JAIME LANNISTER

“Did I say you handled it poorly? Needing space isn’t handling something poorly. If anything, you knew what you needed and went and got it for yourself. That’s more than half of us can say. Do you know how many times I forced myself to mingle among the masses when all I needed was a bloody moment alone?”

Jaime brushes his thumb against the apple of her cheek.

“I understand. No more needs to be said, unless there’s more you want to say.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"I didn't say you did, I said I did!" And if her irritation is to be trusted, she believes it still. Sansa can wear her cool mask all day long and Brienne will still know she's not meeting the expectations her lady has of her.

Brienne sighs, tries to shake off the residual frustration she can't seem to let go of and shakes her head. "No, there's no more."

It doesn't matter. She just needs to get her shit together, and having a goal now will help her do that.

JAIME LANNISTER

"Good, now that we've got that out of the way, how about we do something how coiled up you are. You're like a snake about to strike, and as you are so fond of reminding me, your house is not among those that have an animal emblazoned on their banners."

She's always giving him grief about being a Great House with a mascot and all, and he hopes she never stops. It gives life to the parts of him that couldn't stand being called the Golden Lion and hated whenever Tywin's reasoning for doing questionable, shady things would be that they were lions and that's what lions did.

"How do you want it? Do you want to fight me or—" Smirk. Eyebrows up. You know what he means, Brienne.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

It takes her a moment. When she realizes what he's implying, takes in that look of his, she feels every muscle in her body pull taught. And, of course, her cheeks blush a furious red.

Funny how she still manages, somehow, to be scandalized by him when he has asked her point-blank if she's fucked a horse before. But that's the thing: despite how obnoxious he's being, it's simply another arena where she can trust him. Far be it from her to try to explain. She has tried to stutter through it to Sansa within the past few weeks upon informing her liege lady but the words didn't exactly come out. How do you look a girl that beautiful in the eye and tell her yes you are fucking the Kingslayer and no you don't plan on stopping any time soon?

"Jaime!" She hisses at him and tries to look serious while she darts her gaze around them. "I'm not going to literally roll around in the hay with you."

She might be bluffing. She might be considering exactly that at exactly this moment. She shakes her head, either to tell him no or to clear it. Who could say?

JAIME LANNISTER

“The hay?”

He looks around them, takes in their surroundings. Ah yes, the stable. Instantly, he’s cross with himself over having not been more clever as to have used that line before she picked it up and wielded it. (But he’s impressed that she did.)

“I was going to suggest we go somewhere else, but if you’re up for scandalizing the horses...”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

There's a breath or two where Brienne looks like she might actually take him up on that, where her eyes sharpen and she can feel the pull between them more acutely settle into her stomach. But the other option, that's just as tantalizing.

"Just for that, I think I'd like to beat some new bruises into you," she says before dragging him back out of the stables and toward the yard once more.

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime lets himself be dragged — oh, she could very easily force him and had to on several occasions when she was leading him around on a leash, but she doesn’t need to because Jaime is more than just willing and pliant. He’s eagar. Delighted to be hauled around, delighted to get the opportunity to fight her again.

“You know, you haven’t fought me since I was your prisoner and I stole one of your swords. And I wouldn’t even call that a true fight since we weren’t allowed to finish it.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"You just don't want it to count because you lost," she fires back with a scoff and a scowl.

Despite them walking arm-in-arm the charged energy between them is enough to clear the people training out of the spot Brienne usually takes up men she trains to fight wights and Others and the like. At the weapons rack, she releases Jaime and peruses until she finds a sword suited to her.

JAIME LANNISTER

As of late, Addam’s been trying to get him to use a shield strapped to his right arm, to utilize the muscle memory he has in that limb to his full advantage. It’s that weapon his friend tries to hand him, thinking he wants to play to the strength in his arm, but Jaime shakes his head pointedly and pushes it back against Addam’s chest.

He draws a shortsword instead, a blade that’s in dire need of a good polish and has clearly seen better days, but feels balanced well enough in his palm. About on par with the blade he made off with when he fled King’s Landing for Riverrun following his dismissal from the Kingsguard. He felt bad about taking it in a moment of weakness and spite, but now, knowing what he does about what Valyrian steel supposedly does to the Others and the wights they control, he’s glad he did.

Jaime gives it a twirl in his hand. It’s a showy move and nowhere near as smooth as it would have been in his right hand, but it feels good to do it. He may or may not have been practicing it with the stolen blade behind the curtains of his tent, having dropped it and flung it across the pavillion many times before he got it right and got used to flipping the blade around in a hand that was never meant to carry one in the first place.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She'd never developed a showy talent to her fighting: swordplay was not a way of life or an art for Brienne, it was the only escape left to a girl who couldn't be the girl everyone wanted. But her demeanor shifts, to those who know to look for it, when she hefts a sword into her hand. Her posture straightens up from that slight hunch she doesn't realize usually rounds her shoulders down. Her chin lifts and her steps are more sure. Here, her true confidence comes out.

But she's also brimming with excitement, bright eyes raking over the sight of Jaime with a sword in his hand again. She reminds herself to even out her breath, but it's a real chore because she knows fighting Jaime isn't like fighting anyone else. He waits and he watches the same way she does. He doesn't strike at her hard and fast out of pride or insecurity. Jaime likes the fight as much as the winning.

