Okay, first of all, I am dreadfully sorry. I'm sure many of you thought I had given this story up or something. No, I haven't. I only wanted to pause until I had finished another fanfic, but when I had...I don't know. Inspiration was just lacking a bit.
I'm gonna be honest with you: I hated writing the first half of this. Another reason why I was slightly unmotivated. I knew I had to write something about the fight now, but I can't, I'm not good at it, and I still hate it but anyway, it's not going to get better so here we are.
Last but not least I have my exams just now so don't expect the updates to be as fast and regular as they were in the beginning, but I'm just gonna take a chance and publish this now, hoping it's not completely crabby.
Hope there are going to be any readers at all after I left you hanging in the air like this for months...Gods I'm feeling so bad.
In case I'm lucky, feedback is VERY appreciated as always!
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Blood. There was blood everywhere. Blood pounding in his ears, blood dripping from the wound on his right arm, blood seeping from the dead that lay all around them, the red liquid that had once been the essence of their life leaving their bodies to water the grounds of Winterfell.
Jaime had no idea how long they were already standing here, fighting against and slaying down one wight after the next, the unstoppable flow too fast and too strong to even give them time to breathe or think. Brienne was pressed against the wall beside him, just as sweaty and blood-stained as he certainly looked himself, but he knew it was not her own blood as she stabbed the enemies with the skill and strength that distinguished her as the knight she was - a determination shining from her eyes every time he dared to throw a quick glance at her that made him feel equally proud and unreasonably confident. If there was a chance for someone to survive this, it would be her.
The noise around Jaime was overpowering. His own heartbeat, the clashing of steel on steel, sword on sword. He had liked this sound. Once. Before he became who he was now. Before he lost his hand. Before he met Brienne. It had been like a song to him, the fight like a dance, everything a game and one that he was skilled in playing and never lost.
Now, the sound of the swords was accompanied by the painful screams of those who were hit. People fell at every side, wounded, dead. He didn't know where to look first, where to turn, who -or what- to concentrate on. He drove his sword through another one of the cold dead bodies that had come only to kill them, impossible to tell how many.
How many men have you killed, M'lord?, Qyburn had asked once.
Countless. Even just in the last few hours, provided that these things could still be called men after all. Countless. Countless. Countless.
He and Brienne had stood side by side before the battle had started, waiting. Jaime had taken her hand and when she looked at him, he saw the same mixture of fear and resolution in her eyes that he felt himself.
Remember what we spoke of, he had said. No heroic feats. Brienne had just nodded.
Now he saw her fighting with two wights at once, every time she managed to drive back one of them, the other would rush forward to attack again. Jaime wanted to help her just as he was distracted by a third that came towards him from the side, but he made short shift of it and turned his attention back to Brienne. She seemed to finally get ahead of them, Oathkeeper sirring through the air faster than Jaime could look and forcing one wight back far enough so she had time to finish the other. After that, the second all on his own wasn't so much of a bother for her skills. Panting, she started pulling her sword out of the body - a second of rest, as it seemed...
And that was the second Jaime's heart stopped. There was another, approaching Brienne from behind, without her noticing. He called her, but his voice disappeared in the muddle of other sounds surrounding them. Funnily, all the noise seemed to vanish for Jaime himself, everything but his own heartbeat filling his ears. He didn't even know that he had started to move when he was already running, the world around him standing still.
Then he reached her just as she turned around, but he had already thrown himself between her and the wight's sword, the only thing he could think of at this moment that he needed to prevent its blade from touching her. The sword glided along his shoulder, if it cut him he couldn't tell. There was no pain, but he knew that was no proof that he hadn't been hurt. The flow of a fight. The exertion. The adrenaline. All preventing him from any sensation.
He felt how his side hit the ground, but still managed to make the wight fall down as well. He heard Brienne gasp in shock behind him when the dead creature crawled over him, he tried to fight it off, but it had pinned his left arm to the ground - the right useless as ever, pressing against the cold body in vain. The smell of decomposition filled Jaime's nose, almost making him retch. The sharp scent stang in his eyes and he was sure that he would have felt the wight's breath on his face if the thing would still have been breathing.
