceably. "Or a nose. Or knock some teeth out."
"Hm, the idea is not halfway bad," Jaime shrugs.
"But then you should really wear a glove over it, because then people don't see the metal coming," she tells him. "And that is why I find it so useless. Because they made it look fancy."
"Yeah, those ornaments fit better with the Tyrells than with the Lannisters," Jaime agrees. "I would have found a lion's face more fitting."
"It's useless all the same for as long as they try to make it look pretty," she argues. "And there is no sharp edge or pointy end."
"If there was, I'd always end up slashing people," he argues. "That's not always a good way to start conversation, in case you didn't know."
"In Tarth, there is a man who's lost his hand at the age of eleven. He's got a hook ever since that day. He's cradled all his children without them ever getting a single scratch," she argues. "You just have to learn how to use it properly. Everything is a matter of training."
"You know the people of your isles fairly well," Jaime grins. "I wouldn't know anyone outside the castle in Casterly Rock or the Red Keep for the matter."
"I told you often enough that you are a different kind of royal. I may be highborn, but we don't stand very high, so there was no reason for me to hold my head very high either," she replies. "And I spent almost all my days outside, so I naturally was in the town as well."
Not to mention that Brienne never felt like holding her head high for anything much.
Only for earning her spot in Renly's guard, maybe.
Or when she told Jaime to leave her in Harrenhal. She held her head high because she was, in an odd sense, proud of herself for willling to make that sacrifice.
... Maybe also for making that sacrifice for him the same way she made it for Lady Catelyn and her girls.
"I thought those folks always treated you badly," Jaime grimaces.
He can remember one time while on the voyage to King's Landing her mentioning it. Not only that the knights in Renly's camp or the boys at the ball that made her love Renly beyond a word's description called her names, but even her own people never treated her for the highborn Brienne apparently is. Though Jaime reckons that it is indeed her fault in some way, because Brienne tends to forget it herself – that she is a highborn. That she doesn't have to earn people's respect at all times, because the texture of her blood already secures a certain amount of respect for her, at least it should.
But Jaime suspects that Brienne is just too much of a bullhead to take anything for granted, or to value anything that wasn't earned, wasn't fought for, wasn't blood shed for.
"I don't say I talked with them much, but I'm good at listening," Brienne replies. "For that you don't have to interact with them."
Jaime grimaces, trying to imagine Brienne as a small, or well, tall-small girl, listening in on other people's stories because she fails at talking to them, stealing glances from far, from behind corners, stealing away before anyone would know here there, ghosting through the shadows out of fear to be deceived once more.
Jaime never had the trouble, to be honest. He always had a kind of aura about himself that drew people in. Well, that changed with his new status as Kingslayer, but when still younger and more idealistic, he was friends with many folks, not real friends, but acquainted with many people.
Maybe they are not that much different after all, upon more honest contemplation. Jaime never really had friends outside his family, and he reckons it was for Brienne likewise. The one person she relied on was the man she made her King, and even Renly wasn't someone she'd ever share secrets with, or someone to have her back in battle.
"So maybe I should get a hook after all," Jaime grimaces.
"Why not a collection?" she shrugs. "This could be pretty much anything. It's, uhm…"
"A missing hand?" Jaime snorts dismissively.
It is, simple as that.
It's a missing hand.
A stump.
Even though Cersei still can't say the word without acid bubbling up in her mouth, or so it seems.
Though it is just that: A stump.
Something that used to be formidable and is now left to rot in Harrenhal, until nothing but bone remains.
"A blank space," she argues, making Jaime frown.
Because she says it in an almost hopeful voice.
And Jaime still dreads the loss of his hand, of that part of himself.
Brienne, seeing his frown, thus goes on to explain, "While limiting in certain areas, it may also be quite liberating in other areas. Because you can fashion it with anything. You can reshape it however you please. It's a blank space that you can fill with whatever you find proper."
"Are you seriously trying to make a motivational speech?" Jaime makes a face. "You are not really good at it, just so that you know."
"As if you needed a motivational speech. We both know that your ego is bigger than yourself," she snorts.
"My ego is so big because it grew so much thanks to my skills," Jaime argues.
"Do I have to remind you who won back by the bridge?" Brienne rolls her eyes.
"I told you time and time again that you were not beating me," Jaime insists, a smile creeping up his lips.
"Yes, you were just taking a rest, I'm sure," she huffs sarcastically.
"In fact," he snorts. "And I can't repeat it often enough. I've slept in a muddy pen for over a year. Had they put you through similar treatment, you wouldn't have been able to hold up your arms for longer than three minutes, let alone wield a sword that long."
