JAIME LANNISTER

Dragon.

Jaime isn't required to be on the front lines of this sort of confrontation. By all rights, his presence is quite alarming, as a Head of State should never put themselves in this sort of jeopardy. Not when it's just a dragon (as if anything could ever be just a dragon) and not the dead finally marching on Winterfell. It's a dragon in the forest, a dragon that flies back up into the sky before Jaime and the contingent of men at his heels have a chance to do anything about it.

He doesn't know if it was the same beast that killed Brienne, he just knows it's a dragon and the only dragons left belong to Aerys's daughter. It's said she has three of them, so it's a one in three chance, but a missed chance.

Jaime swears so colorfully one of the younger, less seasoned knights blushes at hearing such profanity pour from his liege lord's lips and stumbles back to allow Jaime to stalk back into the keep. He's furious all over again and without a proper outlet for it or his sorrow, his heartbreak. There's nowhere to channel it and he's growing tired of bottling everything up and burying it deep inside himself. Of holding everything in.

Of disappearing into himself. Sinking deep into the recesses of his mind where things are calm and okay and the world is not a cruel, mocking thing.

He doesn't hear the Free Folk shouting. Doesn't hear his men calling for him to return.

He's sinking and his feet are carrying him forward towards the great hall where he can sit at the long table at the front where no one else but the Starks are allowed and be left alone to sink even farther.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Brienne has made it back to Winterfell under her own sheer stubborn fucking willpower (well, plus a dragon). She's collected more than bumps and bruises. It takes two of the Wildling men that reach her to help her get back to the keep, and she's delirious enough to allow them to hold most of her weight. Now that she's not driven by a single blinding purpose and she's around people she trusts, Brienne's body starts to give over to everything else.

She doesn't really know what day it is or how long she's been gone. She knows it's been long enough without food or water that she's started seeing double, and she knows Samwell is going to have to lop off a toe or two, lost to the frost before she'd found boots.

She sees the dragon's shadow cross Winterfell twice, and she watches it head south. Then she passes out before they get her to the maester's tower.

JAIME LANNISTER

In his anguish, Jaime slips into a momentary near-catatonic state. No one can get through to him, no one except Tommen, whom Sansa fetches from her brother's rooms, and brings to the Great Hall to intervene. Jaime doesn't respond to any of them, but blinks himself out of his reverie when Tommen calls him father, pulling him up from the depths of his mind that were threatening to swallow him whole.

It's Tommen who is with him when he enters the maester's tower, the boy remaining at his side when he kneels down beside the unconscious woman's bed. He takes her hand in his and kisses the back of it, refusing to let go as Samwell sees to treating her injuries. Tommen comes and goes as the day turns into night, but Jaime remains. Eventually, exhaustion takes hold of him and Jaime falls asleep with his head pillowed in the crook of his maimed arm against the mattress, left hand still holding hers.

Tommen sits on the floor nearby, Ser Pounce nestled in his lap, refusing to leave his father's side.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She wakes in increments in the evening, from a dreamless sleep, to a world she isn't sure is real. Warmth and softness come first. The smell of healing herbs and of leather and sandalwood. A spice of some kind that makes her think of Jaime's tent.

Her hand squeezes his like a test. The rest of her is still, though, quiet as she comes up through hazy memories and exhaustion. It feels important to stay quiet somehow, though she isn't the kind of woman who makes a lot of noise anyway. When her eyes open she realizes she had been smelling Jaime, and it's his hand in hers. Suddenly she's very awake as her heart slams against her chest before she remembers she'd seen the dragon fly away. Away from here, away from Jaime and Sansa and Tommen, and Sandor and Geirthe too. Away from people she cares for.

She squeezes his hand again, and shifts to sit up before groaning in protest at how it seems like every part of her body is weak and tired.

