Work Text:
It takes longer than any of the humans have endurance for, but they survive the Battle for the Dawn. The Others and their foul creatures are defeated, the threat driven back and then down into the snow, buried under the weight of their own heavy bodies. The human armies fight and they fight and they fight, and then suddenly: they win.
The sun rises again, and Jaime thinks the light would have turned the snow pink if it weren't already black and red with gore. Everyone lowers their swords to the ground and lifts their faces to the sun. Everyone, Jaime notes, except Brienne. She shuts her lovely eyes and her body slumps, then falls, like a mountain sighing off a small hill of snow that turns into an avalanche.
He's already at her side, so he kneels with her, barely grabbing her before she collapses entirely.
“Are you injured?” he asks urgently, scanning her body for any visible wounds. It's still difficult to see in the light; it's been so long since the sky has been any color but black that his eyes haven't adjusted, thin slits to beat back the glare. Not that he could see if she was injured anyway; everyone had given up cleaning themselves days ago. All of the blood and viscera on her armor might belong to her – or none of it might.
“Tired,” she mumbles, and as though she's invoked his own exhaustion, Jaime sags against her.
The two of them and their glowing swords had been at the front lines of the battle nearly the entire time. There were naps, occasionally, and food when they could stomach it, but what Jaime remembers most is fighting. His body feels wrong at rest. The two of them should be standing back-to-back, sword arms swinging long past reason, sharing heat and screams and brief moments of victory. Jaime's empty palm itches. It all feels wrong – the silence and the open hands and the blinding light – until Brienne wraps her sword hand around his, and they sit leaning against each other in the snow and the sunrise, holding hands with the same unyielding grip they'd held their swords.
It's Podrick who gets them up on their feet and into Winterfell's walls once more.
“Ser. My lady,” he says, appearing as if conjured. He'd fought some, Jaime remembers, but mostly he's been keeping them alive with his support, forcing them to rest and eat. Podrick tugs Brienne's arm, still at his task even now. “We must get inside.”
“Podrick,” she says. Her voice as raspy as when she'd come for Jaime after being hanged. “You live.”
“Yes,” he says. “Inside, please.”
There's no way the boy will be able to lift her, and she seems uninterested in moving on her own, so Jaime levers himself to his feet using the sword he'd dropped at his side, and then drops it again to grab on to her thickly muscled arm.
“Up, wench,” he orders her. His voice is little better than hers. Had he been screaming that much? The noise had been so constant, so loud, he might have screamed the entire time and not heard himself. He can barely hear now.
Jaime doesn't lift her, either, but his prodding gets her to her feet, and they wrap their arms around each other and shuffle slowly towards Winterfell. It is a sign of their exhaustion that Podrick has to grab both of their forgotten swords and follow after them.
All Jaime knows next is that Podrick scoots in front of them as they manage the impossible task of walking, and they follow him – a will o' the wisp leading them through a dark night, through shadowy figures that cry and call out, over ground that crunches and slips beneath their tired feet. Except at the end of this trail, there is a bed, big enough for the two of them and Podrick besides, curled up at the end like some scruffy stray.
None of them takes off their armor. They collapse, filthy and perhaps wounded, and sleep.
They sleep, and Jaime, at least, does not dream.
Jaime wakes to armor digging so deeply into his ribs that he's having trouble breathing. He gasps and shifts around until the mail stops trying to embed itself into his skin, convinced at first there's a wight on top of him, some chitinous monster, some--
He flails out and, in the process, accidentally kicks Podrick, who startles up with a cry. That wakes Brienne, who sits quickly, her hand reaching for a sword that isn't there.
“Jaime–“ It's a gasp more than a word, and he holds his hand out to steady her.
“I'm here. A series of unfortunate awakenings, that's all,” he explains, breathing hard.
Brienne blinks at him, round and slow as a cow. He'd thought of her that way when they'd first met, but he's learned since that she's as fierce as a lion. The way she'd fought out there, when there had been no hope of winning – he's never seen its like. There was little docility to her before; there is none, now.
“The Others--”
“Defeated,” he reminds them both. His heart begins to slow. No hope of winning, yet here they are.
“The battle--”
“Over,” he assures her.
She furrows her brow. Her eyes are so blue, even in the dim firelight. “How?”
“Truly? I don't know. But we've been asleep for...” Jaime takes stock of the room. No windows, so impossible to tell time of day, not that he knew what time it was when they went to sleep. He takes stock of himself, too, finds he's unbearably stiff and needs to relieve himself with a growing necessity. Whatever fire had been in this room when they arrived – and he only vaguely recalls it – is dying swiftly. “A while,” he settles on. “We should get up before we freeze to our armor.”
Brienne looks down at herself and grimaces. “We should have cleaned up before we slept.”
