Author's Note: A quick little drabble that popped into my head. I'm not too sure how I feel about it other than to say I hope for a different ending for cannon Brienne. Reservations aside, I figured I might as well write it as not. The characters don't belong to me.
A Different Battlefield
Sometimes, she thinks she can hear his voice and other times the world is silent and all she can see is the arrow sprouting from his eye and the look of shock on his face as he falls, blood quickly turning his gold hair red. It was not how he should have died. Sometimes, she saves him. Sometimes, it is her who is shot – an arrow slicing through her belly and the warm trickle of blood down her thighs. That is when she remembers.
She is delirious and she can feel the strength leaving her limbs as the blood rushes from her body. In the beginning, she had not known anything could hurt so much. But now there is only the heat of the fever and even that seems distant. In the brief moments when her mind is still sharp, she is angry. It seems unfair that after all the battles she has fought like a man that she will die of being a woman. But more than that, she is afraid. She is glad when the delirium takes her, because no matter what horrors they hold, she is never alone in her fever dreams.
This is how she will die, she thinks. She, who they once called the Maid of Tarth, who once rode into battle surrounded by her men and unafraid, will bleed to death alone in a cave. One morning, when she comes to herself again, she hears rustling at the mouth of the cave and feels a dulled sense of panic. It will be an animal that kills her then, she thinks, and not the blood loss. She tries to sit up and reach for her sword to defend herself but she cannot.
Then she sees that it is not an animal at the mouth of the cave but Podrick Payne. Her panic doubles and she feels a surge of rage that gives her the strength to close her fingers around Oathkeeper's hilt and pull herself up to lean against the rock behind her.
"Why have you come back?" she screams at him.
"I found one," he says, eyes wide and horrified. He gestures behind him to a woman whose features Brienne cannot make out.
"Why have you come back?" she says again. "I told you to ride for Tarth. You swore to me."
"I thought….I thought you might…" the squire trails off.
"You thought I might live?" Brienne asks, her voice harsh.
"But….You can't just die. Not like…It isn't right," Pod says, his eyes fixed on what is left of her bloody clothing.
"Give him to me," she rasps, ignoring his words. It is too late to care about what is right. The effort it had taken her to sit up has started the bleeding again in earnest. She will not last much longer.
"Ser-" Pod starts, but the woman he had brought with him is coming forward.
"Here, my lady," she says kindly, kneeling down. "A healthy little lad. I have milk enough for him, I promise you."
Brienne is not strong enough anymore to mistrust her kindness. "Thank you," she whispers. The woman lays the sleeping baby on Brienne's breast and Brienne finds that she does have strength enough left to lift a hand up to cradle his head. Her fingers looks comically large against his tiny skull and she thinks again how strange it is that such a little man will be the one who finally kills her.
She feels a wave of emotion rush over her. She thinks of her father, strong and honorable, and how sad he will be to learn of the manner of her death. She thinks of Lady Catelyn, her face contorted in misery after the murders of her sons. She thinks of Renly, tall and proud, and of Jaime, his smile broad and his arms tight around her.
The baby opens his eyes then and stares at her. She does her best to smile. It is as it should be.
"Pod," she says. She hears the boy kneel down beside her but she does not look away from the child. "When he is older, give him my sword and tell him….tell him there is no one I would have rather died for."
"My lady…" Pod says.
"Now, do as I said. Take him around the fighting and ride for Tarth. Tell my father….tell him he will make a better heir."
The boy looks about to protest, but she interrupts him. "Promise me, Pod." She rasps. "Swear it."
"I swear it, ser. My lady. Brienne," he says and his voice does not waver.
The last thing she sees clearly as Podrick Payne pulls Oathkeeper from her fingers are Jaime Lannister's eyes peering up at her from a tiny face.