BRIENNE OF TARTH

The whole affair, like the looming Dreadfort itself, is fraught. If Brienne had wished for Jaime's presence on the road, she's desperate for it during her stay within the ancestral seat of a house she's glad to see in ruins now.

She even wishes for her father's speedy arrival. Soldiers are used to waiting, and Brienne has done her fair share, but the tension among the mixing of men with a common goal told to them by their betters is thick and slow to dissipate. She finds at least the more she trains with them and the fewer dinners she skips the easier it is to move from group to group. And some mingling begins—it shouldn't surprise her of all people that a commonality of mislike breeds bonding.

And then her father does arrive with the sun high above. The tension strings tight as a longbow once again.

"My dear girl," he says with all the politesse his daughter doesn't possess. Nobody sees the hitch in his movement as he envelops her in his arms for a stiff and brief embrace. There are no tears nor declarations of joy at their reunion. Podrick beams because he doesn't know how this is a knife in her side, which she could remove only to bleed out. He only sees the likeness and the proof of what she's told him, which is very little.

Her father's stature and bearing far outstrips her own, because who would see such a large man and ask him to be smaller? She knows just how absurdly tall he is now that she has Sandor to compare him to, and she wonders at the girl she used to be, who could set her jaw and stand against him.

Podrick loves him immediately, as do most men and plenty of unlucky women.

He introduces Tommen with the removed fondness of a great-uncle while Stannis sneers as he passes flanked by two guards from Evenfall. Brienne bows, and stares far longer than is polite. He's grown from when she last saw him, but he's still a cherubic boy who's obviously seen far too much. She wants to linger by his side, but Brienne dutifully separates from them with a firm request to dine with her father and the other Stormlanders so that they may meet before leaving in the morning.

TOMMEN BARATHEON

He’s tall for his age, but he’s as quiet as the cat he insisted on carrying out of the Red Keep when soldiers loyal to his fath— Loyal to House Baratheon took him down into the tunnels beneath the keep and whisked him away by boat under cover of the fog that had swept into the bay the morning Daenerys Targaryen flew into the city on the back of a dragon. He’d sat in the boat clutching Ser Pounce to him, peering up with wide, green eyes hidden beneath the hooded cloak they’d tossed over him at the great beasts flying overhead. Majestic and terrifying, like something out of a song.

They don’t miss him. They’re barely interested in him. He’s a deposed king who was never who he thought himself to be, and he’s aware of how much of his rule wasn’t actually his rule. His grandfather told him what to do and say, and then his mother, and then Lady Olenna and his sweet wife, Margaery, whom he was told had escaped safely and fled for Highgarden with her brother and grandmother. (And that’s all they would tell him about her. They wouldn’t even let him know if he was still her husband.) He never felt like a real king, but it was his duty to try, and he was grateful for the guidance of others, of the wisdom they offered that felt so far out of his reach.

Maybe he should have tried to do it on his own more instead of wanting to be anything other than a king. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so awful about leaving the city in the hands of a woman he fully believes is evil incarnate, thanks to all the negative propaganda about Targaryens and their madness that he’s been fed by his mother.

His mother, who is probably dead. Just like his siblings. Just like the man he thought was his father.

That’s something he’s having a hard time wrapping his head around. Like a puzzle piece that won’t fit into the picture no matter how hard he pushes down on it. Even when he cries about it, he can’t make sense of it. The truth, or so Uncle Stann— Lord Stannis had told him it was, felt... Like a cruel lie. Surely his mother wouldn’t have lied to him so blatantly...

(But she would. He knew she would. That was the worst part of it. Tommen knew who Cersei was, he was just unfortunate enough to have inherited his real father’s blindness when it came to being unwilling to see the truth about the woman who raised him.)

When Tommen finds her, he holds up a finger to his mouth in a shushing gesture, his expression a desperate plea for her not to give him away. He’s been guarded since he arrived at Evenfall and it’s the one constant that’s transferred over from his previous life as legitimate royalty that he finds maddening. It’s suffocating, and as much as he loves Ser Pounce, he’s tired of only having his cat to talk to when the Evenstar is too (understandably) preoccupied with things that aren’t keeping a lonely boy company.