"We won't ever know," Brienne shrugs. "Because I won't sleep in a muddy pen for a year just to prove you wrong."
"I actually thought you would. You have the bullhead it'd take to do such a thing," he argues.
"I might be stubborn, but not that foolish," she rolls her eyes.
"So we will agree on that we disagree?" Jaime exhales.
"As always," Brienne shrugs.
"It's always good to know to be at truce with you, wench," he winks at her.
"For now," she snorts.
"Then what about the hand, to cut back to the topic?" Jaime huffs.
"Until my Father allowed me to train and learn how to fight properly, I was just tall. Too long arms and legs for a too long body. But once I had a chance to, I reshaped myself to what I needed," Brienne shrugs.
"That didn't necessarily make you prettier," Jaime snorts playfully, though the accusation lost all of its power by now.
"And it has never been about that. I needed a strong body, strong arms, strong legs. You can't rely on nature to create everything in perfection, and even if it does, nature can take away what it gave into the world as perfect. If nature reshapes us, then why shouldn't we do the same?" Brienne argues with the blunt kind of logic that leaves Jaime blinking each time.
Brienne is likely the only woman who even sees in nature itself an enemy.
An enemy to beat no less.
"You know, Locke cut my hand off," Jaime snorts. "It's not that nature just decided for me to shed it like some lizards throw off their tails."
"And he is part of nature," Brienne shrugs. "In either case, whatever you want to call it, fortune, destiny, nature, the world's doing… We can affect us by taking matters into our own hands."
"Or hand," Jaime makes a face.
"Or hand," she agrees. Jaime exhales, leaning back slightly.
He honestly doesn't know how this woman in all her bluntness, in her greenness, often ends up saying exactly those things he didn't even know he needs to hear.
Because once she says these words, he realises just how much he needs them, needed them all along.
It's as though she speaks to his craving before he knows it there, before she knows it herself.
Because in fact Brienne is just that motivating.
Because she opens up the realm of possibility for him. Brienne doesn't dream those dreams that lie out of people's reach. She points to dreams that are even within the reach for a man who has only a stump for an arm.
Jaime can start that collection.
He can reshape himself to something usable again.
Someone of use.
Of worth.
And maybe… even of honour.
"So… what would we need for a good collection?" Jaime questions. "Other than a hook?"
"A dagger. A sabre… an axe would be hard because it would be either too heavy on the arm or too small to cause severe damage… A small crossbow might also be possible," Brienne says thoughtfully, puckering her full lips.
That is what she feels comfortable talking about. She means to offer comfort, but Brienne knows she is not good at it – at all. She is none of those women who know how to use their intonation to soothe, who can bring a man to let the defences fall with a single touch, a single stroke of the palm.
She can only point out the obvious things.
She can only say what she knows for certain, because Brienne is such a bad liar.
She knows a lot about weapons and their use. She knows about function. But she doesn't know about emotion, or what this particular emotion, this particular loss must feel like. She lost something dear, she lost Renly, but Brienne doesn't know what would be if she found herself suddenly incapable of doing things the way she had them learned, to have an integral part of herself wiped out, cut out.
She hardly knows her own emotions, after she buried them so deeply behind the metals of her armour that they only well up inside her like echoes. So how is she supposed to offer the comfort to an emotion she cannot even tell the shape of for herself?
So all Brienne fears she is capable of is to offer the comfort she knows, and that is the comfort of fight. She knows the comfort of weapons singing. She knows the comfort of war. Of blood.
And while she reckons it not to be much, Brienne thinks she owes this man that much at least. Jaime saved her life, even though she is just an ugly wench who had him by a leash, pulled him, pushed him, wanted him dead half of the time. He never had to protect her, and still Jaime did, because he is a knight at heart, no matter what the invisible inscription of Kingslayer upon his forehead may claim otherwise.
Brienne is not good reading people, but she is good at listening. And she knows truths. What Jaime spoke to her back in the bathtub in Harrenhal was truth.
The truth that he is a backstabber because he didn't want his loved ones to be slain by a man who was consumed by his own madness that burned like a Wildfire.
So the least she can do is to point to the possibilities she sees, because Brienne honestly sees them. Or else she wouldn't say so.
As already said, Brienne is a bad liar.
She can picture Jaime like this, wearing these weapons, filling this empty space like this, and it would be far better than a golden hand that has nothing of his shine, his apparent skill and talent. He doesn't need golden ornaments to be a man of value, a knight.
