Jaime paced the length of his apartment.
Forget about her. She's not your responsibility. What would you do anyway? Lions do not concern themselves with sheep.
He must have repeated it under his breath a hundred times over the past few days, but still, dread and anxiety sat stone heavy in his gut.
The deer, the runes... he reminded himself harshly but the thought was chased by the fainter whisper of your colors, the wolf...
His phone vibrated against the countertop, dancing over the maroon swirls in its demand for attention and Jaime lunged for it, some seemingly addled part of his mind wondering if it could possibly be her.
It was his brother.
TYRION: In a normal person, I would assume ignoring my texts meant the intended recipient was having a thriving social life
TYRION: but this is you we're talking about
TYRION: so where in the seven hells are you?
His thumb hesitated over the reply button as he considered what to write back.
Sorry. I've been out of pocket because I've been in the woods, taking pictures of tree carvings, and helping wild beasts escape traps.
You're a lawyer... what are the exact legal definitions of 'stalking' and 'delusional disorder'? They might become real relevant real soon.
A student of mine is having a semi-psychotic break and instead of getting her help, I asked her what the fuck was wrong with her. How are you?
He set it back down, certain there was nothing he could type that wouldn't have his brother repeatedly calling him until he answered.
Pressing the knuckles on one hand to his closed lips, he watched the snowfall from his floor to ceiling window, the chill still leeching through despite the double-paned glass.
She's not out there with her flimsy tent and shitty campfire. You saw her leave. With whoever the hell that was.
His lip curled as he remembered the man. A relative, possibly, but there was no discernable family resemblance.
A cousin perhaps. Friend? Boyfriend?
Jaime considered him a clueless shit, regardless of his identity, and groaned at his latest failed attempt to put the woman from his mind.
He had to get out of this apartment before he went mad.
He had hovered his thumb on Addam's number a half dozen times in the hour he'd been at the bar, but much like with Tyrion, the thought of even trying to explain the events of the past week to his friend was exhausting.
A cold wind ruffled the hair at the nape of his neck as the door opened to admit another patron. Jaime rolled his beer bottle between his palms and debated on switching to something stronger to muffle his internal disquiet.
He glanced up as the new admittance pulled out the stool to his left, and prepared himself to give a polite nod, only to find the same face that had glared at him while leaning against an old truck.
He was suddenly very grateful for his reticence in calling Addam.
Jaime smirked and leaned back, automatically projecting the air of casual disdain that came so naturally to anyone with the surname Lannister. The man watched him, unamused, before asking for some mid-range scotch from the bartender. Jaime would not speak first; he was not the one that sought out this confrontation.
"What are you doing?"
"Drinking. What are you doing?"
"No, what are you doing with Brienne?"
This close to the man, Jaime could see the grey at the temples of his dark brown hair and the slightly weather-beaten skin over his cheekbones. A quick glance at the bartop revealed rough hands covered by a litany of small silver scars, and the ring finger of one amputated neatly at the second knuckle. The miners at Casterly often had hands that looked like that, hands that spoke of years of hard and brutal labor. Despite this, he appeared relatively young and his lean form healthy.
Older than me, but not by much. Eight years? Ten, maybe? he thought before replying in a disinterested tone. "Do I know you?"
"Answer the question," the man growled through clenched teeth.
Jaime's brow raised. "What I do is no one's business but my own. You want to know what she's doing? Ask her."
"I know what she's doing. I'm asking you what you're doing."
"Gods," scoffed Jaime, turning back to his drink, "The jealous boyfriend act is rather pathetic for a man your age."
For a second the man's face goes slack before morphing into an impressive combination of rage and disgust.
"I am her Father," he hissed, his hand tightening around the scotch.
Jaime froze, his gaze locked on his beer as a cold sweat broke out across his neck and spine.
Father. No.
His head was already shaking in his disbelief when he looked back up to see the slightly smug expression on Mr. Tarth's, apparently, face.
"She doesn't take after me," he said dryly. "Surely you can understand that I want to know why my nineteen-year-old daughter's professor has been following her, despite her repeated request to the contrary and all common decency?"
Fuck.
"I was concerned. I saw her out there, alone-"
"Ah yes, the professor that took every opportunity to humiliate her in public is suddenly so concerned about her safety. Likely story."
"What are you going on about?" snapped Jaime. "I asked questions, she gave answers. That's a pretty standard arrangement for a classroom."
"And is it your standard practice to single out one student to always answer the questions with sexual themes?"
Fuck. It wasn't... I didn't...
But he had.
And though his intent hadn't been her humiliation, only her reaction, he could now recall the surrounding students' sniggering laughs and delighted smirks at the woman's discomfort.
I only wanted... Fuck.
Jaime took a long pull of his drink, shame burning hot under his skin, and turned fully to the man.
"I didn't seek her out. I came upon her after finding something disturbing, something I later found out she herself did. Your daughter, Mr. Tarth, has been out there, in the woods, by herself, living in a fantasy world. And where the hell were you? So spare me the fucking lecture. If you'd been a more concerned father, we wouldn't even be having this conversation."
The muscle in the man's jaw flexed as the hand with the missing finger clenched into a fist before he stood with a tight scoff.
"You know, her mother told me we would need her one day." He took a few bills out of his wallet and tossed them onto the bar. "I should have told her then that we wouldn't deserve her."
With a nod at the bartender, he turned to leave.
"She needs help," called Jaime with a raised voice.
Mr. Tarth froze mid-step, seeming not to breathe before he whirled around, his finger jabbing in Jaime's direction.
