Jaime climbed the steps slowly, his knees twinging. The sooner he could be out of this armor the better. The leathers he wore had been Daven's. When he'd ridden north after seeing to the steward, they'd seemed fine - he'd slept in them even, when he did sleep. But after hours of swinging that sword his shoulders felt chafed and raw.
He'd need to see to replacements, he thought, chuckling to himself. Who could have known that he would survive the army of the dead, let alone be thinking of regular comforts? He spared a thought for Bran. The boy had been in the godswood during the battle - had he lived? If not they'd likely all be dead now anyway, so he must have. But whatever Bran had to say to him now could certainly wait.
When he reached the landing he put his thoughts of the Starks aside. Brienne was standing by her chamber door, supporting herself against it with one arm, her forehead pressed to the wood, facing away from him. She was slumped slightly and her hair was wet with sweat and blood and gods knew what else. She didn't stir as he approached.
He stepped around her as deliberately as he could, not wanting to startle her if she'd managed to fall asleep against the doors. Her eyes were closed, her right arm crossing her chest, hand resting on the lion pommel at her side. "Are you alright?" he whispered.
She opened her eyes, the left one swollen half-shut, and looked at him suspiciously, softening when she realized it was him. The only other expression she could manage was an upward turn at the right corner of her mouth. ""Exhausted. Considering sleeping right here in my armor."
"Wouldn't be the first time," he offered with a strained voice, a faded memory of her forcing its way to the forefront of his mind, "though standing would be different," he tried to jibe.
She tried to chuckle but it hurt too much. "No," she sighed. She'd slept in her armor every night on the road before they'd been taken by Locke and his men. And again last night. She had sunk to the floor the moment she was inside and didn't move until the horns sounded.
Only it hadn't been out of exhaustion. She had finally let the tears fall - the ones that had been threatening for hours, days now, perhaps years. Tears of joy for her newfound knighthood, mixed with more vulnerable tears of anxiety at finally admitting her feelings to herself, combined with the heaviest tears - the ones that belied her fears for him, and for them all.
"I can usually avoid it these days," she said, careful not to betray how recently she'd failed to do so. The addition of Podrick to her life had made that aspect of things easier. Someday, she thought, when she had the energy, she'd have to thank Jaime for saddling her with the boy. Her uninjured eye flew open in panic - she couldn't recall seeing Pod. She tried to straighten up against the door. "Where is Podrick?!"
Jaime hushed her with a wave of his hand like child, seeing that she was definitely past exhaustion. "He's fine. You told him to see the maester for that scratch on his face, remember?"
She sighed. "Yes of course." More like a gash, she thought, but she was too tired to argue the subject, or do much of anything for that matter. She pressed her head against the door again, and tried to reach for the lever. if she could make it to her bed she could at least get off her feet before she lost consciousness.
He eyed her and touched her arm lightly, arresting it, concerned that even if she made it into the room without falling over, which with her head on the door she was trying to open she was certainly risking, she might still try to sleep without dispensing with the muddy armor.
"Not sure how long he'll be…," he hesitated, "let me help?"
She had no wish to deny him. She nodded and pushed herself off of the door, holding onto the wall. He pushed the lever down and toed the door open for her, letting her lead the way and pushing the door to a close gently behind him. Once inside, he realized that the chamber lacked the chill of the hall, and he was surprised to see that a low fire still burned after all these hours. Brienne had moved toward the small table at the center of the room and was leaning on it for support.
"Sit," he said, gesturing to the wide chair in the corner.
She shook her head, "No, if I sit in that chair, that will be the end of it." She removed her sword and hung the belt on the back of the chair, then started picking at the ties at one shoulder while he moved to work at the other, pulling the metal away almost effortlessly and set it down beside the chair. She studied him as he returned to her side. "You've gotten better at that," she said with some admiration.
He smiled weakly, taking the other pauldron from her. "Practice. All I had was time." He swallowed hard, recalling a darker time when he'd had no battles to fight but the ones in his head, the fires he'd put out with drink. Shaking them away, he helped her with the straps holding on the breastplate, removing it as well and laying it down while she picked at the ties on her boots. "Do you want help with those?" he asked.
"No, I'm fine," she grunted, "Throw a log on that fire though, will you?" She'd already kicked one boot off and was exhaling into a stretch of her weary foot.