Give him time to wield a sword, and be it one attached to his stump, and Brienne is certain that Jaime will prove to the world yet again that he wears the golden armour of the Kingsguard for reasons beyond issues of the Kingslayer or Kings and Lord Hands trying to fight each other by making an heir the pawn of their battle of power, forcing Jaime to be lord, then knight, then lord again, only to let him be marked as Kingslayer and never making any effort to wash him free of that sin.
Brienne saw his knighthood. And it took no golden armour to make him one.
It didn't even take him his right hand.
Just one jump down a bear pit.
"But tiny arrows don't do much damage," Jaime argues, bringing Brienne back to the present.
"You just have to aim at the right places," Brienne shrugs. "Of course that requires skill."
"And you mean to say that I lack it?" Jaime cries out in feigned exasperation.
"I can hardly blame you for it. How are you supposed to train to be swift with your stump when you have that thing on at all times? The only thing it may do is to train your muscles because it is quite heavy," Brienne tells him, nodding at this thing she finds alien and in fact… grotesque.
And Jaime frowns at the ease with which she says the one word, and the unease with which she says the other.
Stump is easy.
Golden hand seems hard. Instead she calls it a 'thing'.
"It's lovely how you try to offer comfort, but end up insulting people at the same time," Jaime snorts.
Brienne blinks. He realised it as an attempt of offering comfort? Maybe she is not so entirely bad at it after all.
"If you ever expected me to be good at it, you know me less than I thought," she huffs nevertheless.
Because she isn't good at offering comfort.
She is dull and blunt.
"I think I know you better than most people," Jaime argues. "I was stuck with you all day long for an achingly long time."
"Trust me, there are quite a few things you don't know about me," she huffs.
"Like what?" he retorts. "I have seen you stark naked."
"Likewise," she interjects.
"See? That means we know each other better than most people," he shrugs.
"Just because we have seen each other… like this doesn't mean we know each other very well," Brienne argues. "We know each other through what we told each other, what we witnessed together."
"It's even funnier that you still blush whenever I mention that bathtub," Jaime chuckles.
"I did not faint like a tart," she retorts, biting her lower lip, fighting back that vicious blush that leaves her open and vulnerable.
And that is what makes her regret it each time - her futile attempts of offering comfort, being soft.
Because he goes on insulting.
Goes on teasing.
Makes her blush like a stupid young girl.
"I had a fever, by the Gods!" Jaime argues, rolling his eyes. "After I had to undergo the ordeal of having a festered wound of a limb being cut off cleansed and probed at."
"A bayonet!" Brienne suddenly cries out a lot louder than she had intended to. Jaime frowns.
"You could also use a bayonet," she says in a smaller voice, her words growing frantic. "Or have something made that is like a bayonet."
"What now?" Jaime frowns. "How would you work that? It'd slip off. That's one of the main problems."
"You could put it over the stump, if you let a blacksmith make a larger ring to fit around your stump, or rather the whole forearm, or maybe a few rings in a row. That depends on the stability needed. And on the stump itself you could wear a glove that has a larger metal ring to keep it from slipping off," Brienne goes on, the words tumbling out far faster than she'd want them to.
"Wait, where would you have the rings?" Jaime frowns. "Show it. I'm interested."
Because he is.
He really is.
Brienne blinks at him as he holds his arm without a hand out to her, waiting for her to move. Her fingers ghost over the material of his clothes for a moment before she manages to suck in a breath to talk again, "Well, I don't know if this works. I am no blacksmith. But I imagine that you could have a metal construction like a bigger version of a bayonet. There you have a ring to attach it to whatever is needed, correct?"
She draws an invisible ring around his forearm, "But if you had a few more, then it would grant you the stability it'd take for you to have a chance to actually use that weapon. If it were just attached by the front, it might easily be too heavy and fall off."
"Right," Jaime agrees, suddenly feeling tantalised by the way her hands ghost over his arm.
"Well, to make sure that it doesn't slip off, we have to create a kind of lock. And that is what the leather glove you wear under the metal hand could be used for, if it had some ring attached, or whatever else to keep the bayonet in place," she says, thumb and middlefinger on either side of his stump.
Jaime cranes his neck to the side. He is no man of great imagination, but what Brienne says makes him see that bayonet right before his eyes, as though it was already attached to his stump, already reshaping himself to something usable again.
Without golden ornaments.
When Cersei gave him the golden hand, it felt like something to cover it up, to cover his shame, his inability, but the possibility Brienne traces on his skin with no more than her fingertips is not to cover it up, but to expose, to show, to use, deconstruct, rebuild, reforge.
Instead of a golden replica, Brienne offers a chance of a not-golden unicum.
