"He asked me if I was in your guard." This, she says with a soft smile as her eyes start to feel too heavy to keep open. As if gaining his permission to sleep is somehow enabling it to take her. She shifts with him, letting her weight settle in as she's drifting off.
"He's sweet like you."
JAIME LANNISTER
“Stubborn wench, go the fuck to sleep.”
His words and his laugh are all in good nature, full of warmth and affection he doesn’t have to hide. His left hand lifts to card through the tangle of her hair in hopes that it will help lull her into a restful slumber.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
If his words shut her eyes before, his warm laugh and cursing and his touch all seem to lull her into sleep fully. In here, in his arms, she doesn't worry about dragons, wights, or disappointed fathers. She dreams of Jaime, and of the north, and of Tarth. The bed's probably too small for them both but she clings to him and she doesn't mind.
JAIME LANNISTER
It’s mid-afternoon the following day before Jaime stirs. He awakes naturally, drifting into wakefulness once his mind and body have had their fill of sleep he’s missed out on while she was away. While he believed her to be dead.
He yawns like a lion, probably the only truly lion-like aspect of him, stretching his legs, which are half hanging off the bed in a position that ought to be uncomfortable, and turning onto his hip to snuggle closer to the dozing woman in his arms.
Jaime doesn’t want to wake her. Doesn’t want to jostle her. So he just holds her, watching her sleep, content to lie here for however long is necessary.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She wakes a little while after with a jolt, kicking and shouting. It's over as quickly as it began but it leaves her panting and disoriented, on alert as she blinks and tries to make sense of Jaime and her surroundings.
JAIME LANNISTER
She kicks him, but Jaime takes it, as he reaches for her, sitting up best he can around her momentary thrashing, putting a hand to her shoulder in attempt to steady and rouse her.
“Brienne. Brienne, wake up. Sweetling, it’s me. You’re safe. You’re in Winterfell.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
The sound of his voice helps her focus, and he never calls her that in her dreams. Sweetling. It leaves her blinking hard as she takes it in, lets the last day of events shuffle back into her memory again. She'd made it back. She'd woken to Jaime at her side. Twice, now.
"Jaime." She exhales a long, steadying breath as she looks up at him, face softening as the vague alarm fades. He's a relief, and she can look her fill of him in the light of the day, here in her bed. "You're still here."
JAIME LANNISTER
“Of course I am. Where else would I be? And before you say running a country, I’ve got people doing that for me in my necessary absence. I’m yours for as long as you need me.”
He’ll have to get up to piss eventually, but he can hold it for a while longer. And they should both look into eating something.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
It feels like too much. It's something she should argue, isn't it? He shouldn't have to drop everything just to watch her sleep and get kicked by her when she wakes. She doesn't need him per se, but she does want him here. She feels better about sleeping knowing he doesn't intend to leave her to wake alone.
She does scowl at him for taking the words right out of her mouth, though. It's a half-serious look that's full of fondness instead of real irritation.
"I should think Tommen would benefit from some of that necessary absence." It could be a chastisement, but her voice is far too soft for it to be anything but a suggestion. It's a question too, about where Jaime stands with the boy. She finds it hard not to think of him, not when she's found herself at odds with her own father.
JAIME LANNISTER
“He has been,” Jaime is quick to say. “In an odd turn of events, my lords don’t seem to give a damn about his parentage. He’s a bastard, he can’t inherit anything, and I’ve already named a legitimate trueborn Lannister as my heir, so they don’t fear him becoming Lord of Casterly Rock or Lord Paramount of the Westerlands in my steed. And Tommen doesn’t want it. He never did. He’s happy to play the role of bastard companion to young Lord Rickon and drag his cat around wherever he goes.”
A smile forms on his lips then, a proud, fatherly one he was never able to wear until now.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
Neither of them should be celebrating bastards borne of incest but Brienne leans up to press a kiss to Jaime's cheek, lured in by that magnetic smile and how happy he sounds that his child gets to just exist and be happy.
"Oh. That's wonderful," she says. "Jaime, that's—I'm so happy for you both."
She can't imagine it'll be easy on either of them, but he had been so wrecked in the Riverlands, after being dismissed and all but banished from his duties. He couldn't protect Tommen when he was king, but he can care for him openly as a bastard son. That is worth celebrating.
JAIME LANNISTER
“And it’s all thanks to you,” he says, bringing his left hand up to her cheek. He smooths his thumb over the apple of her cheek. “You protected him. You made sure he made it here safely. I cannot thank you enough for that.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
It had been no choice at all, in the moment. She'd thought about it afterward, and she'll never say this to his face, but if she had to choose whether he lost the last of his children or her, she'd pick herself every time. No question.
"You don't have to. I meant what I said." He deserved to be defended, and she hadn't even been sure it would work.
JAIME LANNISTER
“Impossible woman,” he mutters, bumping his nose against hers. “Stop giving me more reasons to love you.”
And yet he does. Just when he thinks he’s hit the peak of his ability to love her, she goes and gives him even more reasons to love her. Loving her continues to be this impossible, all encompassing thing that’s spiraled out of his control.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She wants to tell him how much Tommen reminds her of him, and how much she wanted to spend time with the boy, and how that never happens to her. She doesn't ever feel like she has the right to claim someone's time, and yet Jaime's son was so kind to her. Curious, and bright, and so kind.