“My lady, forgive me for asking, but are you kingsguard to Ser— to my unc—” Tommen presses his lips together and makes himself say it. He hasn’t said it yet, but if it really is the truth, he needs to. “To my father?”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

It catches her so off guard that Brienne stutters as her face fills with a ruddy blush. Why is she blushing? It's a perfectly polite question from a boy who's been ousted from everything he knows to her, a woman he thinks is loyal to Ser—his unc—his father.

"No," she answers plainly and a little harsher than she wants. Brienne looks around them, wondering where his guard is or where the handmaiden she thinks she recognized from Renly's retainer might be hovering. But he's slipped them, the little boy king that was, and she thinks she should probably return him and give whoever lost him a solid scolding.

She doesn't do any of that. She blinks down at him, feeling like she's looking into Jaime's eyes, and she softens a little. Sansa must have spent some time around him, and she assumes his perspective of her is much like any southerner.

"I'm sworn to serve Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell." Her hand grips the hilt of Oathkeeper to steady herself, and she hopes she doesn't have to explain her association with Jaime.

TOMMEN LANNISTER

“Lady Sansa was very kind,” Tommen says thoughtfully, with a doleful smile eerily reminiscent of the man he doesn’t realize how closely he resembles. “Kind, but sad. She didn’t like living in the Red Keep, and Joffrey was terrible to her. Far more than he was to Cella and I. I was happy to hear that she was able to return home, and from what my guards tell me, you are responsible for that.”

And there’s the brighter smile. The one that’s like sunshine on a rainy day, happy for Sansa in spite of being so unsure about his own standing, his own present existence.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She wanted to steer away from Jaime, and yet what comes out of her mouth is a denial of sorts: "Your—Lord Jaime was far more instrumental in that than I was."

Arming and armoring her, putting Podrick into her care, loading her with gold and everything in between. Believing in her. Ousting Ramsey himself, which she's endlessly proud of.

"She's—Lady Sansa will assure your welcome when we arrive at Winterfell." Brienne speaks stiffly, caught between overformality and unfamiliarity with Tommen himself. He's just a boy, and she can't imagine what it must have been like to lose his siblings and his father, and now his home and his mother.

Or, well. Maybe she can, a little. "And I will see you safely there. The journey won't be overlong, but you should probably rest up. I'm sure your guards would agree?"

TOMMEN LANNISTER

“My father. It’s okay to refer to Lord Jaime as my father, my lady. Lord Stannis tells me it was the worst kept secret in the Seven Kingdoms, that I was a foolish boy for not seeing the truth that was in front of me. If everyone knows as he says they do, then I must do my best to acclimate myself to hearing it.”

But he appreciates that she’s trying to do him some undeserved courtesy. He isn’t a king anymore. He isn’t owed anything. He is a bastard whose only claim to anything is a marriage to a highborn that might not even still be valid. For all he knows, it was already annulled and his guards have been forbidden from telling him so.

“Rest up is what I’ve been doing since I left the Red Keep. Rest up and stay in place and do nothing but stay out of sight and do as I’m told.”

The boy is far too polite, far too well trained by Cersei to hold his tongue when his words are unpleasant and unkind, but it’s clear from the way he scrunches up his face that he doesn’t enjoy being holed up. Of being told what to do, just as he was before.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She flushes again, first in embarrassment and then with anger—and she makes a note to have a very frank conversation with her father about how close Stannis should be allowed near Tommen, and why it matters.

But she nods in assent, and then chews her lip as he expresses his discontent with what shape his life has taken these past weeks. She softens again, especially in response to the exact mannerism she's seen on Jaime's face countless times.

"If I may," she starts, eyes sharpening with mischief. "I would offer you a proposal. I will call him your father, and I will not return you to your guard, if you can agree to cease calling me lady and if you tell me what it is you'd prefer to do, and allow me to accompany you."

