Chapter Text
He’d seen her first in the Kingswood. Leafless trees and her long, sinewed back bending as one against a star-filled sky.
They were waiting out the night in a deserted barn, one eye on the Brotherhood’s camp and the other on the treeline. Ten and five and facing his first real battle, Jaime had snuck out to relieve himself and then circled the perimeter, searching for holes in their plan.
That’s when he’d glimpsed her, stone-still between the trees, cloak billowing like the midnight wings of a great predator bird. She’d turned to watch as he skulked through the underbrush, and for a flutter of his heart he’d seen her eyes. Blue as sorcery, blue as blazing death.
It cut straight through him.
He’d stilled and cowered, falling at the base of a tree and blinking into the dark, only to find it empty. Jaime raced to where she’d stood, looking for tracks, for stray threads snagged in the thick briars.
There was nothing.
Jaime finished his search, went back to the others with a shaky grin and a tale of ghostly warriors in the woods, of the gods sending them aid in the form of tall, ugly women.
At daybreak they charged, catching the group of outlaws quite literally with their breeches down; scurrying to put on armour, to gather together in an approximation of formation.
Arthur Dayne gleamed like righteousness in the thin light, and Jaime followed behind. Matching his movements, his steadfast fury.
Oswyn Longneck threaded the gap, cutting him off from the others. Jaime knew the man’s reputation, and his nervous energy blossomed into bloodlust. All the practiced moves, the lessons learned clicking into place, a song of glory in his ears.
In the distance he saw her. With eyes narrowed, she crouched beside a broadsword thick as his forearm. The wind lifted her ebony cloak to reveal yellowed ribs; a collage of bones and rags and patches of forest floor showing between.
That same shiver from the night before took him, rattling teeth to toes, stealing his air.
His terror made him reckless. He wanted to be bold, to seem brave in front of these men he so admired. Leaning into the attack with flourish, noting too late the twist of wrist that brought Oswyn’s blade across his gut.
Jaime gasped and gurgled, and above his pain he heard the specter’s grunt of acknowledgement. She stood, lumbering into motion toward him.
With sudden clarity he understood her presence, her purpose. The weight of failure mixing with his own blood, suffocating.
“No-no, please...not yet, not until--” Jaime gave a last desperate lunge and lodged his sword in the bastard’s neck, bloody spittle misting his cheeks.
The fighting continued around him. No one noticed his life pouring onto the pine needles beneath his stuttering steps, how each movement was slower and less sure than the one before until he was kneeling in the dead of the forest, far away from the sounds of battle. He tugged off his helm and gauntlets, his hands were bloody.
“You’re green, but skilled.” Her voice carried through the trees, much louder than the whisper it sounded, a power behind it that wasn’t mortal. It should have been terrifying, but Jaime swayed into the sound. “Quick and lithe, so much raw power. You are quite beautiful to behold.”
He could no longer lift his head, instead watching her footfalls in the soft dirt. Somewhere distant from the fear and pain he noticed that she was light of step for such a large woman, a delicate hum to her movements. She knelt beside him.
“I’m dying.” Clutching his arm across his middle, red filled the wrinkle between hand and wrist.
“You are.” Her breath brushed his ear, and he found it suddenly impossible to stay upright, falling into her waiting arms. “For now.” She said this even softer, a confession.
With nimble fingers she removed his gorget, his pauldrons, breastplate and plackart. Chest freed, he took a deep, desperate breath. His tunic was soaked from a quick flowing river.
He was dead already, it made him brazen.
Turning into her, he hooked his fingers over one of those brittle-bone handles, yanked her close and searched for the heart inside. Only black lived within.
“Are you the Stranger?” His lips were wet, a rattle growing louder with each breath.
“No...and yes.” She smoothed the hair from his forehead, cradled him across her lap as blood puddled between her thighs. “We are many, those who answer to death, who are guides at the end and at the beginning.”
