"Remind me, exactly, why we are here again?" Jamie hissed through his teeth as the men of the Nights Watch readied themselves for the inevitable onslaught of wildling hoards.
"I was told Arya Stark would come here to find her brother," Brienne retorted with the same, waspish manor.
"Half-brother," Jamie corrected, "and it was a pretty big gamble… that has left us in the middle of a war!"
They separated briefly to allow a flurry of men to rush past them to the battlements.
"Why does no one in Kings Landing know of what is happening here?" Brienne marvelled, aptly changing subject.
Jamie shrugged, "I expect they think the trouble is so far away that it doesn't affect them."
A number of Nights Watch shouted orders amongst themselves to reinforce their defences.
"One of the Nights Watch asked if we had burned the bodies in Moles Town…" Brienne said, a little suddenly.
Frowning, Jamie wondered, "Why?"
Brienne met his eyes, with the smallest glint of horror… "In case they rose again."
Another troop of men rushed past….
"Rose again?" Jamie repeated, attempting to keep the distain out of his voice. "As in… the walking dead?"
Brienne looked to him with such a degree of fear, Jaimie couldn't help but laugh…
"You're joking!" He stated.
But she looked to him, with dread in her eye…
"Brienne…"
"They are scared, Jaimie," she insisted, her concern taking on an adorable innocence making her all the more endearing...
He sighed and shook his head…
"Think on it…" she insisted, with a little more urgency, placing a hand on his armour, "Criminals; murderers, cutthroats and thieves… they're afraid of what is coming to face them…"
The mirth left him…
"Now tell me you don't think the dead can rise again?"
Before he could answer, the panicked cry of "Wildlings!" hit the cold air.
Jamie found himself moving, throwing his back to Brienne in an impromptu and uninvited attempt to protect her as he, clumsily, drew his sword…
"What in the hells?" Briennes outraged voice asked, shouldering out of the way to stand beside him, sword drawn…
"Sorry," he apologised immediately… faux-pas with his fiancée causing chagrin to colour his cheeks, "I didn't mean-"
"Jamie!" Tyrion shouted from the balcony… "I need you on the wall."
And as the castle began to take fire and erupt into the noise and chaos of war, Jamie roared back to the younger Lannister, "I will not leave her!"
"Then arm yourself!" Tyrion warned, "War is at the gates…"
All became fire and blood surged in his veins… it was magnificent.
()()()
Between flurries of onslaughts and the surge of rage and adrenaline firing his veins, Jamie considered the words of Eddard Stark those years ago… Winter is Coming.
Winter had begun… it was organised, it was determined and it was at the gate.
No one in the south had the faintest idea it was on its way…
The Wildling attack was surprisingly organised and skilled; Jamie had always imagined them as undisciplined and unmanageable and easily disposed of.
Perhaps it was not only the numbers but the leader who oversaw the battle; Jamie thought he had to die, and quickly, before this army of the North swooped down through the rest of the country.
Tyrion had had an idea… and he now led the attack from the top of the wall… striking down the onslaught with his brigade and flaming tar…
Jon Snow, the commander of the watch, charged into the fray as Wildlings crashed through the gates.
Jamie, while not as skilled as he had once been, still had experience and training on his side as the berserkers fell upon them, gratified to discover that while the attack was impressive, the individual warriors lacked training.
Still, they had numbers on their side and, as Jamie cursed himself for allowing them to surround him, he wondered for the first time… would he fall here, in battle?
"Get back, Sire…" Podrick shouted to Jamie, wielding an axe and taking out two of the wildlings from the five about him…
Jamie smiled, surging forward and assisting in the dispatch of the remaining attackers.
"I think, Pod," the Lord of Casterly Rock called, readying for another flurry of wildlings… "You can call me Jamie."
The servant shot him a sideways glance at him… "I may have to work on that, My Lord."
"Where is Brienne?" Jamie asked, swinging his sword about and revelling in the adrenaline and anticipation of battle.
"Where do you think?" Pod asked, hefting his axe and charging into the advancing rabble…
And, of course, it had been an obvious question…
Where was Brienne?
Brienne was doing what she was born to do; cutting down all and any that dared to threaten her, at the side of the only Stark at The Wall.
Jamie watched them for a moment, back to back and then pressing forward, blocking up the hole in the keep wall with the wildling dead.
Perhaps they would make a better pair than she could ever make with a Lannister.
Even the bastard son of a Stark held the integrity and honour of his father. And Brienne mirrored those traits. They made sense together…
Had Jamie always been kidding himself that he could change for her?
And as attacker followed attacker, Jamie found The Nights Watch breaking to assist one another, descending into the chaos of war that the widlings took advantage of.
