"Hmm," she hums, unconcerned from whom he took it and more interested in its presence now here in Winterfell. "It's beautiful. Will you carry it?"
She wouldn't blame him for doing so, nor for returning it to one of the Starks.
JAIME LANNISTER
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “This is the first time I’ve shown it to anyone. No one knows I have it, if they even know it’s missing. I’m just glad it’s not in the hands of the Mad King’s daughter.”
Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. He doesn’t know, but what he does know is—
“It needs a better name. I was hoping you could help me with that. Before you go.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
"Oh. Well, I suppose I could try." She'd been as subtle as a morningstar with Oathkeeper so maybe this time she can manage a little better.
She reaches for it and then pulls back, as if remembering herself and gestures toward it instead of just grabbing it. "May I?"
JAIME LANNISTER
She’d touched his heart in ways he had been unable to express at the time when she dubbed the blade he gifted her with Oathkeeper. A way of both paying tribute to the promise they swore to Lady Catelyn they were doing their best to uphold and her turning his shame in on itself.
An oathbreaker no more.
“Of course.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
Sparing him a quick, shy look, Brienne turns her attention to the sword, fingers curled surprisingly delicately as she runs a finger along the flat of the blade before picking it up with the same reverence she'd held Catelyn's hand all those years ago now.
She hasn't touched Oathkeeper in more than a year. Widow's Wail, it thrums with the same eagerness to be wielded that she swears must be magic. The weight isn't so different (its spellforged twin cuts through the air like a wing, too) but the hilt's balance and the shortness make her think it would be a good fit for Jaime's hand.
Brienne lifts it, tip pointed upward and lets her gaze draw up with it, and then back down again. She thinks of the sword she dreamed about as a child, and turns her attention to Jaime, who has come so far from the vile man he was when she met him. He reminds her of the ideals of chivalry in the purest sense: he's been tested, and he's failed, and he means to change. Maybe he means to return to an ideal he once saw in Ser Arthur Dayne, but Brienne thinks perhaps he's better for knowing what it is to falter and yet get back up with kindness and justice in his heart.
"The Just Hand," she says. Her cheeks pink. It's probably too on the nose, but with the Perfect Knight in her mind standing alongside Jaime, who isn't ashamed of his maiming and now uses it to his advantage...well. It blurts out of her, unbidden.
JAIME LANNISTER
The rechristening of the blade that he stole from his bastard sons is simple, but carries so much meaning behind it. What little faith Jaime had in the Seven died the moment Ned Stark spotted him sitting on the Iron Throne with the Mad King's blood pooling at his feet. He stopped believing, but he still knows the stories: How the Maiden gave Ser Galladon of Morne a sword dubbed the Just Maid as a token of her affections for him.
Just as the name was a token of Brienne's affections for him. "The Just Hand," he echoes, looking down at the stump of his maimed arm, then back up a her. "Only fitting that the one who gave Oathkeeper its name got to give its forge twin a more fitting one. Just Hand it is."
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She had expected him to balk at the name or make a jape of some kind, so when he accepts it so easily, she has to dip her chin to keep from saying something silly. Instead, she turns to face him and lays the sword over her forearm to offer it to him.
"No matter what you do with it, it's got a piece of you, always." Which, if she were that witty woman she isn't, she would find endlessly hilarious, given that it also carries Ned Stark's legacy. But she's overserious, and holds it out to him reverently.
JAIME LANNISTER
Oh, he's well aware that both of them are carrying a piece of Ned Stark with them in wielding the blades that were reforged from his Great Sword. —or he is, anyway. Oathkeeper still rests above the hearth in the Great Hall, untouched since the moment she put it down and refused to carry it when she left. Part of him wants to press her to pick it up again, but the other part respects her choice too much to urge her into doing something she may not want to do.
And in spite of what he said, another part of him had seriously considered giving this sword to her too, but the notion was only briefly entertained.