“Does it hurt?” He closed his eyes against his cowardice.
“No more than it does now.” Her hands were so gentle, stroking, soothing.
“And you’ll stay with me?”
A lifetime lost flashed before him--a knighthood he’d never earn, love he’d never know--tales of loss and desire. Her embrace erased it all. The heat of a thousand stars burning away his regret like fog in sunlight.
“Through this, and what comes next.” He started trembling and couldn’t stop, a violent shake. She gripped him harder. “This is the hardest part, Jaime. Hold on to me.”
He fisted her ragged clothes, her cloak of woven darkness; he gripped her ribcage and squeezed her wrists and burrowed himself in her cold comfort as his heart sped in a futile attempt to keep beating, and his breaths came small and frantic.
please-please-please-please.
“Almost, Jaime...almost there.”
“I can’t see.” He mouthed the words, unsure if he could still make sound. “Where are you?”
“I’m here. I won’t leave.”
“Goood...”
He expected to keep existing. For something to catch him in the in-between, neither here nor there.
It didn’t.
Coming alive was very much like waking from a long sleep full of fretful dreams. Dreams that included strong fingers working the gap in his middle closed, the tissues knitting together with the feel of worms crawling under his skin. Dreams of those same strong fingers pressing his sternum, pinching his heart against his spine once, and again, until it lazily picked up the rhythm and surged forward alone.
Then soft lips were parting his, filling his lungs with oven breath, stretching him open and warming him from the inside until his eyes snapped open with a gasp.
She was right there, inches away, and the fright he should feel was lost in the look of her.
By all measures she was ugly, but the word didn’t apply. Not when her eyes glistened like liquid sky, black-crow flecks gliding in the bottomless clear. Not with her cheeks spotted as the first spring foal, and her gentle, crooked smile.
“Welcome back.” She stroked his cheek with a knuckle. “I’ve heard the first time is the most difficult. It will get easier.”
He covered her hand with his, holding it in place. “What will get easier?”
“Dying...living. Both.” He was still cradled in her arms, resting against her empty chest.
“What am I?” Jaime raised a hand in front of his eyes. Every little cut was healed, pristine as his first name-day.
Taking his hand in hers, she turned it over reverently. “Forgive me. I’ve never held an immortal before.” With a sigh she brushed his palm to her lips. “There have been very few like you, scattered through time, allowed to live again and again.”
“To what purpose?” He searched her face for secrets, finding none.
“I think that depends on you.” She blinked, a small line forming between her brows. “This gift was freely given, without condition. What you do with it is your choice.”
“And if I choose poorly?” He spoke in the same voice he’d used as a boy, scolded and cowering under the covers in his mother’s bedchamber.
“Then you’ll learn, and choose better the next time.” She nudged his shoulder then stood, pulling him to his feet. “Hopefully.” When she winked it was a breeze through branches, birds taking flight.
Feeling in a pocket, she extended a hand. “Take these, keep them with you, keep them safe.”
She handed him two flat stones, each painted with an eye the color of his. Jaime flinched at the reminder of what should be.
“Valar morghulis...memento mori... the words are different, but the meaning stands. One of these deaths will be your last. A reckoning comes for all men, eventually.” She backed away, still wearing that shared-secret smile.
“Will I see you again?” He took a step toward her, then faltered, fear cornering him at last.
“I’m really not sure.” She huffed a laugh, and seemed to drift apart, fraying. “Be good, Jaime Lannister. Eternal regret seems quite the punishment for ill-made plans.”
He was alone. With only the flapping of a few stubborn leaves still clinging to branches, and the late-morning birdsong, high and echoing.
In the distance he could hear swords clanging, the sound of battle overwhelmed by the cries of fallen men, the raucous shouts of victory. With heavy arms he picked up his armor, re-suiting piece by piece, then followed the noise to find Ser Dayne scanning the faces of the fallen.