The keep was a bloodbath as wave after wave of wildling and Thenn broke ground and were slain… Man killed man with sword, axe and arrow as screams and battle cries became a white noise and all Jamie could hear was the fast beating of his own heart.
The lift from the top of the wall smacked to the ground and four Nights Watch called to Jon, as they rushed to a secret tunnel through the wall… something about a giant!
Jamie looked about for the Commander of the Nights Watch to see him, crumpled over the body of a wildling… lost in whatever moment had claimed him as he cried and gripped the still form closet to him…
"I'm coming!" Another yelled…
And, to Jamies horror, Brienne leapt from a cloud of smouldering logs to rush and follow the doomed men.
Jamie was before her in an instant, "You can't go down there!"
"Someone has to guard the tunnel!" Brienne answered, charging away from him.
"No!" Jamie insisted, rushing to get in front of her, slamming his golden hand on her armour, "it's suicide."
"It's just another battlefield, Jamie."
Gods! This woman could drive him insane, "It's a furnace in there! You go in and the likelihood is you won't come out…" Still she moved forward! "And they have giants!"
Brienne snorted and pushed him aside, "There's no such thing as giants."
He heard himself splutter as he skipped about her and landed his fist a little more forcefully on her breastplate, "So you believe in the walking dead and yet you don't believe in giants?!"
"They need all the help they can get."
"No! Brienne!"
"You can't tell me what to do!"
"You're my wife!"
"But I'm not," she scowled, shouldering past him, "am I?"
Jamie went to yell over the sound of battle but as he opened his mouth the ground beneath them rocked, sending the pair sprawling across the floor and by the time Jamie had recovered, Brienne was on her feet and tearing after the Men of the Nights Watch who were heading to the tunnel and outter gate…
"Brienne!" He called in futility as a Thenn reached him, exchanging several sword-blows before Jamie ran him through; he had taken too long!
It felt as though the onslaught had lasted hours but, as Jamie rounded on another group of wildlings he was lost in the fight for his life before reaching the Commander of the Nights Watch…
"Snow!" He screamed… "Snow…"
"She's shot!" The Commander explained, cradling a wildling woman in his arms…
Jamie tried to focus on his distress in the noise and chaos about them, looking at the woman in his arms… "She's still alive…"
The other man looked again at the woman, clutching her to him a little tighter.
"Jon!" Jamie called, trying to bring his attention back to the moment… "the men need you!"
"Ygritte needs me!" He insisted.
And, as hard as it was for Jamie to admit, he knew Jon Snow was a greater threat to the wildlings than he could be right now in battle… "Let me take her to Aemon."
The younger man looked to him, slightly broken and confused.
Jamie tried again, "She's been shot, Jon. Let me take her to Aemon and keep her safe… you need to fight this war."
Snow looked about them… saw the men and wildlings dying… and agreed.
The young woman was easy for Jaimie to lift into his arms as he headed deeper into the keep, trying not to think of how that direction took him further away from Brienne… but he made it to the make-shift medical room, where the more useless members of the watch guarded Aemon and Gilly from attack as their first patient was laid on a low bed…
"She's a wildling!" Gilly recognised with distress…
"As are you child," Aemon reminded… "and she will be cared for."
Jamie turned to leave.
"And where will you go to, Ser Jamie?" The maestor asked, "Are you not here to serve and protect us?"
He had to be kidding!
"I am more use out there," Jamie protested.
"We are receiving patients…" the old man countered, finding Ygritte and deptly twisting the arrow out of her shoulder without causing further damage or flooding the room with blood.
Jamie felt a growl… they were unprotected… but so was Brienne…
"Please…" Gilly asked, hearing little Sam cry in the back of the room…
Hells! Jamie thought… taking his place at the door and readying for guard duty…
()()()()
After an age of distant screams, a slow and steadying trickle of injured Nights Watch began to make their way to Aemon and Gillys medical centre…
That meant the battle was over.
It also meant there were now enough men at hand for him to receive Aemons leave, so he ran as fast as he could, back to the keep, where he hardly noticed the dishevelled and dismembered bodies but saw Tyrion stand out from the lift that brought him down from the wall.
"Where is the tunnel?" Jamie shouted, not allowing his brother to delay with any questioning…
Tyrion pointed down a pathway and barked some orders before joining Jamie at the mouth of the tunnel…
The stench of death stretched out before them… and Jamie felt a knot tighten in his stomach…
"Did Brienne…" Tyrion could not finish his question and his brother couldn't word an answer, simply nodding in response.
