Notes: I couldn't resist adding a bit more about Jaime's sword to finish off this story.
Dawn fell on Brienne's face, cool. The scratch of the woolen blanket and the bed beneath her felt no different than her own. It was the smell that was different, the smell beneath the sharpness of blood and dirt and bone and pain. A dark sweet musk. The cloth of a tunic that was not hers; flesh, her hand held, fingers warm.
Jaime slept in her arms, and she thought absently that she should feel more disconcerted by this development, by the wonderings of her strategic self and the fears of her heart — what does this mean and what are we now and who am I to him and what is he to me — she could not give her thoughts the weight of questions. They floated within her, ghosts of a shared dance.
She slid her hand from his, unwrapped her arms from around him, and rose to attend to the fire. Her heart roiled, but she set it away from herself as she had done when she'd thought Jaime would die.
They'd let the fire burn down, and so she added more kindling, watched the small flame devour the wood, then added the larger pieces Jaime kept stacked nearby.
She'd done this many times while Jaime was healing, and the strangeness of the feeling had not left her. It was peculiar and unreal and terrifying, the way she moved so easily in Jaime's space. She did these things for him not out of a sense of obligation, but a sense of internal rightness. Like the silver filling the cracks in the hilt of Jaime's sword, the plain blue stone in its bezel. This was simply what she did, because it was what she did.
You know what it means and this is what you are now and this is what you are to him and this is what he is to you were answers her heart knew and feared, even as they felt true and right and easy.
The fire crackling, she turned to his sword; Jaime had left it unsheathed on the table. She smoothed her thumb over the sky-blue stone, where she'd watched his tremble. She'd not meant for her gift to hurt, but she understood how it had. In their tender fearfulness, their hearts were the same, and the feeling of it in her body was a pointed longing. You know what it means was an answer just as sharp, but it warmed to her touch, like the sword she carefully sheathed, before Jaime's voice, husky with sleep, eased itself into her awareness.
"Careless of me." Bedding rustled behind her. She heard the soft padding of his feet, and then he was standing beside her, a warm shadow. "I've thought of a name."
"It already has one."
"Widow's Wail isn't fitting," Jaime replied. "I'd rather like to live now, and not imagine my wife crying over me."
My wife. The sense of unreality found her again, and her heart, and those thoughts that would not leave.
"You couldn't have decided a name while you were sleeping."
"We were dancing," Jaime said. "And then I woke to find the fire hot and my blade cared for." His hand found hers where it rested on the hilt. His fingers moved idly back and forth across her knuckles; his callouses met hers in a pleasant roughness. "Now the name seems even more appropriate."
"Are you going to keep me here all day with this game?"
"There's nowhere we need to be."
Jaime was right. For the moment. The feel of his blood soaking her was not so far away. "When Bran's ravens return from the south, we'll know the threat we face, and must prepare."
"They haven't yet, and so we don't." Jaime looked up at her, sincerity and softness on his face. "I made a promise, I kept a promise, for once in my life—"
"And you nearly died because you thought it wasn't enough—"
"What are you doing now, Brienne? Trying to make your life more difficult because you think you have to protect all of Westeros?" His hand held hers, squeezing gently. His voice was quiet. "Our dance was long enough for me to think about quite a few things."
"Like a new name for your sword."
"A sword I swing well enough to keep me out of trouble." His face was still filled with that gentle earnestness. "I don't know what's coming; I know I want to be by your side." He smiled, and warmth shone in his eyes. "You don't need protecting."
"No."
"Doesn't matter," he said. "You're still mine to protect." His other arm wrapped around her waist. "I find myself fond of making promises these days," he continued. "Not swearing oaths, you understand. At least, not after this one." He grinned. "I'll leave such formalities to my wife—"
My wife. "Do you not understand the meaning of such a phrase?" She lifted her head to look at him, finding his gaze soft on their hands, joined on the sword's hilt.
"I understand it quite clearly, Brienne," came Jaime's reply. His thumb stroked the back of her hand. "I didn't name my sword for the oath I'll swear to you, but every promise after that."
This is what you are to him, and this is what he is to you.
The thought warmed her, like the fire in Jaime's hearth, and the morning sun shining through his window.
Promise caught the light, golden threads melding with silvery mist.
Spring's sky settled in the bezel, a drop of hope.