“Gods lad, you gave me a fright.” He moved quickly through the carnage, wrapping Jaime in a fierce hug. “I was afraid Longneck had landed a mortal blow before you dispatched him to the Stranger.” The older man glanced at the dried blood still coating his plackart.
“All his, I assure you.” Jaime grinned, clapping Dayne on the shoulder. “I think he must have knocked me a bit senseless though. I wandered in the woods for a few minutes, struggling to find my bearings.”
“Did you see your warrior maiden again?” Dayne laughed.
“I think I did.” Jaime swallowed, the memory already fuzzy as a dream. Impossible eyes, a wide, heartless chest and soft hands...
“And did you steal a kiss?”
“But of course.” Jaime boasted. “Perhaps more.” He waggled his brow, and the stones rattled in his pocket.
In the end, he received the knighthood he’d longed for. Dayne himself touched the blade to his shoulders. Jaime’s own death-blood coated his hands as he knelt in trampled grass.
The woman in the forest left him after all, her image fizzling to nothing in the same way she had disappeared before his eyes. He placed the stones in a pouch, and his mind filled the gap, calling them a childhood token.
Jaime aged, but never ailed, and he made all the worst choices.
*
He pushed a boy from a tower and called it love.
Of all the sores on his second-chance soul, this was the foulest. The boy had not died, not yet, not quickly. No, he would linger and suffer, one more stone on the scale, the balance surely tilting toward Jaime’s damnation by now.
He choked on his wine when he saw her in the great hall of Winterfell. More solid this time, ribs concealed by the dark armor of the Northmen and a cape of black fur. She hovered in a corner, eyes boring through him from across the room.
Jaime had dreamed of her, of course he had.
Always in some meadow, always with a cloudless sky that paled next to her eyes. She would lie down next to him, and her breath would be his breath, his heartbeat theirs to share until it stopped. This time the stones would cover his eyes and stay, and he would go home with her.
He’d written her off as a fantasy of his youth, a figment of high blood and fear. To see her now was to have all the constructs of his imagination come crashing down.
She was real, and she was here for the boy.
No one else seemed to notice as she headed to the tower where Bran lay unmoving. He followed her up the stairs and hovered in the doorway, watching as she knelt by the bed, staring at his tiny, broken body. The boy’s eyes flickered open and she smiled, a gentle shake of her head, followed by a nod.
Bran closed his eyes. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead so softly. Jaime coveted that kiss.
Then she stood and stormed toward him, eyes blazing with cold flame.
“This is your doing, Jaime Lannister.” Her fists hit his chest with a thud, he grabbed the door frame to keep from tumbling back down the stairs. “His suffering is on your soul.”
She held out a hand, two stones painted with blue eyes in her broad palm.
“You take these!” Shaking with fury, she forced them into his pocket, so close he could feel the frantic beating of her now-present heart. “You carry them and you remember.”
“He will not die?” It sounded awful, he knew it did, but to die seemed less cruel.
“The boy has picked the hard path, the one with honor and misery in equal measure.” For a moment she searched his face, then turned away with a scowl. “What has happened to you, to make you so horrible?”
“I have only ever loved my family, my sister--”
“Loved her.” Her eyes snapped with judgement. “You’ve fucked your sister and sired three bastards, cuckolded your king and flipped your chin at the gods. Is love what you name it to make it palatable?”
“How could you understand? You who have no feeling, you without a heart.”
“I feel .” She growled the words, baring her teeth, and he wondered how he’d ever seen her as docile. This was a force of nature bearing down on him, full of wrathful righteousness. “If I did not feel, I could not pity you so. For you will outlive her by a dozen lifetimes perhaps, and yet she will kill your spirit long before she ceases to exist. She will grind your heart into dust, and you will finally comprehend the monster you bedded.”
“Evil thing!” He spat it at her, backing down the stairs. “Foul creature! I have looked inside you and seen emptiness.”
“Not half as empty as you will be.” The words swirled down the stairs, the torches flickered. She was gone.