There was no chance. Jamie knew it… but at the sound of a distant cry, he found himself running with such speed his heart hammered in his throat; he would have called her name, but the thought she may not answer scared his voice to silence as Tyrion called out to the Nights Watch and there was no response…
They were almost two thirds of the way down the tunnel when Jamie smelled the burning torches and heard the moans of injured and dying men…
Closer still, two of the Nights Watch lay in pools of blood, beaten and cut…
Jamie felt cold…
"What's that?" Tyrion asked.
Beyond the smoke that clouded the tunnel a shadow sprawled across the dim wall, gargantuan and getting to its feet…
"Another giant?" Tyrion asked… brandishing his axe…
But Jamie squinted at the shape and noted as the footfalls came closer, the shadow grew smaller and more familiar…
"Brienne!" Jamie called, finding himself in flight before he knew it.
There she was, staggering slightly and sheathing her sword as she turned to see him, "Jamie…" she muttered, wide-eyed from adrenaline… "Giants do exist."
And as Jamie reached her, he reached out to catch her as her legs buckled and she fell…
"Brienne!" He yelled to focus her attention, which worked as she looked up to him… Jamies heart soared; they were alive! He wiped the blood away from her forehead and kissed the unmarked skin there… "We made it."
And she smiled… "We have."
They had… they really had. What were the odds?
And in that thought Jamie felt the world stop and time unfurled… what in the Seven Hells had he been playing at these months gone by?
What truly scared him?
And when the answer was so crystal-clear, he knew what he had to do…
"Tyrion," Jamie called.
"Yes?"
"Fetch Aemon."
His brother looked confused for a moment but then headed back the way they came…
"Jamie…" Brienne asked, faintly, "What are you..?"
"Quiet, wench!" He insisted, hauling them both up and casting her arm about his shoulders…
They made it out of the tunnel and into the smouldering courtyard before Jamie bellowed, "Maestor Aemon," dragging himself and Brienne toward the keep, "Maestor Aemon!"
"What are you doing?" Brienne asked again, more mystified than angry.
"Who calls me?" The old man appeared at the terrace, Tyrion at his side, urging him down the stairs.
"Jamie Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock," Jamie replied, "You are a maestor of the citadel, are you not, Sir?"
"Chained and sworn," the withered man replied.
"Brienne wishes to renew our vows…"
"Here and now?"
"If you would do me the honour…"
"Jamie…" Brienne gasped as he looked to her.
"I want to marry you," he said quietly, "now."
And she couldn't respond… only look to the maestor who came to stand a few feet above them, sightlessly addressing the assembled Nights Watch who had gathered to witness the impromptu nuptials.
"My first wedding," Aemon laughed, "I may be a little rusty…let's see… Will any stand to bind this pair for me?"
"I shall!" Tyrion all-but leapt up and gave a brief glance about himself… finally tearing a swath of material from his tunic and bolting down the stairs…
"Jamie, I…" Brienne shook her head, uncertain.
But Jamie had never been more certain of anything in his life… And as he looked to her he saw her understanding of that comprehension and she resolved, her face clearing of doubt and concern enough to watch as Tyrion reached them, taking the piece of fabric and winding it about their hands, binding them together.
Jamie appreciated his little brothers enthusiasm and gave him a thankful nod as Tyrion announced, "They are bound, Maestor."
Aemon nodded, "Given the circumstances, you will excuse my skipping the preliminaries…" then he cleared his throat, "All witnesses gathered here may stand and note the binding of this man and this woman in the eyes of the seven. May the Father guide them truly down their path together. May the Mother grant them fruitful union. May the Maiden refresh their love through the years. May the Crone allow them wisdom to understand one another. May the Warrior bring them the strength to stand together. May the Smith help them forge their lives in the light of the seven. And let the Stanger finally take them both to their rest."
Silence settled across the battleground…
"Let no man or woman tear apart what has been witnessed with honour and reverence," Maestor Aemon leaned forward and nodded, "You may now kiss your bride."
Gods! Jamie had been waiting for that part!
Drawing Brienne closer to him with their bound hands, he reached forward to place his lips on hers, demonstrating a great strength in controlling the adrenaline firing through his veins.
So when Brienne pressed her lips back to him, with more force than he expected, he felt a rush of excitement, so he thanked the Maestor and turned to his brother, "Tyrion, the wall is yours. You fought bravely and I'm proud of you."
His sibling was speechless and almost welled with tears as Jamie found the strength to whisk Brienne into his arms and declare, "Now, if you will excuse me; I'm going to fuck my wife until she can't think of anything else but how good she feels and then we shall put all the battle and bloodshed behind us."
Which is, exactly, what the Lord of Casterly Rock did.