He tried to keep a clear head, but then, before he even knew what had happened, the pain his body had held back before suddenly hit him.
"Jaime!", he heard a familiar voice, the voice of a woman.
Brienne, his head managed to identify. He had to stay awake, had to stay with her, to protect her, but he was so incredibly tired...
The world went still and silent around him when he felt a weight pulled off of his chest and a blurred head with dirty blonde hair appeared in his sight for a moment.
"Jaime!", he heard again. He liked that voice. And the name. Not "Kingslayer". Jaime.
He could be glad it was the last thing he heard before the world went black.
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Brienne didn't leave his bedside. She sat in a chair or walked up and down, back and forth, restless day and night. In the beginning, Podrick or Sansa came from time to time, suggesting that they could take over for a while so she could find some rest, but she always refused and no one dared to argue with her. She wouldn't have found peace anyway. When she slept, it was sitting in the wooden chair by his side and she would wake up in the middle of the night, neck stiff and back aching, but none of that was of importance. She spent hours just sitting in silence and listening to his uneven and flat breathing, always fearing that it would stop completely, but it never happened.
She spoke to him when she was alone. The Maester said he probably couldn't hear her, but she didn't care. It made her feel better, somehow. She told him what had happened, Arya, the Night King and everything afterwards. She told him what they could do when he would wake up and return to her. She knew it was stupid and sentimental, perhaps even pathetic, but she couldn't let go of her dreams, their dreams, not yet, not until...
And sometimes, she would just whisper his name. To remind him of who he was, perhaps. To remind her of who he had been. Or just to hear the sound, feel the taste of it on her tongue. She didn't know. Jaime. Just Jaime, leaving her lips like a prayer. Jaime. Jaime.
He had lied to their prisoners once...to save her.
He had jumped into a bear pit without a weapon...saving her again.
He had honoured his pledge to ride North...for her.
He had been vouched for during his trial in Winterfell...by her.
He had left to face the capital and the danger that awaited him there, had killed his sister...for her.
And now, he had faced the Army of the Dead...by her side.
Would he also be damned to give his life...for her?
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Jaime lay in total darkness.
Death, he thought. Was he dead? It had most certainly felt like dying. But shouldn't there be...something, then? Anything? Was this death? Just being surrounded by nothing?
Nothing but one thing. Two things. Darkness. Darkness and voices. He heard them, sometimes. Or just this one, the one he had heard just before he died. It was a welcome change, hearing them, especially the most frequent one. He liked the sound of it, although he couldn't understand what it said most of the time. Just one word. Jaime.
He knew that word. Or at least he thought he should know. It sounded familiar. It was a name, for sure. Someone he knew? Or was he just imagining that? Was he going mad? Could dead people go mad? Certainly, if death was just this - voices in the dark, being surrounded by nothing for eternity. Dreadful thought. Probably you would get sick of the voices sooner or later too. But not yet. He liked to listen to them, tried to imagine what they might say, might want, and at some point, he was quite sure they were calling for him.
He wanted to follow that call. He would have liked to. He just wasn't sure how. But maybe he would find out.
He did. And that was when he opened his eyes to something else but darkness.
Brienne was the first thing he saw.
How appropriate. She was sitting in a wooden chair next to the bed he was lying in, her chin sunken down on her chest, her head supported by one of her hands with her elbow on the armrest. She was sleeping, apparently.
Or were they both dead?
No, he discovered, looking around the room. This was her chamber at Winterfell. He would have recognized these surroundings everywhere, as it had been within these four walls that he had spent the happiest weeks of his life so far.
Jaime breathed out in relief. Then they had to be alive. She was alive and so was he, as it seemed, unless he was a ghost, but that sounded rather improbable. So they really had survived...
Jaime tried to move upwards to a sitting position, an exceedingly difficult task with only one hand anyway, and now to make matters worse his head was hammering at every movement. Brienne stirred at the sound of the rustling bedsheets and her eyes flew open, blinking several times to chase away the drowsiness before they settled on his smiling face.