He tried to sleep, but saw her face instead. Days passed and her image lingered, haunting dark corners during the day, stalking his dreams at night. The stones in his pouch hung like a boulder around his neck. A week went by and he could stand it no more, daylight bleeding into dark, no respite from his misery.
Jaime drank much more than he ever had before, much more than was wise or reasonable. He drank until it seemed right to stumble out into the cold Winterfell yard, then keep walking through the gate to the woods beyond. The wine he’d brought kept him warm enough to move, and so he did, until he was far in the trees with only starlight for company.
They hung overhead like white stitches in deep blue satin, each pinpoint a soul, and none as lost as he.
Taking off his cloak, he curled on the cold earth, letting the ice and death of it sink to his marrow. He willed her to him, imagining clear blue eyes and steely hands around his waist...
“Come back.” Her breath was on his face. It was in his chest and throat as well. He knew the taste of it now, even if he lacked the memory of her placing it there. “What a stubborn, selfish man you are.”
“”S’better now.” His lips were stiff. “You’re here.”
“This is wasteful. Pointless death, needless pain--”
“I was bloody well suffering already!” Jaime snarled and spit, the venom of her words from days before burning his throat. “You put that boy’s soul on my head--”
“You put it there, Jaime, you alone.” The words were cold, but her hands were warm. She wrapped her cloak around him, dragged him once more across her chest. This time she wore no armor, only soft fabric over flesh and the reassuring thrum of her heartbeat beneath his cheek. Her fingers threaded in his hair, and he closed his eyes against a wave of sadness. “I told you before to choose carefully. Each sin you commit will be magnified, a score of generations for you to watch it grow and bloom.”
“Innocent children would have died. The boy saw me with her. If he told his father, my children would die. How could I choose that?”
“Their lives were bought at the expense of another’s childhood. Have you not damned them anyway? Are they still innocent?” The breath from her lips floated away in a cloud, he watched it rise and dissipate. “Are any of us?”
“Are you?” He huffed it against her neck.
“I was once.” Jaime looked up to see her smile. Moonlight caught beneath her skin. “I went from womb to this, not one breath taken as a mortal.”
“You were stillborn?”
She nodded, then sat silent for long minutes, her hands still in his hair. “It wasn’t my fate to be erased like that, there were plans for my life.” Taking a breath, she steadied her rising voice. “This is the body I would have had, or so I’m told.”
“Gods, you would have been big.” Jaime chuckled against her.
She snorted. “Not very pretty.”
“Who needs pretty if you’re magnificent?” He poked her in a now-fleshy rib. “You aren’t very human-looking, though. Solid as you are now, there’s something otherworldly about you.”
“Most people don’t notice. It’s only because you’re half-in and half-out, a foot in the grave--”
He hissed. “That’s ghastly.”
“It’s true.” Tugging away her cloak, she gave him a shove. “Go on now, your mistress-sister will want you to warm her bed.”
“Don’t--”
“That’s true too, isn’t it?” She raised a brow in challenge, and he couldn’t find his tongue to answer. “Here.”
In her hand were two more stones, a set of green eyes staring back at him. He collected them in silence.
“That bag of baubles on your hip grows heavy. Mind that you can still lift it when your journey is done.”
In a blink she faded, black cloak melding into bark and branches, leaves swirling in the dark. Jaime knelt in the cold, his heart pounding a lonely rhythm.
*
Jaime came alive with a gasp. His wrists were chained, and he couldn’t see a foot in front of him, still covered in shit and piss in a Riverrun cell. He wondered if he’d have skin left if he scrubbed to the bottom of the filth.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you, deep breath in...then out, that’s it.”
The woman from the woods was behind him, having sprouted from the muck and hay, dark begetting dark. He savored the wind-through-leaves scent of her, more potent than the gagging stench. Her voice was a murmur from a favorite dream.
