Hello! I hope you enjoy this new story. It is very disconnected from the plot, but everyone will stay in character.
SPOILERS FOR SEASON 6
Thank you for reading and feel free to follow and review! Much love xxx
Brienne of Tarth stood straight as a poker outside Lady Sansa's door, her large, pale hand grasping the hilt of Oathkeeper. She stared around dutifully, as alert and focused as a sworn sword ought to be. But tonight, despite her devotion to shielding Lady Sansa from all further harm, her mind was elsewhere, her wide, blue eyes clouded over, and the hand that gripped the hilt shook slightly. She had felt braver facing the bear than she felt now.
There was no getting around it. None at all. It was a simple fact, an undeniable reality that her blood was a week late. A week. Not a day. Not even two. A week.
Brienne pursed her lips, shifting her weight onto her other foot. She struggled to keep her face blank and professional. But it was difficult. She felt as if her armour had doubled in weight. A week. It was usually highly predictable each moon. Within a day or two of accuracy, she would bleed mercifully lightly, and it would be over within just a few days. But not this moon. A noise brought her abruptly out of her thoughts. She started, clenching her muscles-but it was just Lady Sansa coughing. Brienne relaxed. But not for long... Her mind wondered back to that night in that tent at Riverrun. That blasted, bloody, stupid tent...that beautiful tent, that tent which had held something better than anything the seven heavens could offer...
Some words were exchanged. The official business. She had stood as upright as she did now, half a head taller than the Kingslayer who stood before her, clad in similar armour to the Lannister steel he had given her himself. It felt…not strange, as such, to see Ser Jaime again, her old prisoner turned companion, whom she had watched at his very best and, most gut-wrenchingly at his very worst. It was more like a homecoming, as if she had been away at war for many, many years. Well, they had both been at war. They both had the scars to prove it. Ser Jaime's age was beginning to show, but he was still, to Brienne's dismay, so devastatingly handsome it felt like someone was driving a Valyrian steel sword into her gut. But his was a different kind of beauty to Renly's (gods rest him, she thought automatically). Jaime's was wrought with guilt, fret and a kind of tiredness that never left his eyes now. It was unlike anything Brienne had ever seen in a man's face before. She wondered if any man in Westeros carried a burden greater than he. Brienne felt Jaime's strength and vulnerability at once and in equal measures in her very soul, since they fitted together so perfectly with her own. And as she looked at him across that tent, she felt all of her old feelings for him, feelings she had pushed so deep down she had thought she would never be able to reach them again…they resurfaced, like the Greyjoy's Kraken, consuming her completely as if she had been engulfed in wildfire and plunged into a cool lake at the same time. She could see Queen Cersei's accusatory eyes…"…But you love him…"
She did. Gods, she did.
"…and if you attack the castle, honour compels me to fight for Sansa's kin." She had kept steady eye contact, ignoring the dread inside her. Ser Jaime's had eyes stared straight back.
"Of course," he said, levelly. Brienne knew him well enough to know he was feigning stupidity, hoping she would not say out loud what they both knew. But she knew she must.
"…To fight you." She clarified, trying hard to keep her voice as steady as his, though she could not help the pitch raising a little.
Jaime had stared for a long moment. He almost opened his mouth once to reply…then closed it again. Brienne waited anxiously, knowing her face was betraying her, her dread was showing though. She saw Jaime sense this. It made him speak up, meaning to comfort her, she knew. "Lets hope it doesn't come to that."
It was too much. With one last desperate look at him, Brienne had turned quickly on her heel to leave the tent, to wipe her face clean of all emotion and return to her duty, trying to force her mind onto the much more urgent affairs in hand, her forthcoming negotiation with the Blackfish, getting back to Podrick Payne outside, taking care of the horses, finding…
So when Jaime grabbed her wrist, stopping her just before she could exit the tent…she had almost screamed.
"Please." He had turned her back to him, standing very close to her. "I can't let us just part like this again." Still, his hand, rough and warm, held onto her wrist gently, but firmly. Brienne had felt her heart stop completely. "Especially if the next time we are to see one another is on opposite sides of a battlefield." He met her eyes again, holding their contact.
Brienne had not known what to do. All she could feel was the gentle force of him on her wrist. It was as if all the air in the room had disappeared. She was far stronger than he now-she could have ripped her arm away easily…but she did not. She could not. "You…" she almost stammered. "It may not come to that, you said."
Jaime sighed. "The Blackfish is a stubborn old bastard. Just like his niece…" Jaime was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. It did not smell as nice as it did when they last parted on the Kingsroad. More like it did when they were the Bolton's captives. The memory stirred an even deeper part of her, knitting her closer to him than ever. "I don't want the next time I see you to be the last time." Jaime continued, a weak grin twitching in the corner of his mouth. "We all know you'd beat me on the field easily now. You'd cut me down as if I were Pod."