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime is out, having slept so poorly these past few weeks, lulled easily into restfulness by the assurance of her presence and the sound of her breathing by his ear. He doesn’t stir immediately, not until Tommen crawls over to him from where he’d been sitting with his trusty fat cat in his lap to shake at his shoulder. It’s a sleepy, gradual rousing that betrays his usual snap to alertness, a sign of just how comfortable he is in the presence of the people who remain in this room with them.

He hadn’t been able to sleep when Geirthe was in here, too busy shooing off the wild girl who insisted on crawling over Brienne’s injured form like she was a boulder, but once Sandor had carried the girl off, out he went. Like a light, with his son sitting dutifully at his side and Rosa shadowing Addam in her first real attempt at governing in her cousin’s wake to allow him the freedom to hover by his wounded lover’s bedside.

“Father,” Tommen whispers, then says more loudly, more firmly. “Father. Lady Brienne is awake.”

Jaime blinks forcefully to make himself wake the rest of the way up and Tommen stands, plucking Ser Pounce from the floor and giving Brienne a grateful, fond look before he removes himself from the room and shuts the door behind them to give them some semblance of privacy. Tommen’s muffled voice can be heard telling the Lannister guard positioned outside the door to give his Lord Father some privacy, the kingly tones still clinging to his voice in spite of the crown no longer being his.

“Brienne?” Jaime squeezes her hand, rising back up onto knees that are going to be stiff and sore from having been curled beneath him for hours upon hours. “By the Seven, we thought you were dead.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Still groggy, still weak, Brienne sags at the sound of Jaime's voice. She doesn't intend to release his hand unless he pulls it from hers but she gives up on trying to be upright in favor of blinking blearily up at him.

"'m sorry," she says in a hoarse voice. "So did I. Tommen? Podrick?"

JAIME LANNISTER

“Both alive. As is your father.”

Whom Jaime hasn’t said a single word to, hasn’t had any ounce of interaction with aside from meeting his gaze from the crowd while seated at the long table before the Great Hall’s congregation during that first initial banquet, welcoming the survivors back.

He comes up, sitting on the bed’s edge as he gently — oh so gently — helps her into a sitting position, maneuvering himself to lean back against the wall so she can rest against his chest instead of the roughened stone.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Uncharacteristically pliant, she leans into him almost eagerly.

His warmth seems to seep into her, eliciting a deep sigh she lets out as she practically clings to his body with all of her aching limbs. She's glad it's just him, and that she can let herself have this right now. Her cheek presses into his chest, which she'd thought she might never feel again.

But her mind shifts away from thinking about too much softness, and she feels compelled to be pragmatic.

"Valyrian steel can pierce dragonhide."

JAIME LANNISTER

The fingers of his left hand comb through tangled hair, his maimed arm wrapped about her middle.

"Can you please worry about yourself a little?"

He scolds her, but it's lighthearted sounds like relief. A sign that she's still herself, putting practicality and business before her own wellbeing. Believing that she needs to inform him of this detail before she says anything else. It's such a Brienne thing to do that it makes his eyes water anew, basking selfishly in the solace of having her back.

Of having her alive and well and not done in by dragon’s fire.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Her first inclination is to argue, because of course it is, but she just hugs him tighter. She thinks to tell him she doesn't know how, she only knows how to move forward, she doesn't need like other people do. But she does, and she swallows that all back.

Still, she is pragmatic to a fault.

"I declared myself your mistress to my father in front of the Stormlords."

JAIME LANNISTER

A small, mirthful sound escapes him as he presses his lips to the crown of her head– And, as if on cue, before Jaime has even allowed himself to think about what that may mean for them now that she's alive and well, the door swings open to reveal Lord Selwyn in all his stern (furious?) glory.

He has to hunch in the doorway to avoid grazing it with the top of his head, and it's only up close like this that Jaime realizes the man might actually dwarf the Hound in height.

"Lord Jaime," he says sternly, opening his mouth to say something more, when Jaime cuts him off, remembering with sudden clarity that he is the higher ranking noble in this room.