Massive thighs squeezed his hips, arms circled his waist. He leaned into her, too weak to resist. “What- what…” He couldn’t finish the thought.
“Taken by fever, and no wonder.” She kicked a bowl of rotten food at his feet. “What a despicable way to treat one another.” She dried the sickness-sweat from his forehead with one sleeve, the other hand trailing across his chest in soothing motions.
Moons had passed without one kind touch. He closed his eyes and wept in relief. His strange companion said nothing.
Misery seemed to affect her, and she cradled him close, swaying back and forth. Jaime relaxed further, almost asleep. He wondered what someone walking by would see, if they’d notice the giant, scowling woman at his back or think him writhing in a fit of madness.
Curling over his shoulder, she whispered, “As soon as I can convince her to release you, we will leave. I’ll get you clean clothes and decent food.”
“Will you bathe me too?” He huffed.
“Of course I will, if you are too weak to do it yourself.” Her answer was terse, as if the question annoyed her. “Fresh clothes would be pointless otherwise.”
He squirmed at the idea of her stripping him bare, one big hand holding him above water as the other scraped and soaped and explored every filthy part of him. His forgotten cock twitched, and in some buried part of him he wanted.
Jaime wanted her to know his corruption and wash it clean, for her soft touch to linger beyond these half-dead moments.
Minutes passed uncounted in the endless darkness. She released him and faded silently into the grime and shadows. There were two stones in his palm.
For a few heartbeats he was alone, then there were footfalls outside his cell.
*
Neither of them said a word as she led him from the cell in chains, dragging him behind like a leashed dog.
Jaime was thin and weary, his time in captivity not fully reversed by this resurrection. It would take days to grow muscle, to regain stamina. He followed her from the camp, and through the surrounding forest. They were a mile out before he spoke.
“How did you come to be in Lady Catelyn’s service?”
“I joined the Stark army and proved myself loyal and useful.” Grunting as they climbed over fallen logs and cut through underbrush, she seemed heavier, more real. A briar snagged her wrist, he saw the line of blood in its wake.
“I imagine you are very good at using that sword.” He nodded at her huge weapon, and she hefted it easily. “How many Lannister souls did you collect while I rotted in that cell?”
Stomping ahead, she snorted. “As few as possible. I do not relish battle.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I had to earn her trust so that she would allow me to return you to your family.”
“Why?” Jaime was rushing to keep up and stumbled. She spun and caught him, her face once more aglow with moonlight.
“I think you are more than this.” Glancing down at his wretched body, she sighed. “Against better judgement, I believe in you. There is a purpose to your immortality beyond incest and acting as your father’s beast.” She rattled his chains.
“I always assumed the Stranger would meddle in the affairs of men.” Stopping to catch his breath, he extended his arms, indicating the battle that still raged nearby. “You are in the business of death, after all. What better place?”
She shook her head. “Not usually, but there are forces at work that threaten the balance.”
“Balance?”
She stared into the distance, watching something beyond the sight of mortals. “Dead men should stay dead.”
“Present company excluded?” He grinned, and she nodded.
“You are apparently the exception to many rules.” The corners of her mouth twisted up, a weak smile. There was a whinny in the distance. “My horse is just ahead.”
Her horse turned out to be a monstrous black stallion tethered near a stream, he huffed steam and stomped when he saw her approach.
“What is his name?” Jaime combed his fingers through its long mane.
“It doesn’t have one.” She moved wordlessly to her pack, pulling out an apple and handing it to Jaime. The horse swallowed it in two bites.
“What a shame.” Laying his head against the animal’s thick neck, he heard the air whistle down its throat. “Beautiful creature like this deserves a name of honor. What do you look like?” Jaime stared into big brown eyes, gauging his companion’s reaction. “Balerion?”
“He’s not a dragon,” she grumbled.
“He could be, look at him.” He lowered the bridle until they were eye to eye. “Do you breathe fire, Ser?” The horse snorted and jerked his head, tugging at Jaime’s hand. “Look, he likes it.”
