He'd whispered so quietly and so closely to her that at first she thought she had imagined hearing her name.
Oh you're in my veins
But then she realized that the knot in her stomach was gone. Her arms dropped to her sides and she spun around to find him close.
"Jai...Ser Jaime." She offered a nod in greeting. She could see that he was confused to see her, his eyes shimmering as he squinted at her against the sun. When he didn't break their eye contact, she swallowed and stared back at him. He took a step forward nearly closing the distance between them. He was very close now, and she found herself unable to move as he held her gaze. For a moment she thought him about to embrace her, but instead his left hand moved into the space between them, capturing hers and held it firmly in what might have seemed to anyone else like a platonic greeting.
After several moments, knowing that others were watching, he released her hand and blinked before cocking his head slyly at her with that teasing grin he'd not used in so long, "Returning to Riverrun to put me in irons again, my Lady?"
She met his grin - "Not this time." He scowled and then turned to Pod - "Podrick Payne." He shook his head in disbelief and embraced his arm as Brienne watched. "I have to say I'm delighted to see you alive," turning to Brienne "after all this time." Brienne cast her eyes downward, avoiding the reprise of his gaze. He turned back to Pod
"Where have you come from?" "Castle Black, My Lord" he said. Jaime's eyebrows hit his scalp as he looked at Brienne. "Really? A long journey...he pulled his eyes from Brienne who was now giving a reprimanding look to her squire.
"Pod, have you eaten?" "No, My Lord." "Why don't you go feed yourself. Daven?!" The steward appeared having been observing from a distance. "Daven, see to it that this man gets a meal." "Yes, My Lord." Then turning to Brienne to excuse himself, "My Lady." She nodded and watched Podrick follow the steward around the corner of a row of tents and disappear." Jaime turned back to face her. "As you can see I was - he looked down at the armor he was still wearing - "in the midst of something when your arrival was announced." Brienne panicked, "We can go." Jaime looked at her curiously, "No no, come, please." And he turned and headed for his tent. He hoped rather than knew that she would follow him.
On entering the tent, Jaime immediately started trying to finish what Daven had started. Removing his sword and belt was an easy enough task, but when he pulled at the strap on his left shoulder holding his armor in place, he found it in a knot. "Damnit, Daven," he muttered to himself. He was facing away from Brienne as she entered the tent and now as he chased the knot around his body he found himself facing her looking quite disheveled.
"Might I?" she asked gently. He looked resigned and nodded, "Some things are taking more time than others" he said, mostly referring to things he couldn't do with his missing right hand. She gave him a small grin that didn't reach her eyes and approached, brow furrowed, and set to work undoing the knot. She was so close. He couldn't help but watch her face while she worked on him.
And I cannot get you out
But before he could lose himself in her eyes, she'd stepped away and taken the armor with her. She set it on the stand across the tent with the rest. Immediately he felt the air cool in the space between them. The silence was too much for him now.
"What were you doing at the wall?" Brienne hesitated and considered her answer. "After I left King's Landing we followed traces of the Stark girls - rumors, mostly. But they proved true. We found Arya-" "Arya's alive?" Jaime was shocked. "Perhaps." At his puzzled look she continued holding the sword at her side as she spoke,"I begged her to come with me but she suspected that I was not to be trusted." "You...?" Jaime was beside himself. Who wouldn't trust this woman? "She ran off when the man she was traveling with confronted me." "What man?" She took a breath. "Sandor Clegane." He was awestruck. The earth spun and Jaime rocked back on his heels, his jaw on the ground. He held onto the table for fear he would fall. "You fought the Hound?" She nodded modestly. This woman was a marvel. He respected her abilities, but the Hound? How was she still alive? How did she have all her limbs still? He looked at each one in turn to ensure that they were all there, and all hers.
"We found Sansa with Lord Baelish," she said with some distaste. Jaime raised his chin and looked to the sky. So that was how Sansa had gotten away. Had Baelish had something to do with Joffrey's murder then? When he met Brienne's eyes again, she seemed deeply troubled. "Please go on." "She didn't trust me, either but we followed them North at a distance. Eventually we were able to get her to safety, but not before Littlefinger had sold her off to Lord Bolton's bastard."
Jaime's eyes dimmed as he remembered their time at Harrenhal with Lord Bolton, a cruel man by all accounts, one who had nearly gotten Brienne killed at the hands of his lackeys. The same man who had betrayed the Young Wolfe to the Freys and gotten the Stark family slaughtered. How inconceivably cruel that Sansa should find herself tied to that family. If reports were to be believed, his bastard was even worse than his father. Had they been in his care, one of them might have wound up being fed to the other. Jaime shuddered.
"Ramsay is an impossibly cruel man," Brienne continued, "but Sansa is safe now." He turned her eyes back to her in wonder. How much she had accomplished apart from him. In two years, what had he done? He'd helped his brother escape which had gotten his father killed, he'd sailed to Dorne only to have his daughter die in his arms, and he'd been pulled from the Kingsguard to settle petty disputes. And all the while she had been working tirelessly to fulfill the oath that they had both sworn.
"I can't believe it," he said quietly. "I never thought you'd find her. I'd just assumed Sansa was dead," he was saying, almost to himself. When he'd sent her away from King's Landing it had been for her safety, he'd never imagined -
Oh you're all I taste
She was beside herself. He'd sent her away from the capital with a promise to find Sansa. If he hadn't believed that Sansa was alive, why bother? Did he mean that he didn't think she'd have been able to protect her when she did find her? "Why would you assume that?" she asked defensively.
He started - he didn't want her thinking he'd meant any offense to her ability to protect someone. After all, she'd protected him better than most. "In my experience, girls like her don't live very long" he stated apologetically.
Brienne paused. This felt like the old Jaime, the one she believed had been left behind at Harrenhal. The knot in her stomach loomed again. She took a breath. "I don't think you know many girls like her."
He hated the look on her face in this moment. He'd never thought to see her again, and now she was here but she seemed to hate him. Just like old times, really. The familiarity was almost worth it. But he knew he'd managed to offend her somehow, and if she turned on her heel now he might never see her again - truly this time.
"Well I'm proud of you," he blurted out. The statement caught both of them off-guard. She looked away, nearly blushing. But he could not stop looking at her, drinking her in.
At night inside of my mouth
"I am, you fulfilled your oath to Catelyn Stark against all odds." She looked away again, sensitive to the fact that he was paying her a compliment.
But at what cost, he wondered. The Stark girls lived while two of his children were dead. "Of course my sister wants Sansa dead." He started around the table toward her. "The girl's still a suspect in Joffrey's murder so there is that...complication." He was standing very close now. She stared him down, but she could see that he was searching for something in her eyes - he would not use the information to betray her to his sister, but what else he wanted she could not tell. He was watching her, waiting for her to pick up the banter, fight him, hit him, anything. But all he got was her icy stare and he couldn't stand it. He dropped his shoulders and his voice, "What the hell are you doing here?"
A/N: I do not own Game of Throne or these characters; some dialogue may be taken verbatim from HBO's Game of Thrones or George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Lyrics used are directly from Andrew Belle's "In My Veins" (C) 2010.