"I love you," Jamie said, and kissed Brienne. Of all of the kisses they had ever shared, this kiss might have been the most complicated. A kiss with so much more behind it than the pressure of Jaime's lips against hers, more than her mouth opening under his and meeting his urgency with her own. More than "I want you" or even "I need you," this kiss didn't question, for it held its own truth: a complicated kiss that in the end was also the most simple: he loved her.

Brienne felt like she was spinning, falling, the world around her re-aligning in light of Jaime's declaration. In that instant she believed him.

For all the intensity of the kiss, it didn't last long. Jaime drew back and Brienne sat up and shifted around so that they were facing each other. Though Jaime's kiss did not demand an answer, and his words were not uttered in expectation of one, Brienne could see that he hoped she would say something.

How many times had she imagined telling Jaime how much she loved him? How often had she reminded herself that she never could, never would, tell him? Loving him came easily to her; the thought of finally telling him so made her heart flutter in her chest with a frisson of fear and elation.

"I love you, too," she said, the thundering of her heart so loud in her ears that she wondered if she had spoken the words loud enough to be heard.

Jaime's radiant happiness reached his eyes first, but the deep dimple in his left cheek was soon curving around a wide smile that left Brienne breathless, her own smile slower to appear but no less euphoric.

Jaime grabbed Brienne and bore her backwards in a ferocious hug, rolling them both and laughing as they playfully wrestled on the big bed. Soon it became a contest to see who could pin who, to tickle or steal a kiss. Eventually the kisses turned sensuous and the tickles became gentle caresses. They lay facing each other, their heads at the end of the bed and their feet in the pillows as they lazily petted and nuzzled at each other, legs entwined, hands and lips gently exploring with no intent other than finally being able to do so.

Jaime gently began to pull Brienne's gown up and she tried to quell the instinct to resist. Jaime's shirt was the next to go, though he was somewhat more willing to be rid of his clothes. They lay naked next to each other, barely touching, Jaime trying to give Brienne time to overcome the skittish shyness of being so exposed.

"Let's get under the covers, Wench," Jaime suggested, "and get some sleep."

Brienne was grateful for his suggestion. Even though she wanted to be brave and confident, she felt overwhelmed by their new intimacy and the many things that had changed between them in the space of a few days.

They got back under the covers, briefly tussled over the pillows, and then relaxed into their familiar position, cuddled up with Jaime snug against Brienne's back, his right arm thrown over her waist and her arm over his as she held his stump against her. Nothing had ever felt as comforting as Jaime's naked body against her back, and she melted into his warmth. The feel of his cock pressing against her backside without the barrier of their clothing seemed both strange and familiar. Jaime was as chivalrous as he could manage and didn't take advantage of the position to nudge her with his arousal. Brienne smiled to herself and shifted her hips and thighs a little as though settling in to sleep.

"Wench," Jaime warned in a low growl, "play fair."

Brienne laughed softly and bumped against him again before making herself be still. She could feel Jaime's heart beating against her back, his breath on her neck as he lightly kissed her there. Brienne heard Jaime murmur my love under his breath, and then, suffused with contentment, they slept.

Hours later, Brienne woke up and looked toward the windows to see if daylight had come. A violent storm was beating against the thick glass panes. Snow piled up in the corners of the windowsill and the bare branches of the trees outside scratched against the window as though they begged to be let inside to escape the storm. There was a glow that might have been approaching day, but it could just as easily be snowlight.

It felt to Brienne like the more severe weather of the far north had finally found them after losing their trail for months. The inhabitants of the Red Keep were fond of complaining about the winter weather; everywhere Brienne went she heard someone lamenting the cold and snow, the scant hours of daylight, or how inconvenient it was to get wet and chilled when they had to go from one building to the next. Those here in the keep that had traveled down from the north knew how fortunate the people living in southern Westeros were.

In the far north the sun barely rose above the horizon to the east before setting again in just a handful of hours. The old rhythms that most folk lived their lives by were disrupted; dark and light became an endless gray. After Jaime had been arrested at Queenscrown, just south of the Wall but north of Winterfell, they had ridden south as rapidly as possible, stopping only every sixteen hours or so to set up a rough camp and sleep; they paid no heed to whether it was night or day. Several times during the journey the party had needed to hunker down to wait for a blinding squall to blow itself out, lest they lose the track of the King's Road and wander off course.

It was bleak country they had passed though. There could be little farming and game was sparse in a land blasted by winter. Those who had heeded the Stark's message that winter was coming by working hard to store food, wood, and warm furs had retreated into their concealed shelters and were seldom seen; they at least had a small chance of survival. Small folk that had felt there would be plenty of time to stock their larders for the long winter had mostly tried to make the uncertain trek south or had perished in the long night; many did both.