"Hey", she whispered emotionlessly at first, but the mixture of shock, surprise and enormous relief was clearly speaking from the blue depths of her eyes. She watched how his gaze darted through the room, maybe trying to orientate, and finally returning to her face.
"I'm alive", he just said. Brienne couldn't help but smile at that.
"Of course, you are", she replied, slightly shaking her head in relief and amusement. "I would have killed you if you'd dared to die", she added in pretended seriousness, delighted to see a smirk form on his lips as well.
"In that case, I can't let you become a murderer...", he muttered, shifting a little and starting a second try in bringing himself in a more upright position. Brienne helped him without needing to be asked and he grinned gratefully when she placed a pillow in his back.
"What happened?", he asked when he was finally comfortably settled. "Seems we won or neither of us would be here right now", he added and Brienne nodded gravely.
"Arya", she explained, short and crisp. "She stabbed the Night King with a dagger. Valyrian steel."
"Arya?" Jaime raised an eyebrow. "The little wolf?"
Brienne looked unimpressed.
"She's tougher than she looks", she simply stated, perhaps with a little more sharpness to her tongue than intended, but it only made Jaime smile to himself.
If there was a man in Westeros who was well acquainted with tough women, it was him.
"Oh, I know", he assured her. "Must be in the family. Catelyn. Sansa. I've long stopped to wonder about the Stark-women", he said truthfully and watched how Brienne obviously tried and failed to hide the little smirk that was curling the corners of her mouth.
"Sansa has been named Queen in the North", she told him, the pride she felt for her Lady speaking clearly from her voice. "An independent kingdom."
"And Daenerys agreed without objection?", Jaime asked, more than surprised. "That's hard to believe."
"Well, I guess we can expect that Jon Snow might have had something to do with the Queen's...graciousness", Brienne granted him with a meaningful look.
"The things we do for love...", he whispered as if more to himself, looking down for a moment, and when his eyes returned to Brienne's face, they were shimmering with something, an emotion she couldn't quite figure out.
"It would have been alright", he said then, causing Brienne to wrinkle her brow in confusion.
"Alright?"
"If I'd died", Jaime clarified just as softly.
"What's alright with dying?", she asked surprised, almost shocked.
"It would have been a good death."
At that, Brienne nodded seriously.
"Death on the battlefield", she said, "Can't argue with that."
Jaime couldn't suppress an amused but fond smirk, but gladly, she didn't notice.
Of course, that's what she's thinking of.
"Oh yes", he confirmed, "dying whilst fighting for those you swore to protect is a good death", he agreed sincerely. "But that wasn't what I meant." Brienne raised her eyebrows, looking down at him questioningly.
"Bronn once asked me how I imagined my death...", he explained warmly. "I told him all I wanted was to die in the arms of the woman I love...and I would have."
She stared at him, apparently unsure what to reply, somehow touched and annoyed by his words in equal measure.
"You made me swear not to sacrifice myself to save you...", she finally said, a slightly disbelieving undertone echoing from her words that would have made Jaime chuckle if he hadn't been so incredibly tired. "What made you think I would allow you to die for me instead?"
"I simply thought you could allow me to be the honourable one just this once", he replied, looking up at her. He had tried to sound light-hearted, but she knew him too well not to notice the hint of sadness shining from his eyes despite his tone, and he could watch her features softening immediately.
"You have been", Brienne assured him, her voice soft but firm. "Many times."
Jaime slightly shook his head, stopping when a sharp pain shot through his brain at the motion, but he couldn't help to glance fondly at her nevertheless when it subsided.
"Thank you for saying that", he smiled, knowing that she was the only one in the world who would think so. But that was alright, she was the only one whose opinion mattered, anyway. "That means a lot to me."
"It's the truth", she simply stated.
"I would do it again", he then whispered suddenly. "I would die for you."
He could see something flicker in her eyes at that declaration, but when she spoke, her voice was completely calm and just full of warmth.
"You are going to die of very old age, Jaime Lannister", Brienne told him. "Very very old age."
"But still in your arms?" He looked up at her, watching how the corners of her mouth curled.
"Perhaps", she smiled almost a little mischievously. "If you're lucky."