“He’s just annoyed.” She scratched behind the animal’s ears, making a low soothing sound in her throat, almost a purr. Jaime was transfixed, staring at her long fingers, her lips. After a few moments she smiled. “Call him Balerion, he thinks it’s funny.”
He looked from horse to master, opened his mouth to ask how she knew, when she interrupted his thoughts. “You need to take that bath.”
The supplies were ready in her bag: soap and a brush, a scrap of fabric to dry with. They walked together to the shore and she started undoing her armor. Her hands were strong and efficient, and Jaime could only stare as she stripped down to her smallclothes, then turned to him with questioning eyes.
“Do you need help?” Before he could protest she was pulling off his grimy layers and throwing them into a pile on the damp grass, then she removed the last of her clothes and led him by the hand out into the stream.
His conscience told him not to stare, but other needs outpressed it. He trailed just behind her, watching the sway of her spine in the shadows, the way her wide shoulders shifted in time with her hips, the firm curve of her ass.
Turning toward him mid-stream, she revealed the peaks of small breasts, wet and shining, her movements unburdened by modesty.
Jaime was glad for the cold, quick-flowing water, and for the moonlight that turned the ripples around him to silver fabric, puddling around their waists. His stamina gave way after all; tired, malnourished legs were unsteady in the current.
She held him afloat like a doll, wrapping one arm around his waist, propping him against her thigh. Fingernails scratched through lousy hair, the stiff brush scoured his chest and back, his arms. When she moved to scrub lower he chuckled and took the soap from her, fascinated by her unexpected blush, visible even in dark water.
He was worried she might have to carry him ashore, but he managed with only her arm under his shoulder. She immediately wrapped them both in her cloak, her body pressed to his in ways he would think about later, when he was warm.
Too sleepy to eat, he blinked at her. Watching the starlight in those not-human eyes.
“You’ve not once called me Kingslayer.” Hearing it had become common; her exception was noticeable.
“Aerys was mad, killing him was a mercy.” She would wipe that sin away, just like that. It made him dizzy. Jaime trembled, and she tightened her hold.
“Lady Catelyn called you Brienne.”
“She did.”
“Why?” It was a pretty name, not what he expected.
“It was what my parents planned to name me.”
He hummed, his blinks growing longer. “Then I’ll call you Brienne.”
The return to King’s Landing on Balerion was uneventful. No one noticed them, and he spent most afternoons sunkissed and asleep between Brienne’s arms.
It passed much too quickly.
*
His son was dead. Jaime learned of it from the innkeeper’s wife. It was their last night together on the road.
Once alone, he turned to Brienne with fury burning in his gut, one hand on the hilt of his sword. “Did you take him?”
She met his stare, disgust twisting her features. “It was not me.”
“But you knew of it?”
“I did.”
“And you did nothing.” He crowded into her, his hot breath beneath her chin.
“What would you have me do, Jaime?” Stepping forward, she forced him back. “I do not decide who lives or dies, I merely grant passage--”
“I think that is a lie.” He gritted his teeth, held his ground against her. “I’ve watched how you carry yourself, Brienne, and it has changed since we met. You may have been a foot soldier once, not now.”
“You grant me too much credit, Ser.” Her tone was cold, disguising the flame in those blue depths. “And too much blame.”
“Would you have saved my son, if you could?” Jaime looked away, unable to watch her lie to him.
“No.” The cold settled into frost. “Joffrey had a mean soul and a penchant for pain. He was vengeful and unrepentant. I am not sorry he is dead.”
This was perhaps worse than a lie.
Jaime’s hands clenched into fists. He turned on his heel, heading toward the stables. He would rather sleep with Balerion than spend one more moment near her.
Halfway to the door, he stopped, staring at the dirty wood floors. “Brienne, are you the Stranger?”
Behind him there was a quick intake of air, then silence. It went on so long that he had given up on an answer.