"Not from you," he snapped, his voice shaking and eyes wide with an alarm Jaime did not recognize and the few other patrons in the bar ceased their own conversations to watch the exchange.
"Stay away from my daughter."
He yanked closed the laces on his boot and straightened, his breath rising in a cloud to obscure his view of the trail entrance.
He wasn't here to look for her, but if he happened to come across the woman, well, that was a coincidence.
It was just a walk, one last hike before the semester started and he would have the majority of his daylight hours monopolized by his classes.
It did not matter that he still had not heard anything from Brienne.
It did not matter that the red had started to fade again, or that he never felt warm regardless of the number of layers he wore. And it was certainly of no consequence that he woke nightly after only a few hours sleep, every time with a fading dream of a deep well that churned with sapphires in inky black water.
He ignored the marker showing the branching paths and stepped around it to move directly into the heart of the wood, his boots sinking mid-calf in the snow.
His chest deflated as he came upon the empty base of her camp.
"Dammit," he muttered, looking around for any sign of her, dropping any of his feeble pretenses, and was surprised by the weight of the disappointment that followed.
This had been his only hope at contacting her short of illegally accessing the personal portion of her academic record.
Sighing, he glanced around, the camp looking much like when he'd last seen it.
Except...
Those are new.
With an odd sense of urgency, he removed his pack, dropping it to the ground to retrieve the key.
He held it up to the nearest, finding its match, and brushed his gloved fingers over the carved-up bark. The first was intricate, the lines shooting off and back, layering over itself like scales.
Suppression.
The second was like a starburst.
Ravage.
The final one looked like it was done in a hurry, shallow scratches at the meeting points appearing as if the knife used to make it had slipped.
Withhold.
"Brienne... what are you doing?" he muttered to himself.
His hand closed around the paper when he heard a sound like a hammer falling through the slots of a turning gear come from behind. Jaime whirled, his heart thudding in his chest but the forest was quiet behind him. Movement caught his eye and he squinted at the sunlight that glittered off the snow, the light shifting as if something was moving beneath the drifts.
The world uprighted as he was thrown to his back, his head impacting against a half-buried rock and his vision obscured by the kicked-up ice. He blinked against the stinging shards as a weight descended upon him, one hand instinctively shooting out to his pack that lay open on the ground where he quickly found the knife stored within.
He thrust the blade upward, eyes widening. Over him was a creature he could only describe as mole-like, hairless and faceless, the segments of its body defined only by the paired limbs that pinned him down and a spiraling maw lined with hooked teeth. Jaime watched as instead of blood, thick black smoke poured from the wound onto his chest where it curled into his mouth and nostrils. Straining his neck to avoid inhaling the foul and acrid gas and expecting to have his head engulfed in the mouth of the beast any moment, he readied his knife but his grip faltered when the gash on the creature knitted itself together.
It made the noise again, the guttural clicking coming in time with the fluttering of vent-like structures along its sides as it reared back.
Jaime blinked at a flash of light and then there was a blade, rough-hewn and black, buried to the hilt in the neck of the creature. Smoke poured heavily out of the wound, engulfing him in darkness just as the weight pinning him to the ground was lifted. Strong, warm hands grabbed him under his shoulders to haul him up to his feet.
"Get away from it. The smoke is poisonous."
Brienne.
Jaime coughed and retched until he felt the cool metal of a thermos being pressed into his palm. He pulled off a glove with his teeth and poured water into his cupped hand to rub it over his face and eyes.
"Rinse and spit."
He did as she commanded twice before he straightened, his eyes darting back and forth between her and the dissipating smoke curling along the ground where now only the disturbed snow remained.
"An ōrbarsudake," she supplied quietly.
"A smoke demon?" he asked, gripping the thermos so tightly he half expected it to crumple in his hand.
"Not the best translation but, yes," she corrected and walked to retrieve the black blade now just resting on top the snow.
His jaw dropped, and Jaime found himself torn between the utter shock at events occurring and amusement with her audacity to quibble about High Valarian at a moment like this. The former won out and his shoulders slumped as he sagged against a tree, his natural inclination towards defiance abandoning him.
Smoke Demon or not, whatever that was, was not of this world.
"It's real. Is everything in that book of yours real?"
She bit her lower lip and shrugged. "Everything in that book is possible. Real only means we experience it here."
He felt dizzy and slid down the bark to sit at the base of the tree, ignoring the wet and the cold. "How very cryptic and unlike you to answer so," he replied darkly as he pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
He glanced back at Brienne once the woods around him stopped spinning to see that her sweatshirt was torn in two places, the edges stained dark and wet, and that her gait favored the left leg.
"You're limping."
"I'll be fine," she replied absently as she examined the blade, holding it up to the light.
"Is that your blood?"
Ignoring him, she stowed the knife in a holster under the hem of her shirt. Jaime let his head fall back against the tree and winced at the pain, taking in a sharp inhalation as lights burst beneath his lids. There was the sound of crunching ice followed by warm fingers threading through his hair, probing at the tender spot.
"Just a bruise. But you probably have a concussion," he heard her mutter before ending the surprisingly gentle examination. He caught her sweatshirt, his gaze dropping to the wet edges clutched in his fist where the fabric was now bright red with blood. She tried to pull away when he stared at the color for a long moment but he tugged her back and looked up into her eyes.
"Brienne," he said through gritted teeth. "I need you to explain, and I mean actually explain what is going on."
This close he could see flecks of gold in her bright blue irises, like sunlight shining off the waves at Casterly in Summer.
"Please."
Her lips thinned before her chin dropped in a nod. "Fine. But not here."