A weapon.
Many weapons.
Whatever limits reality sets to their imagination, to her invisible powers of forging weapons out of thin air.
He suddenly feels her hands withdraw from him. Jaime searches her sapphire blue eyes, her face, only to find her frowning, almost ashamed, "But I reckon I'm just… ugh, seeing things. I don't know. Maybe I got a bit too enthusiastic. As I said, I'm no blacksmith and… and the hand is a… present, a fancy, pricy one… I…"
"It's useless," he argues, his voice no more than a whisper.
"Its use is that…," Brienne means to say, shame creeping up to her lips.
For a moment she almost forgot.
She almost forgot who gave him this hand.
What this hand must in fact mean to him.
And how little her silly ideas surely mean to him by comparison.
Brienne is really no good offering comfort.
She should have just said that it is useless but fancy.
"Its use is what?" Jaime asks.
"To look fancy?" she replies uncertainly.
"And you say looking fancy is no use," Jaime argues. Brienne bites her lower lip, "It's of use for as long as you value it. It is a gift. That is…"
"I don't value it. I hate it," he admits.
"But she gave it to you," Brienne blurts out saying. She slaps herself on the mouth out of reflex.
"And that is the problem," Jaime grimaces. "Because she gave me something useless so she can bear the sight a little better."
Brienne grimaces.
She really doesn't get this issue about beauty.
What does it matter if something is pretty or not?
What does it matter that something is not perfect?
Not golden?
What does it matter that it's a stump?
A stump is nothing but fresh skin over bone, with a scar that's softer than any woman's skin will ever be, as though it was newborn's face. She felt it when on the way to King's Landing. Qyburn wasn't around and no one was there to treat Jaime's stump, so she had done the job. Brienne has felt this stump as she changed the bandages, applied the ointment, and it was nothing but soft, marked skin.
There was nothing frightening about it.
Nothing nauseating.
Nothing ugly.
Just skin.
Just an arm without a hand.
You talk to the man, not the man's hand. When you talk to a man, you talk to the man's face, to his eyes. People aren't measured by their hands, they are measured by everything else. So why cover it up with something that doesn't even come close to skin, to function?
Why does everything have to be beautiful to have value?
Why isn't function enough?
Why isn't function of value in any significant way?
"But… it's… it's from her," Brienne can only repeat. "If her purpose was to make it fancy, then the purpose is fulfilled after all. It is fancy. It is golden…"
"And heavy," Jaime exhales. "And not at all of the purpose I'd like it to have. Not at all my purpose."
It feels heavy because it is heavy on the mind, Jaime knows.
It is heavy because it is the sad memorabilia that he is no longer to Cersei what he used to be. That this one modification to his body brought him to such disarray in her eyes, and her eyes alone, that she turned away from him, his touches, his need, his want, his love that made him undertake so many quests, made him risk his life, his own humanity, let alone his honour.
And that it takes no more than a missing hand, a missing piece, to make her turn away from him.
To have disgust in her eyes, drawing her eyes to it, and then away again.
That she can't bear him because Jaime is no longer perfect, no longer golden.
If he ever was.
"Why do you guard it now?" Jaime asks. Not long ago, she deemed it as useless, the most useless thing in the world.
"Because I ignored the fact that it may be of value to you – because of personal reasons," Brienne replies, now apologetically. "You have it from her. That makes it something of value because she is of value to you. And I suppose I… overstepped some boundaries there by calling it useless."
"You didn't," she hears him say, his voice no more than a mumble, a whisper like rustling golden leaves in late autumn.
Brienne watches in almost horror as Jaime extends his hand with the metal hand in his palm, and drops it to the ground. The thud of the golden hand rings in her ears like a bell, deafening all sound, all senses.
It fell.
This golden hand, it fell.
He let it fall.
He let it go.
"This is dead weight. It's pulling me down."
Brienne's eyes drift back to Jaime, who turns to her – and before her mind can register the movement, his lips are on hers. Brienne blinks, her body on the verge of submission already, something dark and obscure drawing the strength out of her at once, but her eyes remain firmly fixed on the golden hand on the ground.
He dropped it.
What if someone saw it on the ground?
What if she saw it on the ground?
He should pick it up.
Put it back in place.
Why isn't he?
Why is he…?
Yet, before she can go on shaking, can go on wrestling the whys, Brienne feels the softness of a newborn's face pressing against the side of her cheek until her eyes tear back around to Jaime as he kisses her deeper and deeper. Their eyes lock like the mechanism Brienne painted with invisible ink on his forearm.