“Not entirely.” Any other soul, and he would have called the voice frightened. “Goodnight, Jaime.” Her footfalls faded into nothing.
*
He went to his sister without conscious will. Cersei needed comforting. That was what he’d intended, but her lips were open and welcoming beneath his, and he had been alone with death too long.
For a few moments it felt right again: the squeeze of her thighs, the slick heat welcoming him in. He had known no other, nowhere else felt as safe, felt like home…
No. That wasn’t true.
Brienne’s arms felt just as safe, perhaps more. There he could let his guard down completely, there he was comforted.
Jaime was furious with her. Fury blazed in his chest when he turned his bare ass toward his dead son and the Stranger’s altar, when he fucked his sister in the shadow of the Mother, smearing her moon’s blood on the white marble.
His woman of the woods and of the stream, his fickle friend, she would know where his loyalty lay.
Then his twin dismissed him, his purpose satisfied, and he chewed on the empty bones of lust as his thoughts trailed back to Brienne. How she’d sometimes acted disgusted and shocked, but never once dismissed him. Unsummoned, the ghost of her arms haunted him, the specter of her eyes.
His loyalty was in question after all.
Stepping from the gloom of the sept, he headed toward the keep, the sunshine of a beautiful afternoon bearing down upon his tangled thoughts.
“How dare you?” Her voice came from an alleyway, black corners writhing with her presence.
“I dare quite a lot, you’ll have to be more specific.”
His voice was cut off by the tip of that massive sword emerging from the shadow, pointed straight at his chest.
“Did you not think that there would be punishment for such an act?” She followed her broadsword into the light, black armour swallowing it whole. Brienne stood half a head taller than he, more solid than ever. The faces on her pauldrons were of twisted, tortured souls. “There were others watching, Jaime, and they do not so easily overlook your indulgent, childish behavior.”
“Not like you.” He flashed his teeth and sneered, desperate to make her as unsettled as she made him.
“No, not like me.” She had the audacity to smile, small and fragile, then dropped into an attack position.
“So they’ve sent you to what? Kill me?” Eyes going wide he took two steps forward, baring himself to her weapon. “Do they know what I am?”
“Perhaps they think death by my blade is final.” Her shoulders lifted in question. “Either way you will waste one rebirth, your time on this world shortened.”
“You’re awfully sure that you will best me.” He drew his blade, took a step back. “I am the greatest swordsman alive.”
“You are.” She nodded, her mouth unable to conceal a crooked grin. “It’s bad luck that you’re fighting a dead woman.”
Without warning, she was upon him. Jaime learned in one blow that he could not best her with strength. When she crouched and swung low, forcing him to block and stagger sideways into the mouth of the alleyway, he concluded that he could not beat her with speed either.
Resigned to dying, he vowed to enjoy their fight for as long as possible.
Each clang of their blades sent a shiver of pain up his arm; it thrilled through him. His soul swayed to the crack-slide of their weapons, to the chatter of his teeth and the slip of his boots over gritty cobblestones. Brienne grunted with each strike, a melody he was born to dance to.
At one point their blades locked, and she certainly had the upper hand. One strong twist of her wrists would send his sword bouncing across the pavement. She grinned and stepped back, and his insides twisted with the heat of her smile.
Brienne had called him beautiful to watch once, and he knew it to be true. His movements were quick and cutting, sunlight caught the edges of his golden armor like ripples on the bay.
She was beautiful too, he saw that now. Brienne was smoke curling around live embers, beautiful in the way that deadly things often are. She was the serpent about to strike, the talon poised to grip and tear.
The end was coming, he felt it in the quiver of his arms as he blocked killing blow after blow. With a final laugh of defiance he lunged...
There was a clatter, and his sword lay in a pool of red. Hers had found a gap in his armor and was lodged deep in his chest.
She was crying.
