Brienne stood on a hill of corpses. Winter had ended with the death of the Night King, and the sun shone through cloudless blue skies of spring, spreading the seeping stench of decay across the castle. But the smell hardly affected Brienne; she was on a mission - she'd lost something precious in the battle and was determined to dig it out.

She pulled at bodies one by one, dropping them to the side as she chased the center of the mound. Finally she spotted it, the snarling golden lion poking out from beneath the skeletal limbs. She pulled at the hilt but it wouldn't budge, as if it were lodged in marble. She tried to lift the bodies that surrounded it, but they were heavier than the others had been. So she went down on one knee and shoved them aside until she could see the Valyrian steel blade.

A small crowd gathered around – the Stark children, Tyrion, some of the wildlings…they formed a circle around the hill and watched as Brienne tried to free her sword.

She followed its length and saw that it had impaled one of the bodies and seemed to be caught on the spine somehow. She tried to wriggle the blade loose but the body would not give. She pushed more and more of the dead to the side until she could see the chest and neck of the victim - a woman without armor.

Brienne's brow tightened as she shifted the last body blocking the lady's face, and her look of confusion changed to rage. The glassy dead eyes stared up her with a mocking sneer. But you love him, Brienne heard her chide, as clear as if they were still standing there at the wedding feast.

Brienne growled and, with all her strength, sank Oathkeeper into Cersei Lannister's middle with a scream of fury, then wrenched the sword from the body, shifting it on its side as the blade came free. Panting, Brienne looked down and her face dropped, her chin quivering. With the dead queen's corpse moved, she could see the one that had been beneath it – except it wasn't a corpse yet.

Jaime stared up at her, blood pouring from his chest where she'd unknowingly driven the sword. Though his lungs were compromised, he spoke unobstructed, his voice cold, "Have you no honor?"

Brienne gaped at him, tears filling her eyes. "She had a child!" Tyrion shouted from behind her. Brienne looked at him aghast.

"You were charged to protect the innocent," came Sansa's steely voice, "you are no knight." The tears ran down Brienne's face as she looked around at the accusing faces around her, then fell to her knees, grasping at Jaime desperately, but he only stared back at her with disgust.

He lifted his right arm – whole now – and pulled his sister's body to him, glaring at Brienne. "Nothing's more hateful than failing to protect the one you love," and then his eyes clouded over in death.

She lifted her face to the clear blue sky and let out a deafening scream.

Brienne bolted up in her bed, panting and trying to find purchase in the furs. Her stomach churned and she leaned over the edge of the bed thinking she would be sick, but nothing came. She pushed herself back until she was leaning against the headboard and drew her knees to her chest, struggling to catch her breath and contain her pounding heart. She looked around the room, finding it just as she'd left it what felt like hours before when she'd stalked in from and slammed the door behind her. Oathkeeper still hung from the back of the chair, the lions and sunbursts on the belt glistening as bright as the jewel in the pommel. The fire still burned. And winter was still here.

The sky was still darkening outside the shutters and she squinted against the brightness of the firelight, resting her head on her arms. She couldn't have been asleep for more than an hour. They'd spent the last several days clearing the yard and piling up the bodies outside the walls, burning pyres of them in the night. It was hard work and her limbs ached day after day, but with each body they lifted, she was thankful to be alive, and thankful that those around her still lived.

The first two days had gone by in a blur – she couldn't recall seeing or speaking to anyone, just the bodies. She'd felt the skin across her brow and cheek tightening, trying to heal, knowing that she'd likely bear the evidence of the battle on her face for a long time to come.

Her own nightmares about the battle – usually consisting of being buried by the bodies - had started after the second day – an expected horror after all the death they'd witnessed. Everyone seemed to be in a numb kind of daze. On the third day, she'd encountered Jaime in the hallway and they'd only nodded solemnly to each other before silently carrying on with their duties.

Thousands of bodies needed to be burned still, but there was another war yet to fight. On the sixth day, Brienne had been summoned to the library while the initial plans for the attack were laid out. Everyone was over-tired and the discussion became heated, leading to Queen Daenerys leaving the chamber abruptly with Varys apologizing in her wake. Jon had left not long after, followed by Sansa who dismissed Brienne and went in search of Jon. Brienne had turned to leave the chamber and resume her work in the yard when there was a shout of surprise at the other end of the room and she'd spun, gripping her pommel.

"What?!" cried Davos. Tyrion tried to quiet him but the older knight, in his exhaustion, had lost his sense of decorum, "Are you certain? She's a damn snake, don't tell me you trust this lie when the others were proven false!"

"Yes," replied Tyrion matter-of-factly. "Now keep your voice down. Yes, she lied to my face - she lied to all of us that day, more than once, but she didn't lie about this."

Davos scoffed, "If this is true, then she won't give up the capital. That sister of yours is mad enough to burn us in our sleep if she gets half a chance, but the lion defending her cub is much more dangerous."

"We'll have two dragons-"

"Wildfire doesn't care what kind of beast you are. If this is true, then the others need to know what we're getting into."

Tyrion stomped his foot, "If you don't believe me, ask my brother. He's the one who confirmed it for me. And," he'd added sardonically, "he's the father so I'm sure he'll be thrilled to receive your congratulations." Tyrion had turned on his heel and spotted her standing in the doorway, and his face had gone pale.

Brienne had felt her body go cold, and she quickly left the room, despite Tyrion trying to call her back. She'd stormed through the halls, warring on the inside – Jaime had come north, he'd given up Cersei's battle plans, and he'd fought for the living. They'd seemed to have grown closer since he'd arrived at Winterfell, resuming some of the patterns they'd had when she'd stayed those months in King's Landing, and closer still; she'd begun to feel as if her feelings were not the only ones being harbored.

You and me were always with each other

Based on Cersei's possessive glares back at King's Landing, Brienne had assumed that he'd fallen back into the woman's arms again, but he'd since told her that he was done with that – that Cersei was in the past for him. But he'd said nothing about a child. It didn't add up.

She knew how Myrcella's death had hit Jaime, and the deaths of Joffrey and Tommen were even more bitter. If Cersei was carrying his child now, honor would compel Jaime to return to her even more so than he'd striven to do before. And if Jaime fled south to return to Cersei now, Daenerys would not hesitate to send her men after him, or worse, Sansa might send Brienne to hunt him down as retribution for having stood for the traitor.

Brienne had gone directly to her chamber feeling betrayed and impotent; she knew that she should have gone in search of Jaime, to confront him, but her heart was not in it. Let him go, she told herself, if he's going to go, let him. She preferred to suffer her regrets without drawing them out. She'd bolted the door and hastily discarded her gear, and then laid down in her bed, numb and deaf to the rest of the world until her nightmare of Jaime's defiant dead eyes woke her.

She sat at the edge of her bed, still in her breeches, her linen tunic stuck to her back with sweat. She gazed into the fire trying to burn the image of Cersei's mocking stare out of her memory. We don't get to choose who we love, he'd said to her once. And you don't get to choose when you stop loving someone either, she thought. But you love him, the wicked woman continued to taunt through the low flames. A sharp knock at the door roused Brienne from her trance and she padded over still thinking about the image of his eyes clouding over.

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 "You and Me" by Alecia Moore and Dallas Green (C) 2014.

I did tell y'all I wouldn't make you wait long. Three new chapters, coming right up!