Brienne let out a low sigh as she shifted under her sheets and winced when she inadvertently put pressure on the wounds along her body. Usually, they would have healed fully by now. That was the dark irony of her condition. Just as she needed magic to hurt the creatures from beyond the veil, she too could be hurt more seriously by them. It didn't hurt any less, regardless.
Her fingers drifted up to the rough line around her neck. It would heal but she suspected something of it would remain, a permanent physical reminder of her ordeal. As if she needed one.
So close, she thought. If it hadn't been for Jaime, I might have died. Suppose I can add careless and stupid to ugly and awkward now.
Last night she was nearly home when she heard a growl followed by a scream that had her tearing through the trees. She had been panting by the time she came to the cave and found the boy within.
Young, blonde and blue-eyed, his resemblance to Galladon should have been her first clue that something was not right. The second should have been how easily she was able to free him from the webs without interference.
"I thought it was a Ēbriovaokses," she muttered to herself in the dark, thinking of the giant spiders that hunted throughout the night but only ate at dusk and dawn, and scoffed.
The memories of what happened after were so clear: trekking through the forest with the boy, returning to the cabin to find Jaime waiting for her, Jaime saying he came because he was worried, that he cared...
But I never left. I never left that cave.
She shuddered, and pressed her wrists together, feeling the pain to convince herself that she wasn't still trapped there now.
Until Jaime. He did come for me.
She rolled to her side and let out a shaky breath, pushing against the bright, soaring feeling in her chest. It unnerved her.
But then, he's always unnerved me.
It was at the end of her freshman year that she first saw him.
She had been hidden in her favorite alcove at the university library. It allowed her to angle perfectly just so the light from the massive stained glass window illuminated her page but still managed to conceal her from curious, gawking eyes.
Even from her hiding spot, she could see his eyes were green and set in symmetric sharp features that seemed permanently fixed in an arrogant smirk. Tall and lean in his well-fitted clothes, he moved with a sort of easy, leonine grace while his golden curls caught the colored rays of light cascading through the windows.
That is what a child of R'hllor should look like.
He had a beauty that unsettled her, made her twitchy with a near overwhelming desire to rise and run away from such a terrible thing. Instead, not understanding the impulse, she just pressed her body back into the darkness and dared not even breathe, lest she draw his attention.
Don't let him see me, she begged the Gods, Just let me go unnoticed.
Her Mother and her ilk seemed to listen for once when he only grabbed a text and sauntered away. Brienne sighed and tried to tamp down the sudden shame that flooded her. She should not care how a beautiful man would treat her and she definitely should not fear it so much as to hide.
Be brave. Be just. Defend the innocent. I do not need their love to do my duty.
It was a mantra of sorts, a refrain she had whispered to herself almost daily since she had the maturity and experience to form the thought.
From the first time she tried to play with other children besides her brother, from the only year she had attended public school, from the moment that the descriptor of 'different' was said to her with scorn instead of reverence...
I am brave. I will be just and defend the innocent. I do not need their love to do what is right.
Her father heard her once as she uttered it, her body rocking back and forth as she tried to drown out the insults the children had thrown her way.
"It won't always be like this, Brienne," he said, resting his hand on her shoulder. "Your Mother said you would have help one day. She swore you would not be alone."
She had clung to those words over the years, even more so when she started to understand what it really meant to be the Evenstar.
I won't be alone forever. The prophecy said I would have love and Mother promised.
And so when they settled back in Tarth after long years in Essos and her father brought home a young man, his new work apprentice, with dark eyes and a kind face...
"Brienne, this is Hyle."
She felt her neck flush with anger despite the cool air of the library and scowled. Cursing that the Gods had made her so foolish, she returned to her work and swore to not think on either Hyle or the gorgeous man again.
She broke one-half of that promise the very first day of the following semester.
Brienne learned long ago that arriving first to class and leaving last spared her a few daily indignities. Stares and whispers could not follow if she was already seated, tucked away into a far corner of a classroom nor could anyone jeer and mock her if she was the only one remaining. Her schedule was meticulously planned along with her routes; it was the closest she could ever hope to get to being invisible.
She's already been seated a minute or so when the door banged open. The light in the lecture hall was cool and artificial, nothing like the warmth of the library, yet he looked the same to her here, golden and so beautiful she froze at the sight of him. For one long second, she just stared before averting her eyes to hunch over and let her hair fall like a curtain between them.
The sudden cessation of the rustling of paper and clothes told Brienne he had finally spotted her and she waited with shallow breaths and a racing heart until the noises blessedly resumed.
Good. With any luck, that'll be the whole of his notice for the course.
Her luck promptly ran out the day he handed back their first essays.
Steeling herself, she lifted her hand, waiting for him to extend hers from the top of the pile, and glanced up when after several long seconds, he had not moved.
She was surprised to find Professor Lannister slack-jawed, his eyes fixed to hers with some strange combination of surprise and perhaps even awe. She was likewise disconcerted to find him even more handsome up close with smooth skin and barely there scruff that made him seem just a bit less than perfect and yet all the more for it.
Then the bastard smirked at her.
There it is. The mockery, she thought bitterly and snatched her paper. She scowled even deeper at the red ink scribbled across every page, each word more condescending and argumentative than the one before it.
He called on her to answer a question for the first time that very day, the heads of her classmates all swiveling to see who Professor Lannister had singled out by name. And one by one, she could feel it, their ambivalent curiosity morphing into something heavier, threaded with malice and almost voyeuristic glee.
And it didn't stop because he wouldn't stop.
Every day, a "Miss Tarth..." drawled lazily from the front of the class with a pause until she acknowledged him, her body braced to look upon his sharp features and even sharper sneer. As it went on, students started to look on less with morbid curiosity and more with bewilderment as they glanced between the two.
