A/N: This short oneshot is part of the Friday Fast Fic Challenge hosted on Ao3 (feel free to join us! We need all the fic!). The prompt is by JulieofTarth and was the word "smell" whereas Isola_Caramella was so kind to start this Tumblr Challenge, which is why that fic is gifted to the both of them. I am reposting it here because this is a closed case, and I reckon it might be alright to post, at least, those fanfics I have apparently finished (considering that I am so awful with updates as of late (see my comment on Choices for more details regarding the matter). The word length was limited to 500 words max., which is what I thankfully managed (minus the Author's Note, lol).

I own nothing. I know nothing. I don't have a beta, I just keep rolling.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the short journey!

Much love!

Coming back to Tarth changed everything.

Or rather, it made Brienne realize that she had changed.

And that even though Brienne thought that what Goodwin always said about her way of wielding the sword was also true for her person – persistent, unchanging. However, Brienne's journey? It did something to her, and Brienne didn't see it until she returned to the place where she thought she would always be the same.

It began when Brienne had the scent of familiar waters in her nostrils, the burn of salt, sensory impressions that had Brienne's mind go back to the path she was on before she travelled the Seven Kingdoms in a quest for honor – and unknown to most, for love, too. It had her think back to the girl who made picked up the sword instead of her dancing lessons, who didn't want her septa to know how much her comments cut her confidence, a bleeding Brienne only staunched once she started cutting with a sword with confidence, who fought boys calling her names, who knocked men into the dust.

Inhaling the salty sea air, Brienne reckoned she would find her mirror back on the isle, which she had abandoned when she joined Renly's army such a long time ago. That Brienne would be that freakish woman again whom people laughed at behind her back or to her face, the woman who wouldn't let anyone know that a part of her always hurt, even if not as much as a blade or an icy scythe in the hands of a White Walker ever could.

And yet, once her boots sank into familiar soil, Brienne found everything different, found herself different, out of place while right at the place where she had begun.

"Scared, wench? That'd be unlike you."

And that was when she knew, turning her head to look at the man who, over the course of the journey, their many fights with swords and words, managed to change her path without Brienne realizing until she took in the smell of home, the scent of her former self now faded.

Jaime's stump pressing against her wrist was all it took to remind Brienne of the person she became on the passage North, of when she stopped being the Maid of Tarth, unkissed, unloved, and gave herself over to the feelings for a man that she kept hidden, locked away behind oaths and stolen glances. It reminded her of a cold night up North, the smell of furs and their own bodies united in the face of the Great War.

The smell of freshly fallen snow under a heart tree, muttering the words that ended the Maid of Tarth and brought forth the Lady of Tarth, his lady.

"Not scared, no."

"Then what?"

"Just… arriving here, back home. Our home."

His smile was all it took Brienne to know that her future bore a different scent, which, nonetheless, was familiar to her now – because it was his, him.

It will always be him.