“Yes, we should have, but you were barely able to walk here, even with assistance. Unless you mean you should have made your poor, spent squire do it for you.” He gestures at Podrick, who puts on a truly pitiful look that Jaime nearly applauds him for.
Brienne purses her lips, obviously annoyed and just as clearly unwilling to do anything about it. “Of course I wouldn't,” she says. She stretches, her arms reaching high up towards the ceiling like trees towards the sky. “But we've slept long enough. We must rise and see what the state of things is.”
“We must have a bath,” Jaime counters. “And food.” His stomach growls eagerly. “Lots of food.” He can hear better, now, and he can see better, and he can feel better, too, his body beginning to thaw. This must be what a spring flower feels like as it emerges from its shell, he thinks.
He stands with the dexterity and speed of a hundred-year-old tortoise, stifling multiple groans until his very lungs hurt with the effort.
Brienne is already on her feet and fiddling with her buckles by the time Jaime lifts himself off the bed. She's grimacing, at least, and if he were a better man he wouldn't feel quite so glad of it. Podrick stands, too, younger and faster than either of them, and he looks between them in consternation.
“Help your lady,” Jaime tells Pod, just as Brienne says, “Assist Ser Jaime.”
They exchange a look and Podrick seems as though he might cry if he has to decide himself. Jaime knows Brienne will never concede this, and he does only have the one hand, so he waves the boy over and the pure relief on the lad's face is worth the small humiliation of being grateful to have help, though he wishes it were Brienne who were helping him. She's deft at her own buckles and armor, calling Pod away a time or two to help places she can't reach, but managing all of it otherwise. The boy is well-meaning, which is about the best Jaime can say about him. Podrick is also sporting the same fading scars around his neck that Brienne has, and a cut on his jaw that Jaime remembers him getting when they'd fought off Stoneheart's men, so Jaime just quietly thanks him as they struggle together to get the armor off.
“Now what?” Brienne asks when they've stripped down to shifts and braies, relieved themselves, and built up the fire.
“We check for wounds,” Jaime says, reaching for her shift. She takes a step back and his hand hovers in the air between them before he lowers it to his side. “Frightened of me, wench? I thought we left that behind with my hand?”
She swallows, and Jaime wonders idly if it hurts to do so, with her cheek and her neck. It's been months and they've healed well enough, but the scars are still vivid and tender-looking. “Not frightened,” she says.
Jaime doesn't have time to piece together what that means because Podrick steps forward. “I can check for you, ser. My lady.”
“I have more battle experience,” Jaime says. It's foolish, but he wants to see with his own eyes that Brienne is, indeed, uninjured. His stomach rumbles loudly again. “We could use food, though. Get some and bring it back here, Podrick. Get a sense of what's happening, as well, but don't dawdle. I'm just as like to eat a shirt if I have to wait too long, and if that happens it will be one of yours.”
Podrick blanches but he nods and scurries off. Brienne is frowning again when Jaime looks at her.
“He's not an errand boy,” she says.
“He is today. And likely I will be tomorrow, and you the day after. You saw the damage done to this place. It'll take weeks worth of work, and I'm afraid I missed the necessary construction lessons growing up. Not that I would be much good for that anyway.” He waves his bare stump and Brienne doesn't flinch. He'd lost the golden hand somewhere in the fighting and the darkness; Jaime had been sad to see it go and then hadn't had time to spare it another thought. He doesn't miss it now.
“If you're done protesting every last recommendation I make, let me check you for wounds,” he continues.
Brienne nods a little and turns her back to him. This time when he reaches for the edge of her shift, she remains still. Rigidly so, her entire body tense.
“Be at ease,” Jaime murmurs, lifting the linen up to her neck. “There's nothing I haven't seen before.”
That earns a splotchy, far-reaching blush that creeps down over her neck and her shoulders. The combined armor and clothing have kept the dirt and blood off of their skin, and Jaime scans her pale, powerful back, cataloguing old wounds but finding nothing new. He uses his stump to hold the fabric against the back of her neck, and brushes at what might be dirt. Brienne jumps under his touch and he presses his fingertips into her skin.
“It's just me,” he tells her quietly. She nods, her hair brushing loose against his arm. She's let it grow, which had surprised him when he'd first arrived in Winterfell with his men. If it were washed and styled, it might even be made ladylike. He wonders if it would suit her as much as her simple plait, as much as Oathkeeper.
The dirt turns out to simply be freckles. She's received no obvious injuries, so Jaime runs his fingers over her back, feeling his way for broken bones or internal wounds. He discovers instead an old scar, the deep, central valley of her spine, the taut muscles of her side, which are trembling by the time he's done. Her skin is much softer than he would have thought, silk against his fingertips.
His cock stirs a little and he abruptly drops her shift, feeling like a lecherous old man.
“Turn around,” he tells her sharply.