Jaime wants to get lost in her world of reachable possibilities.
Because that is pulling him up.
Not down.
He feels weightless, his arm does, his missing hand no longer a phantom weight pulling his limb down, no longer a phantom weight to make a lion bow into the dust.
Because he feels of use at the mere possibility of reshaping himself into a weapon again.
Because he feels of use at the touch of Brienne's hands that hold so much carefulness that it knocks the air out of his lungs harder than any enemy's blow ever could.
Because she can say 'stump' without a frown on her face, without the fear of mentioning something that should rather be covered.
Because she doesn't want to cover, doesn't want to conceal.
Like a battle scar, or so it seems, she wants him to show it.
Bear it with pride.
The battle scar Jaime earned when acting like a knight again, without a golden armour to protect him, shield him.
Perhaps it is that Brienne is so wonderfully grotesque herself that she doesn't see other people's grotesqueness, and even if she does, it seems to bring about within her no more than a feeling of pure solidarity, of care.
No disgust.
No blame.
No shame.
Jaime pulls her into himself, touches her rough, freckled skin as he goes on taking the air out of her, the air that leaves him even more light-headed than the possibility of feeling a little lighter by shedding that vicious tail with golden ornaments.
They sink down on the sheets of his bed, and even when Jaime runs his ugly, little stump over her cheek, her arms, brushes against her calloused fingertips, she doesn't flinch, doesn't pull back.
Instead, she holds on without hesitation.
Instead, she doesn't let go of him.
Instead, she lets him venture, lets him dare to let this bit of skin feel other skin again, allows it to be revived.
Instead, she lets him explore, however clumsily, her body, her face, her hair, sinking beneath the layers of the material into the realm of the immaterial, what lies beyond a person's reach, now with hand or without.
Instead, she lets him test his stump, get its feeling back, try out the movements either long since forgotten or still completely strange to him.
Instead, she lets him shift his weight until he finds balance, rather than putting weights on him to compensate a missing piece.
"What else?" he breathes against her lips, against her teeth, his breath hot and needing.
"What?" she manages to croak, lost in touches she never thought, dared to believe to receive at the hands of the man she sees as golden when there is no gold on him.
"What else can we use?" he growls against her neck huskily. "What can we make of that blank space? Tell me. Tell me of the possibilities. Tell me all that comes to mind."
Write it on me.
Paint it on me.
The colour doesn't matter.
Be it the shabbiest metal, rusty and rough.
But paint it on me.
"A short machete," Brienne says, sucking in air like a shriek as he goes on touching her, kissing her, consuming her, seeing her instead of the woman who forced him to conceal for almost all his life.
Brienne cannot pinpoint the emotion. For that it is too new, too unfamiliar, too sense-depriving.
She cannot tell its colour.
She only knows it's warm and cold.
That it's hard and soft.
Yes and no.
Or no.
It's just this one thing: Yes. Yes. Yes.
"More," he growls. "Tell me more. Don't stop."
"A trident," the words fly out of her as he goes on burying himself in her, forcing her to do likewise and bury herself in him, in his touches, in his softness, in his imperfect perfection, in a blank space to write on that was born out of the death of something formidable, something perfect, something golden.
Something revived.
Something reborn, with the skin of a newborn's face.
"Don't stop."
Don't let go.
Don't let me go.
Ever again.
Or else the possibilities will stop, will shatter, and I will shatter along with them.
Write on me.
Rewrite me.
Forge me anew.
With invisible weapons if you can.
"A parrying dagger!" she almost cries out, forgetting the world as it melts away in the golden shine of the setting sun, running her calloused, ugly hands over his perfect stump, imagining the weapons so vividly, so solidly that she can feel and hear the metal singing under her touch like a blade, like many blades.
Without ornaments.
Without the want to conceal or hide.
But with the need, the want to display.
To affect.
To fight.
To build.
To create something where there is nothing.
To give function to an empty space by filling it.
And so they forge anew.
Rewrite.
Write on each other.
Don't let go.
Raise from the dead.
Breathe into existence and hold on.
Hold on to each other as Brienne verbalises the possibilities, draws them on his skin while Jaime absorbs the words, the invisible ink that shines golden in his eyes, the way she glows at him at this moment in all her magnificent imperfection.
They say 'yes' to the possibilities.
Goodbye to the impossibilities.
They say 'yes' to each other's possibilities, capabilities, and incapabilities.
They say 'yes' to each other.
Without regret.
Without fear.
Because the possibilities lie right between their entwined hands.
And in that they are more golden than any material gold.
And in that they are imperfectly perfect.