Brienne smiled involuntarily, giving a small, pained laugh. She had not laughed in so long…the motions felt so foreign to her. "I wouldn't…I mean…" She bit her lip gently, as their smiles fell away as quickly as they had come. Against her better judgement, she let her eyes wonder down to where Jaime's hand, browned almost gold by the sun, was wrapped still around her wrist.
He noticed her looking. He looked down too, as if the arm and the hand that clasped it were someone else's entirely. "Brienne of Tarth…" he breathed, as if trying in inhale her very essence, looking at her as if he could never tear his eyes away. "There is no woman like you in the seven kingdoms. Not one." And with that…he slipped his hand into hers. "Don't go." He begged her, in a very different voice.
Every fibre of her being screamed at her to pull her hand away.
But she didn't. Or couldn't. Whichever it was…their chests now almost touched as one pair of blue eyes gazed into another.
She was not sure to this day who had moved in first. All she knew was that…a few moments later…their lips had met.
She had let him. Everything had happened so quickly. For the first time in her life, she let herself be weak, and she loved it. She had let the Kingslayer in closer to her than anyone had ever been before. His golden skin, as golden as his new hand, had seemed to glow all over as she looked up at him from the ground, her bare back gently scratched by the grass of the tent floor. The roar of the lion, once abhorrent to her, became her water, her earth, wind and fire. She had found herself wanting everything she had thought impossible for her to reach-wanting a man who wanted her back, wanting him like she wanted air to breathe, desperate and gasping rhythmically as he made love to her, first gently, kissing her neck so softly it felt more like breathing, then more and more, until she felt his teeth against her flesh, and it was more than she could bear. She could only remember running her hand through that thick, yellow Lannister hair and feeling it damp with sweat, as shiny as his golden, muscular shoulders she had held onto for dear life...
When it was over, they had dressed quickly on her reluctant insistence. He had protested, but she was steadfast, though she had wanted nothing more than to lie in Jaime Lannister's golden arms and forget that there was a world outside that tent, a world that needed her. She had known Pod was waiting dutifully outside as a squire should, and not for the first time she wished him far, far away from her. He needed her. Lady Sansa needed her, above all, and it was her duty to put the lady's needs above her own, however aching they were. She had wanted nothing more than never to leave that tent, to stay forever in the red, Lannister cloth, feeling her lion's skin on hers, so warm, so…That bloody tent.
But now there was no blood. Just a faint ringing in her ears and a big question hanging over her like a corpse on a noose. Like those poor tavern girls she had cut down and buried, she too had now…lain with a lion. And perhaps...Brienne shut her eyes, trying to block out the possibility that she carried a lion's…NO. Closing her eyes and shaking her head hard, she put all thought of it out of her mind. Of course not. She knew blood was not always regular-informed by the maester back at home on Tarth in the absence of her mother, she knew that many things could affect the regularity of her blood-eating habits, stress, if the moon was in the wrong place in the sky, if there was an eclipse, if her humours were imbalanced…there were any number of reasons why her blood was absent. There was nothing at all to suggest that the only possible explanation was…
Brienne sniffed the night air hard. Her watch would end soon, and she could go to bed in her little chamber at Winterfell, with its wooden floor and soft furs she felt were far too luxurious for her. Lady Sansa had insisted on keeping her in more comfort than she had had since Kings Landing. But every night since she had returned to her lady's side at Winterfell, when Pod had removed her armour and gone to his own chamber, all she could do was lie awake in those soft, warm furs, and imagine the lion she lay with beside her again…Ser Jaime, who may be dead for all she knew, en route back to Kings Landing and Cersei…
She would never lay with him again. She would probably never even see him again. But still…still…
And now…
This was ridiculous. Brienne shook her head again, shifting her weight back onto the other foot. It was absolutely ridiculous to stand there and worry and fret about something she couldn't possibly solve that night. She gripped Oathkeeper tighter as she decided what she would do. In the morning, she would rise early and discover Winterfell's maester. Simple. Easy. Whoever it was would tell her she had it wrong. There had to be a maestor in such a huge and vital stronghold-though she had not met them yet.
And she could go back to missing Jaime in peace…
She could hear a dog barking outside. After the fate of Ramsay Bolton, however much he deserved it and however much she wished she could have killed him herself for Lady Sansa, they gave her the creeps. The air was chillier than ever as her watch neared its end.
Hope you enjoyed! More soon, promise.
Cheeky hint #1: A familiar face will be heading back Northward.
Cheeky hint #2: Something nice for anyone who hated Ramsay-so that's everyone :P