Jaime takes the blade and returns it to its sheath, setting it down so the hilt rests propped up against the foot of her bed.
"I didn't mean to steal your thunder. You asked me here to tell me something."
BRIENNE OF TARTH
"Steal my thunder?" She breaks from her reverie of the sword, blinking up at him for a moment. "You haven't. I just thought—it's only, I don't wish you to continue thinking I dislike your company. And if my father is going to stay in this keep soon enough, there are perhaps some things you deserve to know."
Shyness takes her again as she turns to offer him the chair which sits opposite the table she's arranged so that one of them can sit there and the other can sit on her bed. "There was supposed to be something of a meal, but—"
And with good timing, a maid raps and hips the door open, wielding a tray of mostly soldier's rations, though she's also placed a few pear tarts beside them, and only smiles at Brienne when she begins to tut over them. The girl is in and out quickly, before Brienne can get her to take the tarts to someone who might deserve them more, and Brienne stands beside her little table and realizes the girl had also lit a small taper to place among the setting.
Brienne's blush is fierce, but she's also smiling despite herself, gesturing again to the chair, voice a little higher than she'd like. "Are you hungry?"
JAIME LANNISTER
Jaime doesn't care about the taste or the pleasant aromas of food anymore. He doesn't even care about how the food looks and will eat anything that appears to be remotely edible — much to the horror of everyone around him one dinner several weeks ago when he ate several garnishing laid next to the boar for pure aesthetic embellishment. Sansa had told him the plants were nothing more than weeds that grew everywhere in spite of their roots being pulled and the snow freezing the soil. He'd shrugged and made some comment about the wispy plant being stubborn and bafflingly resilient, just like him, and ate another sprig just to make a show of doing so.
But from the way Sansa regarded him the rest of the meal, it was evident that she was beginning to piece together some of the unsung verses of the song that made up his story. That he'd lost more than just his hand while a prisoner of war, that his sass and snark were his way of glossing over a bigger issue that's likely never been addressed.
He thinks himself lucky that he doesn't care, lucky that taste and texture don't bother him. It means he'll stand a better chance of surviving if rations begin to thin once the Army of the Dead reaches Winterfell's walls. Jaime will eat what others won't. Jaime knows how to survive on little to nothing.
"Famished," he says, taking the chair offered to him.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
Brienne settles in on the bed, perched at the edge easily enough as her long legs press together in a sort of side-saddle mockery that leaves her sitting just as straight backed as anyone would assume she sits when she's relaxing.
Her nerves have changed, though they still remain as frayed as they have been since yesterday, and though she pulls her trencher closer to herself she still waits until Jaime digs in first. She realizes that even if he'll eat just about anything, the maid had brought her water to drink as per usual, and so Brienne decides to worry over that for a little bit, frowning at their cups. Then she determines that she won't get this over with until she starts, and she'd asked him for this express purpose, so.
"I hadn't wanted Jon to know. About my prior betrothals." She blurts it out, and it seems an all right enough place to start. It eases her rigid shoulders a little. "I hadn't wanted anyone to know."
Jon's been looking at her differently, and though she knows she has his trust and respect as a sword, she can't help but wonder what he must think of her as a lady. She could have had heirs without having to put said sword down.
"Except Lady Sansa. She managed my father's expectations, as my liege. But he's—well, as southron as you'd expect," she laughs, considering the irony of thinking to mention that to another southroner. But she thinks maybe it's a start, to giving Jaime a glimpse into those worries he tends to assume are about him.
JAIME LANNISTER
Jaime has wolfed down a portion of the food already. He eats fast when he’s not being deliberately mindful of his manners and how it must look for a Lord of a Great House to scarf food down like someone will take it from him if he doesn’t eat it as quickly as possible. He looks up at her as she speaks, licking his fingers clean when she comments about her father being impossibly southron.
(He eats like an animal when left to his own devices. Yikes.)