TOMMEN LANNISTER

Tommen might as well be a duckling instead of a lion, staring at Brienne with bright, wide eyes, as if she’s just offered him all the riches in the world. Slowly, that dazed look melts away into a genuine, honest smile. A grateful smile.

“I would like that very much... Brienne.” He tests it out, not knowing what else to call her other than her name. And names aren’t something an ex-king/prince has had much practice using, formality having been drilled into him since birth. “And I want to walk. Somewhere that doesn’t feel like a cage.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She nods again and the shy smile she can't hide when she's truly pleased takes over her face.

"I think we can manage that," she says, and begins to walk with him toward the steps to the battlements. "Have you fear of heights?"

And she asks the question as if she's asking after anything at all: does he like roast boar? Does he mind when it rains? Probably a silly question to ask a boy who grew up in the Red Keep, but. Not something they want to learn when he's trying to feel free.

TOMMEN LANNISTER

Tommen shakes his head. “No. Not at at all. Are we going somewhere high?”

His excitement breaks through that practiced royal demeanor, giving away his youthfulness. In this moment, he is a young boy of fifteen and not a boy pretending at being a man who became both king and husband at just fourteen.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"You'll have to keep up and see," she teases, exiting the hall out into one of the empty yards and taking an abrupt sharp turn which reveals a long set of wide steps winding upward toward the outermost wall of the fort. Two and a half flights, if she eyes them correctly, and not fun to ascend in full plate armor.

The view out over the Lonely Hills stretches over snow-covered field, but close to the fort is a smattering of free folk tents. Brienne leans into one of the crenels and gestures for Tommen to do the same.

"Have you ever seen any free folk?"

TOMMEN LANNISTER

Tommen does, his long, Lannister legs giving him an advantage over other boys still in the throes of puberty. He makes a staccato sound, a laugh that he half holds back, as if he’s afraid that he’ll be scolded for making such a delighted noise.

“No, never. Mother always said that they were wild traitors from beyond the wall who denied my rule. But I’m not king anymore, so why should I hold that against them? And if I’m not holding it against my father for denying my rule, why would I hold it against them? That would be awfully hypocritical of me.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She hums, a thoughtful sound she fails to hold back because of how surprising his words are to her.

"Their ways are very different," she adds. His initial assessment is compassionate and fair, and she wonders how he can sound so much like Jaime when he was raised by Cersei, and had Joffrey and Robert as his examples. "Even among themselves, every tribe has their own rules. One of the groups regard their leaders as gods."

TOMMEN LANNISTER

Cersei went out of her way to make sure Jaime and Tommen were kept apart for a reason, especially when Tommen was crowned and Jaime was still Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Jaime was only allowed to report to Tommen while accompanied by her, through her, or publically when the court was gathered before the Iron Throne.

Not that Tommen has clued into any of this. He doesn’t actually know much about his father beyond the professional realm, and that... that bothers him. He has no idea that a portion of Cersei’s ire and frustration with him likely stemmed from how much he not only looked like his sire, but sounded like him, too. Mannerisms, soft heart and all.

“I don’t think I would have liked to have been a god. I didn’t much like being a leader. I was terrible at it, and everyone knows that I was.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"I think any good leader feels that way." She does. She's pretty sure Jaime does, too. And while Sansa attends to her duties with a stalwart confidence Brienne envies deeply, she doesn't think she truly enjoys the constraints of rule.

She stands up from the crenel to watch the northern yard, where the midday lull is ending, and the afternoon bustle is picking back up. The men she'd brought and the ones her father brought move amongst each other to ready to leave, though they'll be returning with mostly Westerlanders as the contingent of Northerners that accompanied them stay to shore up the Dreadfort's defenses.

"Most of the ones I've known do, anyway." She doesn't mention that you can prove a man isn't a god if you have a sharp enough weapon and enough determination. And that sometimes you get to be responsible for their offspring's life for the rest of yours for your sins.