She's never been much of a shit talker, either, so she just watches Jaime like he's a very tasty meal she's about to eat as he warms himself up.

JAIME LANNISTER

“I honestly can’t tell whether she’s about to fight him or fuck him,” Bronn says to Addam, having seemingly materilized from the shadows with an apple in hand, loudly snacking on it as he settles in to watch the shitshow.

Jaime spares a narrowed glance at him, having picked up on that commentary, but quickly redirects his focus to Brienne.

“Well then, wench, what are you waiting for?”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She hears Bronn too, and her face flushes because she's not sure of the answer herself.

"I'm waiting for your better snipes, Lord Paramount," she retorts, circling him and taking in the way he moves. It reminds her of Arya, whose muddle-handed litheness provides the sort of challenge Brienne never gets when fighting most men. It had prepared her for the spearwives beyond the wall, but watching Jaime move in the same way brings back some sense-memory of their fight on the bridge.

She's since stopped trying to remember fights with any sort of real clarity: generally, all that's left after fighting for your life are the shock of near-misses and the wounds left by hits. She remembers the thrill of it, the power behind her arm. She remembers he talked too much then, too.

"Do you think me so easily baited as I once was?" When she smirks back at him it's slight. It's the one she only uses for him, usually when they're both naked. "Or am I still not worth your best?"

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime is a different breed of fighter altogether thanks to his Lannister genetics. Most of the swordsmen amongst the Westernlader flocks were men of hulking builds, while Jaime was slender and of a lighter build than most. (Something he dimly recalls being blamed on having been born an identical twin by the maester that tended to him in his youth.) It made him faster on his feet and more agile, able to reach and bend and twist in ways that that Casterly Rocks’ Master at Arms didn’t know quite what to do with. He didn’t like how ‘bouncy’ Jaime was, but Ser Arthur’s Dornish method of fighting, along with a few Targaryen tricks Rheagar taught him, suited him just fine.

Which likely makes his own personal fighting style unique. A mishmash blend of his Casterly Rock roots mixed together with Dornish and Valyrian techniques.

“You had the opportunity to fight me when I was at my best, unfortunately we were interrupted and I was robbed of the thing that made me the best. I’m afraid you’ll just have to deal with what remains.”

And with that, he charges her.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

He's upon her before it even registers in his eyes, trading quick blows as they feel each other out. It's thrilling, trying to keep up with his speed, unable to get enough strength behind a single blow to stagger him so that she can get a breath.

The rest of the world falls away, her focus narrowing in that pleasant buzz of finding a rhythm. It's the rhythm she's been missing, sparring with Wildlings and green boys, and even with brutal Sandor who at least can exhaust her past the point of thinking too hard on anything. But it's rare that she finds herself feeling the push and pull she wants.

She leads him around in a circle for a bit, trying to keep up and trying to pay attention all at once. She's living and breathing and her muscles burn, and gods now she thinks she should have taken his other offer instead. It's irritating and delightful, the way he's using her own tactics against her to try and tire her out.

When her feint fails and a blow glances off of her leathers, Brienne's eyes flash with anger and she all but growls at him. The soft sighs and gasps he can pull out of her with his hands and his mouth are gone here in the yard, leaving only the grunts and huffs of raw physical exertion. Here, where it's safe to be too much, Brienne doesn't hold back. But she's been watching him all this time, and she thinks she knows the key to this particular fight: he's showing off for her. He's showing her that despite losing that hand, he's still just as brutal as he was when he had it, no matter what he says to the contrary.

Regaining her footing and having a plan of attack now, Brienne shifts off of the backfoot and takes a few more glancing blows so that she can shore up her strength and begin battering him in earnest.

JAIME LANNISTER

One of the biggest issues Jaime had while working with Bronn on training his left hand to be his new sword hand was getting too stuck in his own head to let himself be. The sellsword turned knight of the Blackwater called him on it frequently, and Jaime sneered and snarled and never fully let himself go enough to move anywhere close to the way he used to while wielding a blade, leaving Bronn annoyed and dissatisfied with his progress. Even Addam told him he was thinking too much about what he was doing instead of just doing it, and Jaime had lashed back at his well-meaning friend by scoffing and abusing his authority by commanding him into obedient silence.

He’s still stuck in his head, but he’s doing what he couldn’t manage while training with Bronn and Addam, because he wants to show Brienne what he’s made of; desperately wants to show her whatever glimmer of his former self remains, to let her see just what it was that made him the best swordsmen in the whole of the Seven Kingdoms before his sword hand was taken from him. That there was a reason he earned that reputation, and that it had nothing to do with his name and everything to do with his skill.

But putting so much effort into showboating for her takes a toll on him. The muscles of his left arm aren’t used to this and are pulling taut against his shoulder blade and neck, straining to keep up with movements designed for a hand that’s no longer there. He’s fast and agile, moving with a cat-like grace, but even he has his limitations—

And distractions.

Such as Rosa practically bouncing with pure delight as she gets to stand at Addam’s side and watch two people spar up close, a place where a lady usually isn’t allowed. She’s thrilled and she’s grabbing onto Addam’s arm and pointing at them while saying things Jaime’s too far away to hear...