He fed the fire and stirred it. He hadn't realized how frozen he'd been until now, the flames thawing his very bones. Before he could turn around again, he felt her pulling at the shoulder strap on his left and looked up at her in surprise, his breath catching.
Half of her face glowed in the firelight, framed by her hair which had fallen forward during the removal of her boots, the other half was covered in the dappled shadow of that bruise. The memory flashed across his mind again - her face and shoulders bruised and swollen after being beaten and held down by Locke's men, growling at him about his self-pity.
Now he desperately resisted the urge to reach up and push the hair from her brow and caress her mottled cheek believing that, even in her exhausted state, she would somehow find the strength to knock him to the ground. He had hoped, though not expected, to live. She'd imbued that in him. And now, he mused, she was stripping him of more than just armor. He knew his heart and he suspected that he knew hers as well. When she'd handled his armor at Riverrun it had been with a frustrated kind of efficiency. But now she was gentler - but was it just the exhaustion, he wondered? "You don't have to-"
"You helped me," she said weakly, moving to unbuckle his breastplate, ducking to avoid his eyes - the way he was gawking, she thought, the swelling must be worse than she thought, "…and I saw the blood," she moved to the right, "you're favoring this arm." Even in her tired state she thought she saw through him - he would likely go straight back to his room and not give a thought to his arm til morning, and by then it could be festering if the wound was bad enough.
He watched, shivering as she grasped the cuff that secured the hand to his wrist, rolling the torn leather strips of his sleeve back over it, and they hissed in unison at the sight of the claw marks and the dried blood that had soaked into everything. It looked gruesome, he admitted to himself, but the bleeding had stopped and the pain was manageable.
As she cocked her head to examine the marks, he could see the tips of her own claw marks peeking out from her collar – the watery scars where the bear had slashed the skin along her collarbone. When her fingers grazed the raw skin, his arm felt aflame and he stopped breathing altogether. She met his glance, her lip curling up, "I think you'll live."
His laugh came out as a sigh as she let go of his arm, a chill returning immediately. She bent to collect his gear and tied the straps together so that he could carry them both with one arm. She held the bundle out to him, and he took it with a grin. "I've never thought to do that, before, thank you."
She smiled sleepily at him, then yawned unexpectedly and glanced across the room at the bed.
Jaime took the cue for his dismissal, his legs now feeling heavy. "Get some sleep," he said looking towards the bed, wondering if he had the energy or even the desire to get to his own. "We'll still need our strength tomorrow."
Brienne met his glance again, recalling their last conversation before the battle, and sighed, struggling to steady her pulse, "Thank the gods there is one."
He took a deep breath and took a step back, gripping the armor hanging from his arm, anything to keep himself from reaching for her. "Sleep well, Brienne," he said softly.
She shivered at the sound of her name on his lips and wrapped her arms across her chest, willing her feet to stay put, offering him a half-smile, "Sleep well, Jaime."
He nodded and turned, opening the door to go. As he closed it behind him, he spared one more glance back and saw that she was shrugging out of her jerkin, her linen shirt clinging to her shoulders. He pulled the door closed and leaned against it, feeling the heat from her fire soothing his sore back.
Only once the sun had risen over the hills, bathing the hall in pale purple light, did he finally step away from the feel of her, retreating to his cold and solitary chamber across the hall.
And I will wait, I will wait for you
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 Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait" (C) 2012.
Thank you SO much to everyone who's taken the time to read this saga so far - you're all so supportive and wonderful.
I'm still trying to figure out where this journey is going. I love these characters and for that reason I've tried to keep close to canon as much as possible, to make the in-between moments feel valid and necessary, filling in the gaps of my emotional understanding of them - in a lot of ways, it's a love letter to these characters.
Will this end as canon as it began? I don't rightly know yet. I do know that book 3 will, by necessity, exist adjacent to canon. Beyond that, I can't say. There are a lot of straight-up canon fics, and a ton of fix-it fics, and I'm still not sure where this will wind up living, nor do I really want to shoehorn it into one or the other.
So thank you for going on this ride with me and for your outstanding patience. Now that book 2 is complete, I can't promise daily updates but I'm going to be starting on book 3 very soon and I hope to not make you wait long for it.