Brienne and Jaime would be back on the King's Road going north in about ten days, along with Queen Daenerys' force of Silvers and free fighters, an army of twenty thousand altogether. Jaime had been in command of nearly three thousand surviving fighters battling the Others and trying to push them back toward the Wall from their temporary base at Queenscrown before he had been arrested. Brienne had not been told what his status on the return journey would be, but she felt it would be foolish for Daenerys not to take advantage of Jaime's skill as a commander and as a warrior. No amount of rumor or disgrace could change the way that men willingly followed him into battle.

Even if Jaime were not given a unit to command, there was no reason to believe the two of them wouldn't ride together, camping and eventually fighting back to back as they always did. Brienne knew that as dear to her as Jaime was before, the stronger bond they had now formed would make their need to be together and protect each other even more important than it had been before.

But would anything else change between them? Jaime had said he was courting her; now that he had her love, did he consider his courtship to have been successful? Or was his intention in courting her to convince her to not only love him in return but to let him bed her? If that was his objective, Brienne already knew that she would have very little resistance to any attempt at seduction he might make. She loved and desired him, and her honor was already besmirched in the eyes of the world whether or not they consummated their love. Brienne thought briefly of her father's disappointment in having his daughter so compromised, but the rumors of her being the Kingslayer's Whore had no doubt made their way to him on Tarth long before this. As much as her father wanted her to come home, marry, and produce grandchildren for him he must have realized the chances of it were small.

Brienne suddenly thought about the risk of pregnancy out there in the wild north. Would there be a maester traveling with them to beg Moon Tea of? The very thought of making such a request made her want to squirm in an agony of embarrassment. Brienne might forever soil her reputation by finally bedding Jaime, but the thought of unintentionally getting with child really frightened her. When the whores that camped along with the soldiers became pregnant Brienne had seen the terrible physical toll to their unborn children the deprivation and danger of the north had. Few of the children carried to term in those conditions survived, and many times the mothers perished as well.

As Brienne's eyes began to close again in sleep, she imagined herself carrying Jaime's bastard and wondered irrelevantly if it would be called Snow for the north or Waters for the south. Or Lannister for its father, her sleepy thoughts whispered to her,Jaime is courting me, is it too much to imagine being betrothed to him? Would Jaime even want more children someday, if the two of them survived to see the spring?

Brienne let the thoughts curl around her as she drifted back to sleep. She was standing on a hillside covered with yellow and red flowers. Her hands rested atop the great curve of her belly as she gazed into the distance, watching as a vast storm swallowed all of the sunlight and new green in its path as it swept toward her. She looked around for Oathkeeper and saw it lying on a mound of freshly churned dirt, the red and black blade dulled and lifeless, spotted with old blood and soil. A sudden, wracking pain twisted in her gut. She fell to her knees, keening as blood soaked the ground and the storm passed, howling, over her, snatching away her dreams of spring and the future as she cried out Jaime, don't leave me

And then Jaime was holding her as she gasped and struggled in his arms, tears running down her face. "I'm here, Brienne," Jaime told her, "I'm here; it's just a bad dream. Nothing but a dream."

Brienne tried to focus on his face, trying to reassure herself that Jaime hadn't been taken from her, that she hadn't used Oathkeeper to dig his grave on a lonely hill and been left alone to bear his child. The howling wind of her dream rattled the windows in her chamber and hailstones pattered against the panes. Brienne shivered against Jaime, trying to choke back her sobs.

"Jaime," she whispered, "I'm sorry to have awoken you. I was having a terrible dream."

"Shhh," he soothed her, "Tell me what it was about."

They had long been in the habit of telling each other their dreams, especially if the dreams were intense enough to awaken them. It helped to dissolve a dream's power for them to talk about it afterwards.

"It was so awful, Jaime," Brienne said miserably, "I was standing on a high hill in the spring, and I saw that winter was coming in the distance, advancing on me like the greatest army of wights ever seen, and I looked around for you, and for Oathkeeper…" she took a deep breath, "and I saw Oathkeeper on a freshly dug grave, its blade dull and covered in blood and dirt. Then the storm was upon me and there was blood all around me, and I lost the babe, and the world just shredded in the wind…and you were gone."

"I'm right here," he repeated, as she looked into his face, feeling his solid form against her, his strong arms around her. And then he smiled, a small, almost shy smile, "You were with child, in the dream?"