"Do you know him?" asked the pretty girl who sat next to her.
It took a moment for Brienne to realize she was addressing her.
"Who?" she asked hesitantly.
"Professor Lannister," she replied as if it should be obvious.
Brienne frowned, her head tilting, and uncertain how wary she should be of the glint in the girl's eyes.
"No... Why do you ask?"
"Well," she said and tossed her brown curls over her shoulder, "He pays you a lot of attention..."
"He does not."
The girl fixed her with a surprisingly hard stare. "Do you know my name?"
"No."
"Do you know anyone else's name in this class?" She didn't wait for an answer and instead just cocked an eyebrow. "Because we know yours."
Rolling her eyes, Brienne shoved her notebook back into her bag. "He does it to humiliate me, and for no other reason than simply because he can. It's not the sort of attention I'd recommend."
"No, I don't think so." The girl looked her over once though there was no cruelty there. "I'm Margery, by the way,"
"Brienne Tarth," she replied after a long beat of holding Margery's seemingly sincere gaze.
"Yes," she smiled, "I know."
Soon Brienne would consider it a toss-up on which was worse: the questions or Margery's sly looks. That was until Jaime asked her about the Stallion Who Would Mount the World. From that day on, it was always him.
Give him nothing, she told herself every day as she slid into her chair.
For all his beauty, he was no different than any other man she had met. With his mocking innuendo, he lorded the small bit of power he had over her to compel her to speak. By the end of the semester, all she could see was the cruelty in his sneer and the delight her humiliation brought him.
But then he asked her about the Evenstar Prophecy and she could not help but show off, to push back with just a hint of the real her, the actual Evenstar.
You only think you know me. You know nothing, she thought as she spoke in High Valyrian, putting a bit more flourish on her accent than she typically would and even considered adding a 'qogralbar ao' for her own edification at the end.
For one brilliant moment, it felt wonderful, powerful even, to see that awe-struck look slide over his face once again and hear him ask for the translation, his voice hoarse.
She left class that day high on her victory and thought on how she'd never need to see him again.
How the Gods must have laughed.
Brienne pulled her pillow from behind her head and used it to muffle her frustrated scream. Somehow the more time she spent with him, the less she knew how to handle being in Jaime's presence.
His words were barbed, yet his actions mostly kind. He was reckless but got angry when he presumed her careless. He embarrassed her in class but did it because he wanted to look at her. She hasn't exactly parsed out why he can only see color when he looks at her and by the Seven, even thinking about what that could mean makes her anxious. And he touches her, a lot, without hesitation. Each time it is a surprise and each time she hopes he'll do it again.
It's dizzying and addictive and terrifying.
He isn't afraid of me. And sometimes, when he looks at me... sometimes...
She ran her fingers through her hair and tugged on it to ground herself.
No. There is no one. We interpreted it all wrong, the prophecy, Mother's promise. Everything.
That brought Galladon to the forefront of her mind and her eyes misted over. Galladon should have been all the proof she needed that her mother was not as mothers should be and a sudden prick of fear had her reaching for her phone to check if Jaime had messaged her.
It would be far better for him if he wasn't the one, regardless, a faint voice in the back of her mind whispered.
The time on the front screen flashed to read just after six in the morning and the bluish glow from her window confirmed she had slept very little. A few minutes later, she slid her body from underneath the blankets when she heard her father in the kitchen.
"Coffee?" he asked as he pulled on his work jacket.
"No," she muttered and sat heavily in the kitchen chair, "I'll try to sleep some more after you go."
Selwyn hummed a soft noise and tilted his head, nodding at her neck.
"How are you feeling this morning?"
"Better. I think it'll be mostly healed by the end of the day."
He nodded and grimaced, his hand going up to scratch the back of his head. "I forgot to tell you, yesterday... but when I couldn't find you, I called someone..."
"Dad," she groaned, "You didn't-"
"He didn't answer," he added quickly at Brienne's glare. "I just left a message saying you were in trouble and that I could use help finding you. I called him back and left another message that it had been handled."
She pinched the bridge of her nose before forcefully huffing out a breath of air. "It's fine. I doubt he'd be bothered with it anyway."
They lapsed into silence and Selwyn sipped his coffee, his fingers drumming along the sides of the cup. "Brienne... I think I may have been wrong." Her eyes snapped up to find her father looking both pained and apologetic. "About him, I mean."
"Dad," she sighed, exhausted and very much not wanting to have this conversation. "We've been through this. It's not-"
Her words were cut off as the front door banged open and there was Jaime, windblown and stiff, carrying a wrapped bundle in his arms. He set it before her on the table and continued on past her.
"Pretty one's mine," he said flatly over his shoulder before he went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. A second later the shower started.
Brienne glanced back at her father who was staring hard at the covered bundle, his jaw tight. She herself had barely taken note of it, her focus on Jaime and the odd, flat expression he wore. But now through the opening of the cloth, she could see the bits of metal underneath catching the dim morning light and her throat went dry.
She flicked back the wrapping and jerked to her feet as it revealed two ancient longswords.
"Valyrian steel," she whispered, her fingers tracing over the dark blades in awe.
A look up at her father had her jerking her hand back. It was his turn to pinch the bridge of his nose before he relaxed and, with an almost helpless shrug, reached for the door.
"Wait!" hissed Brienne, scrambling around the table. "You're not just going to leave me here with him?"
Selwyn's brow lifted and he jerked his chin to the swords on the table. "He's armed you, hasn't he?"
Brienne's mouth opened then closed again, her arms falling limply to her sides.
"Look, I have to get to work. I trust you can sort this out."
She stood there after her father left, staring at the door and hearing nothing but the steady sound of running water.