“I hadn’t wanted to pry,” he says of her betrothals. “You mentioned another broken one when you thought I was a figment of your imagination in hot springs. It wasn’t my place to question further, given that you hadn’t meant to say it to me — to the real me.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
It doesn't make her blink to be in the presence of someone who eats with a desperation that speaks of a time where food was not a foregone conclusion. If she wasn't already used to Jaime, traveling with the free folk and having to do the same at times would have disabused her of any judgment of the behavior.
(Still, she eats quite slowly, pinky raised with deliberate poise.)
After a sip of water, and marshaling her discomfort with the subject, Brienne smiles a little at his response. "Thank you. I was—I used to see you—well. That's another story, for another supper."
Another sip. "My father, he's a good man. He means well, he does. But he's not so foolish as everyone likes to say, about allowing me to leave. He had little choice in the matter, after three failures to secure me a match. The third was a refusal after he tried to order me to put my sword away. So when this recent proposition arose, and I entertained it..." she says it with an embarrassed grimace, knowing now that she would never have accepted. "It wasn't a bad match. It would have helped Jon, and made my father happy, and I wouldn't have had to put my sword away until I wanted to, and so refusing it, well. I had gotten a lot of hopes up only to dash them. You heard how angry he is."
JAIME LANNISTER
"Tormund Giantsbane."
Jaime is far more clever a man than most give him credit for, and he's easily able to put the unspoken pieces together. The leader of the Free Folk had proposed a match to her and though she had entertained it, she had ultimately declined it. A match between a highborn from the South and a leader from Beyond the Wall would have helped strengthen alliances, yet, and the politician within (that he hates, that voice can fuck right on off) can't help but think of the possibilities that sort of alliance would have brought to not only the North, but all the realms south of the Wall...
But that wasn't worth Brienne sacrificing her happiness. Settling for a good match when one's heart wasn't in it... What was the point of that?
"I refused several offers," he tells her. "Not the ones that were arranged in my youth, you already know I was very nearly wed to Lysa Tully and the betrothal contract had to be burned upon my induction into the Kingsguard. But when I took this seat, when I agreed to be Lord Paramount. My lords wanted me to father a legitimate heir to ensure the continuation of the glorious Lannister legacy that my father spewed propaganda about at every twist and turn. That's why Rosa is here. I refused to wed any of the daughters they presented me with and I had to name a legitimate Lannister as my successor to appease them."
BRIENNE OF TARTH
Her eyes pop wide with surprise at how quickly he lands on the right name, and her cheeks pink with the internal shame she still feels about the entire ordeal. It's both terrifying to have it laid out for him and at the same time, because he offers to share his own similar experience, lifts some of the burden from her shoulders.
"I'm glad for it," she can honestly say that, that she's happy Jaime held out for himself. That he made a choice that maybe he's not entirely pleased with but that didn't compromise him so terribly, either. "I know it can't have been easy, building what you have, and doing the things you've done to make it a reality."
JAIME LANNISTER
“Rosa is the youngest daughter of a third or fourth cousin, I can never remember. A distant branch on the Lannister family tree. She would have gone forgotten as a girl, as the youngest child. She spent most of her life trapped in her father’s small keep on the edge of Lannisport. It shames me to say that I didn’t want to name anyone from my family, because I don’t like what my family has become. My father, my sister — even my brother is corrupt in his own way, much as I tried to shield him from that influence in our youth. I didn’t want another Tywin Lannister at the Rock or, Seven forbid, to name one of Aunt Genna’s Frey sons to the seat. Rosa is as far removed from the core beliefs of our House as they come, completely untouched by bullshit Lannister idealism. She’ll make a good Lady Paramount, one day. I believe she’ll do right by our people.”
Daenerys Targaryen wants to break the wheel. Jaime doesn’t know that she does, doesn’t know that he’s helping to play into the ambitions of a woman he isn’t sure is free of the madness that plagued her father by naming a girl as his successor.
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11 -- DONE
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