"Lord Selwyn. I believe my men were given strict instructions that my lady was not be disturbed."

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Suddenly, Brienne finds she might prefer the dragon.

She's too vulnerable, pushing herself to sit upright so that she can face her lord father with due respect which only makes her feel weak in front of Jaime. It shouldn't feel wrong, but this is not a side of her she lets anyone see, especially not her father. She's done nothing wrong. She'd already told him about her involvement with Jaime.

He's not Jaime to her father. He's the Kingslayer. The Lord Paramount of the Westerlands.

Now, she feels too exposed again as her hand presses into Jaime's forearm. She's only seen her father's true wrath twice, and she'd rather it not be turned loose here if he's already managed to cow Jaime's men into letting him by.

"Your lady," Selwyn repeats, and to her, it sounds like your whore.

All her courtesies are ill-fitting of a moment like this, none of the words she has prepared for moments of social uncertainty (made to help her be polite and then escape as quickly as possible) are useful here.

"Father—" she starts, searching desperately for what to say when you're in the lap of a man you've admitted you fuck in an official capacity. She's already disappointed him, made herself a pariah of sorts among the Stormlanders, and burdened him with more than any father should have to bear. She'd publicly embarrassed him because he'd had faith that his only surviving heir would not turn herself into every paramour he's taken since he lost her mother and she refused to lie and hide Jaime as if he were something shameful. And yet she does feel shame. And he's not recovering from a sennight of starving and panic.

"Your lady, and yet still my daughter. Not fit to be wife."

Oh, she definitely prefers the dragon.

JAIME LANNISTER

Perhaps others would have cowered in the face of an imposing man like Selwyn Tarth glowering down disapprovingly at them, but said others were not raised in the far more disapproving shadow of Tywin Lannister. Jaime was genuinely terrified of his father, of letting him down and facing his wrath if he did the wrong thing — something that spooked him well into adulthood. One can even say that Jaime misses his father and resents Tyrion for taking his life because he was conditioned into feeling that way.

Which means Jaime has no qualms with meeting the man's stare with an eerily calm one of his own as he puts his maimed arm to his daughter's back to help hold her upright. "Not fit? She's plenty fit, but being fit to do something doesn't always mean that one wants to do something. I’ve asked her what she wants. Have you?"

BRIENNE OF TARTH

If she were some other woman, Brienne would remind them both very haughtily that she's right here and she has a name but that's some beautiful heroine of some other story who got to choose who to wed when she was still a girl and not whatever Brienne has become now.

Her father sniffs, and her hand tightens on Jaime's forearm. She can see him taking Jaime's measure from up close now, and she doesn't think his opinion is improving. When his eyes move from Jaime to sweep over her, Brienne bites at her lip and resists the urge to bury herself in the furs.

He's looking at her differently, as if he's holding back. But that's absurd. Her father speaks his mind, though he rarely says more than he means to. And he doesn't hold back his opinions on her choices. But it's been so long, and she's changed so much. What does he see when he looks at her now?

"Jaime," she says, rubbing her hand along his arm before letting go. "I need a moment with my father. Alone."

JAIME LANNISTER

If her father had made the request, Jaime would have denied him. But since it’s Brienne, running her fingers against the fabric of his arm and speaking to him plainly instead of trying to address him with decorum that’s never had a place between them, he grants it to her. Readily. She could have asked him to count the stones in the walls of this hall for her and he would have departed to see to it without hesitation.

“Of course. I’ll be right outside.”

He kisses her temple — not to put on a show for Selwyn, but because he wants to and tactile affection is the norm for them and he thought she was dead — and slowly extracts himself from her, stepping around the Evenstar to leave the room and stand outside the shut door.

Jaime stands outside of it like the once Kingsguard he is, dutifully guarding the privacy of whatever conversation happens to be taking place behind that door.