Brienne felt herself blushing hotly as she nodded and closed her eyes. She had been too carried away in letting the details of the dream tumble out of her to consider leaving that part out. She nodded and wrinkled her nose at him. "I tell you about such a horrible dream and that is what you find to pick out of it?"

"Sorry," he said, "you've just never mentioned a nightmare child before," he smirked, "I guess it just stood out."

"Do you think the dream meant anything?" Brienne said, "I mean, not the babe, but winter overcoming spring before it's even had a chance to take hold, the grave and Oathkeeper? I felt so alone,so terrified that you might have died."

"Wench, we both have terrible dreams fairly often. They don't mean anything; they're just our imagination churning up our fears and worries."

"But it was so intense," she said.

"So was your dream about the giant aurochs in armor having a cup of Hippocras with Stannis, but I haven't seen that one come true," Jaime reminded her. "Or that one I've had where all of the pickled pigs' feet served since we came here sprout tiny wings and go flying around the dining hall singing 'Ode to Aerys.'"

Brienne chuckled, "I remember the aurochs: he was wearing Renly's armor, which made it all the odder. But this dream of pigs' feet? You never told me about that one."

"That's because I just made it up. I have pigs' feet on the brain, so naturally I might dream of them." Jaime tucked his feet between hers, "though I would rather dream of your feet, with or without tiny wings."

"I think they would have to be rather sizable wings to carry me anywhere," Brienne told him, giving him a little kiss on his stubbled jaw, "like dragon wings, perhaps."

"Mm," Jaime hummed, leaning his head back as Brienne found she was unable to resist working her lips from his jaw to the short bristles on his neck, tasting the salt there when she flicked her tongue against him. She felt him tense against her as she moved her mouth up, lightly biting his earlobe before huffing out a big breath in his ear and then sniffing at him exaggeratedly and nuzzling the hair around his ear with her nose before exhaling loudly in his ear again. Jaime started to laugh and cringe way from her, "What in the seven hells are you doing?" he gasped.

"I'm pretending I'm a horse looking for carrots," she told him, then nipped his ear again.

Jaime sighed dramatically, "Finally, here I am, lying naked with you in a big, comfortable bed, and you decide to inspect me for hidden root vegetables."

Brienne bit her lip, thinking of certain root vegetables not unlike a man's equipage in shape. Jaime looked into her shining eyes and narrowed his. "I do not want to know what you're thinking, my lady." Brienne began to laugh as she watched Jaime try not to imagine what she could be thinking.

"I had no idea you had so little respect for my dignity, Wench," Jaime told her and moved on top of her, holding himself a little above her. Brienne felt his cock stiff against her thatch as he looked down at her, his eyes darkening and his smile becoming sharp. He watched as her laughter subsided, even though her smile didn't waver. He looked at her chest and watched her nipples harden under his scrutiny and couldn't resist grinding his hips lightly against her. Brienne inhaled sharply and the muscles of her thighs tensed as she felt the fire in her core ignite. Any modestly about being naked beneath him was forgotten as he lowered his head and circled his tongue around one nipple and then the other, then drew back to look at her face, to satisfy himself that she was as aroused as he was. He lowered his head again, moving his cock against her mound ever so slowly as he sucked a taut nipple into his mouth and suckled it hard, drawing her small breast into his mouth until she cried out and shoved her hips up against him, her hands rising to grip his shoulders, and then to push at him as the sensation started to overwhelm her.

He released her breast and then licked just the tip of her nipple, dark pink and swollen from his attentions. He moved his mouth to her other breast and drew it more gently into his mouth, suckling on it in agonizingly slow pulses before releasing it. He reached back with his right arm and pulled her leg up, bending it until her knee and shin were braced against his chest as he hooked his arm around her leg to hold it in place. He reached down and spread the lips of Brienne's cunt and moved his rigid cock so that it was pressed against her sensitive nub. He balanced on his hand as he moved, his cock enveloped in the wet heat of Brienne's slit but in no danger of entering her. Brienne's eyes half closed as her hands began to roam; pulling on his hair, stroking his chest, reaching out to hold his hips tighter against her. She raised her other leg and hooked it over his hip. Brienne watched as Jaime bent his head to watch as his cock slid against her moist flesh. Their hips began to move in tandem, grinding against each other faster and harder.

"Brienne, my love," Jaime gasped, "we need to stop if you don't want me to spill my seed all over your belly,"

"Don't…stop…" Brienne said, her neck straining back as she arched into him. So he didn't; he thrust against her fast and hard, and watched her peak before letting himself follow. Brienne felt his warm seed as it jetted out against his belly and hers as his release took him.