Author's Note: Hello everyone! Welcome back to my world of shameless JB-fangirling!
In reply to my marvellous reviewers:
To Coque: Thank you! Once again, I can only rely on online translations. I hope your tears have dried by now. I must say that I didn't keep exact track on their age. In this chapter they should be roughly around the age of 18-20. Something like that. Once again, I gave AU warning also for that reason, since my focus is on the relationship, really. Hm, jealous Jaime might be something you will get to see, but I won't spoiler too much at this point ;)
To elaine 451: Thank you so much! I, too, bear the hope that I will write them such an ending, but one can never know ;)
This chapter is supposed to serve as a kind of transgression, more plot thereafter in the next chapter.
Mini-spoiler (don't like, don't read): I suppose that some of you hoped that I'd make it happen right there already, but I still have so much DRAMA to write out that I can't just stop right here.
In any case, I hope ya'll enjoy this chapter.
"You and I both know that you have to return to King's Landing," Brienne exhales as she sits with Jaime in her chamber, their faces barely visible in the small candlelight. After what happened in the cave, life has been at a sort of liminal space, caught between the reality of the near future, and the longing for the past they left in Tarth's blue waters.
The odd thing, perhaps, is that neither one withdrew out of embarrassment or fear of the other person's reaction. At the same time, they didn't come close to each other as they did in the cave since. Jaime still finds himself clasping her hand and Brienne finds herself accepting his closeness, but it never goes beyond that.
"Of course, but maybe I should wait until after the negotiations are over. Someone has to advise you so that you don't end up making foolish decisions, hm?" Jaime argues, trying to keep his voice light, though it feels like a heavy lump down his throat.
"I have Maester Duvall. He is a trustworthy man who served my Father and Tarth for a long time. He is a wise man," Brienne assures him.
"And I am not?" he argues.
"You are most definitely not wise, no," Brienne shakes her head, amused.
"So you think I'm stupid," Jaime grunts in disappointment.
"You are often enough… but I mean to say that you are smart, just not wise. That comes with age, I suppose. I'm not wise either. It'd be so much easier for people like us if we were wise already. Then we'd know what to do or how to feel," Brienne mutters, puckering her lips.
If only she was a wise woman who knew how to deal with the turmoil raging within her body.
If only she was wise enough to simply let go instead of holding on to the hand still extending to her.
"Do you think you'll be alright?" Jaime asks with pure sincerity in his voice.
One word from her, and he would stay.
"I suppose I would have to lie if I were to give a definite answer. I don't know. You witnessed it first-hand, this affects me more than it maybe should," Brienne grimaces. "But in either case, it is nothing you can help me with, Jaime. Those are the battles I have to fight now – and you have to fight yours in King's Landing."
"So you want me to go," Jaime makes a face.
"I want you to do what is your obligation, what is your oath. You helped me more than words could ever say, Jaime, but now it's time for you to… go home, return to your life," Brienne tells him in a soft voice.
Because this here is not yours.
"It might well be that we will never see each other again," Jaime argues.
"That's what we said the last time, too, and still, we fought each other amidst a melee," Brienne breathes, glancing out the window.
"So you think we should let fortune decide? The Gods?" Jaime grunts dismissively, not liking the thought to let those nebulous creatures handle their fate in their name.
"Don't they always?" she shrugs.
"And you're sure?" Jaime asks once more. Brienne takes his hand this time, offering a small smile, "I am sure. My place is here now again. And your place is King's Landing. We both must follow our oaths. They are the most important thing after all."
More important than a kiss, a cave, a chance of in-betweenness and escape.
Jaime looks at her, letting out a heavy sigh. As much as his heart is begging him to forget his oath, he knows he cannot, just as he knows that Brienne wouldn't want him to either.
Sometimes he wished oaths weren't that important, or rather... sometimes he secretly wished that he didn't make that one oath, but then again... that was what Brienne always admired him for, and Jaime wants her to continue to admire him for that, or at least not to look down on her.
"Then I suppose I am to return to King's Landing," Jaime whispers solemnly at last.
"Yes," she mutters.
"Maybe the Gods are with us after all," Jaime offers the smallest of smiles.
"I hope they are."
Fingers creep around each other one last time.
Jaime sails away from Tarth with a hole in his heart. However, he must return to his duties. He is a man of the Kingsguard, Brienne is right.
It's not like his presence will undo her father's absence.
Jaime understands it now, at least he thinks he does. He cannot bring Lord Selwyn back, he cannot undo her pain. The only thing he can do is to be the man she sees in him – and the way he reckons, for Brienne it really is the one way she still has to live a knight's life, if only through him.
And maybe he can become the man he saw reflected in her sapphire eyes, if he works hard enough, doesn't give up... does what Brienne would do.
When Jaime returns to King's Landing, he tries to sink into the responsibility of the Kingsguard. He puts all of his effort into being a knight again, the knight Brienne and he envisioned, painted with invisible colours, only for them to see, only for them to understand. He wants to be the man she saw in him, even in that cave when he let go of all of his defences and failed so miserably at offering comfort that the one to be comforted comforted him instead.
However, the deeper he dives into the responsibilities of the Kingsguard, the more he realizes how his title, his self is hollowed out, carved out, leaving him emptier than before. He is drawn in by the man he attached his oath to, imprisoned in a place without prison bars.
And soon he finds himself pulled into a darkness whose existence he was not even aware of.
A single man's madness suddenly becomes his illness.
His downfall.
His fall from grace.
And no one is there to catch him when it happens.
There is just him.
And eyes judging him.
And mouths laughing at him.
And ink written on him, to mark him with a name not his, to mark him as the man he never wanted to be. He becomes an oathbreaker.
And he fades away underneath each glance, each blotch of ink.
Just like Brienne of Tarth simply fades out of his life.
No more letters.
No more lifelines to keep him above the surface, to keep him from drowning in the shadows.
No more soothing letters of ink.
No more books.
No more caves to hide in.
No more sapphires to illuminate the way, to shed light where darkness is.
The Gods seemingly don't care about them after all.
Life sweeps them off their feet and carries them to different shores, pushing their heads underwater as they are consumed by the dark, unrelenting sea.
And when the knight of the Kingsguard finds himself at the very bottom of his own personal Hell, at the bottom of his very self, Jaime finds comfort in the arms of the one person who returned to him unexpectedly, who is his other half, filling some of his hollowness.
He gives up on what he believed in, to find a place to hide in the privacy of a chamber.
In the closeness that allows no distance.
In the closeness that leaves him mute, deaf, and blind.
He lets the shadows devour him until nothing remains of him.
He forgets.