Tears filled her fine lashes, turning them to starshine. He leaned forward, driving her blade deeper, stretching to touch her face even as his body began to crumple. “Don’t cry.” His thumbs stroked her cheeks. “This is my fault.”
“Jaime.” Her voice cracked as she gathered him to her, the hilt of her sword between them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to--” His legs failed, and they went to their knees, the street slick beneath them.
He circled Brienne’s neck, brushing her cheek with the sleeve stained in his lover’s blood. Jaime felt vulgar.
“With Cersei...it wasn’t the same as I remembered.” This death was coming on quickly, words slurring, vision already dark. Brienne made shushing sounds into his hair. “She’s always been home, but not now.”
“Hush, Jaime, it will be over soon.” Brienne breathed into his ear, warm and steady, the thrum of her pulse against his chin.
“I think…” The words were thick, they tasted of metal. “I think you took it.” He reached for her clavicle, but instead felt steel over heavy flesh. Not like before. Not like the first time, when he could hook his fingers over the edge and stare into the void, when it was bone and bone and bone…
“What are you saying?” She spoke right next to him, an echo in his head.
“So many times.” He slipped deeper into her arms, cradled with only touch, only sound, submerged in the unrelenting beating. “You resurrected my heart so many times, and now there is just the one, and it is ours.”
He shook apart into nothingness.
*
Her words came to him as a thought, a beacon to follow from the dark.
“My mother would talk to me, before I was born, when I was still inside her. I remember it so clearly that I must have been dead, even then. She would tell me of all the wonderful things waiting for me in this world.”
With a yank her steel slipped from his body, and then those long, quick fingers were moving over him, removing armor, tugging the edges of him back in place. Her lips blew breath into his lungs, her big hands forced a beat into his heart.
“The others like me are ancient. They have existed alongside man since the beginning, watching and gathering, but never feeling.”
Her armor was gone too. The crook of her arm held him, hard muscle and soft skin, hot beneath his neck.
“A war with the dead is coming. The Stranger needed a weapon, someone to fight for the bodies and souls that he’d claimed.” She sighed, it ghosted across his forehead with that green-dirt smell. “And I had seen nothing...none of the promised wonders, none of the beauty...but I believed it existed, because she told me it did.”
The same fingers that had worked him back together moved gently over his face.
“I never felt wonder until I saw you.”
*
He rushed back into himself, back to the living. Brienne held him tighter then, squeezing him through the shaking and shock that always followed.
“You are his sworn sword.” Words scraped from his throat and he forced his eyes open. She was inches away, fingertips tracing his brows.
“His sword...and his heart.” Her hair fell forward, framing her face in light. “He fashioned me to love, knowing that I would fight harder because of it. It was a cruel trick.”
“Not cruel.” With a trembling hand, he wiped his blood from her cheek. “I have done horrible deeds in the name of love, and you have always known better.”
Jaime wondered which came first, his immortality or his recklessness. With a vast expanse of existence in front of him, he’d committed inexcusable, irresponsible acts; hiding behind the shields of loyalty and family, making certain that whichever god had granted this unwanted gift saw the waste in it.
Brienne had dragged his body into the alleyway. Propped against her in half-sunlight, half-shadow, a web of red stretched from him to the gutter. The occupants of King’s Landing walked by without a glance, stepping over a river of refuse and his blood. Jaime thought it fitting.
He reached for her hand, and she gave it freely. “Have we not seen enough war?”
“This foe knows only death and war and more death. My body grows stronger every day in preparation.” She held up an arm and stared at it. “I will carry his strength into battle.”
“And after?”
She looked away, eyes glittering like sunset seas. “I don’t know. I might return to the unfinished thing I was before.”
“Not like before.” Jaime leaned into her chest, listened to the reassuring whump-whump inside. “It will stay with you, it will be yours.”
Brienne leaned her chin on the crown of his head, threaded their fingers, and lingered.
“I will carry these,” she said. Curling a fist around two green-eyed stones, she faded into shadow.