But even as she opens her mouth, her stomach gives a mighty rumble. She vaguely remembers being fed broth as Sam had brought her around a few times after she'd been dragged into this room. But other than that, she's been resting and drinking only water. The roiling protest makes her flinch with discomfort, and she groans.
"Do you think you could find a maester? Samwell said a lot of things that I was in no state to comprehend about what I should be eating…"
JAIME LANNISTER
“Of course.”
With some reluctance, Jaime slips out from the covers. He slips his boots on, but drapes the shadowcat cloak on top of her to make up for the lack of his warmth. The sheathed sword is also leaned up against the bedside should she need it, Jaime feeling better about leaving her if he’s leaving her armed. It’s not Valyrian steel, but fine forged Rock steel will still do anyone in who decides to make the poor choice of messing with her.
He stops to relieve himself first, finding the nearest chamber pot to piss in before he begins searching for Samwell. The young man has a hearty stew and some loaves of warm, freshly baked bread sent up to her room, which Jaime takes from the scullery maid that tries to deliver them so he can bring in the tray himself.
It means he has to kick the door open after declaring, “It’s me, hold on, my arms are full,” but it also means he gets to sweep in with the tray and deliver breakfast in bed to her.
...or a late lunch, as it may be.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
There's a little yelp and a thud as he returns. The room isn't small but it is meant to hold a few injured. In the middle of it is Brienne, on her arse, looking up at him with an embarrassed flush to her face.
She had assumed finding a maester wouldn't take much time at all. After relieving herself and finding that she was mostly stable on two feet, she'd washed her face and put on a dressing robe with the intent to go out and find a maester herself.
Now, her damp hair is in her face as she tips her head back to take in the sight of her very beautiful nursemaid and the food he'd brought her.
"I thought you'd got waylaid," she explains, grumpily puffing her hair out of her face as she sits back up with a groan.
JAIME LANNISTER
“I did, by my need to piss and desire to bring you warm bread.” He sets the tray down on the bed and gestures to the loaves and the steam rising off them. “Fresh from the ovens.”
He holds out his left hand in offering, standing near enough that she could grab hold of the right as well if she needed to help haul herself up.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She does need both, though she tries just the one first and wobbles a bit before grasping his forearm to get herself righted. Her hands sweep over herself, dusting off her backside sheepishly.
"Took long enough to have baked it," she grouses, but cranes her neck to sniff and suss out what it is she's to be consuming today. Like Jaime, she eats for sustenance, but unlike him there are a few particulars of northern cuisine she doesn't like very much. "What's the stew?"
JAIME LANNISTER
“I’m not really sure...”
Jaime hovers near in case she needs to grab onto him again should her legs prove to be unsteady, not doing her the disservice of assuming she can’t stand and fight through any discomfort by trying to hold her upright.
“Should I have asked? Do you want me to go ask?”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She leaves her hand just touching his forearm for balance rather than steadying, and a soft laughs puffs out of her at his response.
"No," she snaps at his ludicrous reply, unable to school her laughter away. "But it's good you're Lord Paramount and not head of the kitchens."
Brienne climbs gingerly back onto the bed, careful not to jostle the tray too much before sitting as primly as her overlarge frame and soft mattress will allow. She reaches for bread first, breaking one of the loaves and holding out half to Jaime even as she eagerly dips her own half into the stew to sop it up for herself.
"Did the maester say I could leave soon?"
JAIME LANNISTER
“Tarly said you could take your leave of the tower if you wished, but you were welcome to stay for as long as you pleased.”
He doesn’t ask her to come back to his tents with him, doesn’t ask her if he can escort her to the quarters that he has been shamelessly sleeping in constantly since she was given up for dead, wanting to breath in her scent off her pillows and bask in what he could of the remnants she left behind.
Jaime takes the bread, holding it up to take a very un-lordly large bite out of it that he chews with an enthusiasm that isn’t needed where food isn’t going to be taken away from him if he doesn’t make a show of eating it. The warmth registers, as does the texture, but the taste... it’s there, but it hasn’t been important in quite some time.
“How is it?” He asks once he’s swallowed his mouthful. “I’m not really the best judge on that, so I will have to take your word for it. Not too horrible, I hope.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She nods, brisk and happy at the prospect of returning to her own room after they eat and gather her—ah, right. She'd had nothing on her when she came back.
"It's just fine," she says, unconvincingly diplomatic as her nose crinkles in response to the heavy flavoring. Brienne doesn't complain, because it's food and they're hard up for shipments from the Vale, and what little information about Dorne she'd been able to wrest from her father's reluctance to share amounted to unwilling at best and allied with the Dragon Queen at worst.
Her dislike of her meal doesn't stop her from eating it. She's slow, and careful, not necessarily because Samwell had told her she should eat carefully for a few days but because it comes naturally to her. Small bites of sopping bread and little sips of the broth, lifted to her mouth with both hands. She knows she makes a queer sight, has endured endless teasing by the Wildlings who wonder why she tries to make herself smaller in this way. But she doesn't care. She likes her manners, and she is glad to have driven them into Podrick too. (Geirthe is a lost cause, though she does still try her best.)
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25 -- DONE
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