She does, and somehow that's worse. Brienne's face is a mess – it must itch as much as his does, with all that's caked upon it – but her eyes are wide and blue and as remarkable as the sky had seemed after the endless dark. In the few moments where he wasn't fighting or passed out from exhaustion, Jaime had doubted he'd ever see the sky again, and Brienne's eyes had been the only blue in the world. It would be enough if they were, he thinks.
“I can check the rest,” she says hoarsely.
“I'll do it,” he tells her. “Lift your top.”
Her wide teeth sink into her full bottom lip and Jaime is mesmerized by their white against the pink. She shuts her eyes and tugs her shift up, covering her mouth, the only thing that breaks his attention from it.
Focus, fool, he orders himself, and then looks down at her chest.
It's true that he's seen all this before: the firm plane of her abdomen, her wide waist, her barely perceptible breasts. He doesn't remember her nipples being so rosy or peaked, though; doesn't recall the way her belly ripples when she breathes. Jaime rubs his thumb across a streak of blood just above her hip and Brienne inhales sharply, her chest rising enticingly. He adds the rest of his fingers and palm, so his whole hand is pressed against her side, and he rubs it up her ribs, one side and then the other, stopping just below her breasts, the slight swell so near that if she were to move even a little they'd brush his skin. His hand itches to cup one small mound, weigh and squeeze it in his grip, pluck the nipple between his fingers to see what other sounds she might make.
Jaime turns away with a grunt, hard in his braies. “You're fine,” he manages to say, staring at the fire glowing dimly. Someone needs to stoke it, load it with wood. Where is the bloody boy?
Jaime feels his own shirt lift, cool air on his skin, and he startles.
“What are you doing?” he gasps, stumbling a step away.
Brienne looks mortified when Jaime looks back at her. “I-- I thought-- you checked me and I thought--”
Of course. She's returning the courtesy, nothing more. “Apologies,” he says, smiling ruefully. “I didn't expect it.”
“It was presumptuous,” she starts and Jaime shakes his head.
“No, you were being a good...” He struggles for the right word. “You're being helpful. I don't think anything is broken, but my entire body aches. Please, continue.”
Jaime presents his back to her and he feels her presence just before she lifts his top again. He shivers at the cool brush of the air; shivers harder at her warm hand placed gently on his back. There are not many details Jaime remembers of the period from when his hand was cut off to when he was in Harrenhal, but this he will never forget: Brienne's hands moving tenderly on his body, cleaning him, checking his wound, his temperature. Even in his pain and rage and shame, he knew her touch.
Now that he's awake and aware, he can feel the bumpy rasp of her calluses, the way the tips of her fingers curl into his ribs, the press of her thumb into his muscles.
None of this is helping the state of his traitorous cock.
After what feels like an hour of careful rubbing, during which Jaime swallows down an endless moan, Brienne drops his shirt again.
“Turn around,” she tells him, and he bites back a nearly hysterical laugh. There will be no hiding the effect she's had on him, but he has no idea how to tell her no without wounding her, and Jaime is tired of inflicting wounds. He's spent days, years, a lifetime, doing just that.
He clears his throat. “I'm afraid I am unsuited for that at the moment,” he tells the air in front of him.
Jaime can almost hear her confused frown. “You said yourself, there's nothing either one of us hasn't seen before.”
“I was mistaken on that front,” he admits. “I can check myself.”
“You can, but I cannot? Turn around.”
No, here after the end of the world, after they've fought and bled and nearly died together, exhausted and worn to the bone, there is little retiring about Brienne any longer.
“I think it is best--”
“I truly don't care,” she says. And she tugs him – tugs him, like a child – to face her. It catches him so off-guard he doesn't resist at all, and she lowers her hand and her eyes to the hem of his shift and then stops. A tiny squeak escapes her: “Oh.”
“Oh,” he agrees. Even the embarrassment is doing nothing for the blood pumping eagerly downward. It's worse, having her eyes on him, thinking of her hand--
Jaime snaps his chin up to stare somewhere at her broad forehead. “I did try to warn you.”
“It is... understandable,” she stammers. “To...to respond that way. When someone touches you.” Brienne is red as the embers of the dying fire and he'd feel badly for her if he weren't busy feeling so badly for himself. “I need-- I need to be sure there are no injuries.”
“Get on with it, then,” he mutters.
Brienne nods. Presses her lips together so they look almost normal, not the plump distractions he's used to, and then she nods again. Her eyes skate over his face, down his chest, and then off to the side. “Lift your top.”
A simple command, and yet Jaime finds his hand unable to move. Not a day before they were fighting creatures of nightmare; he's faced down men wild-eyed with bloodlust; he killed the king he'd sworn to protect. But this, this is where all his courage fails him.
“We need to check,” Brienne tells him doggedly. She is staring equally as hard past him as he is past her. “I will not take offense at your condition, ser.”
“My condition?” He does laugh, then, and Brienne glares. “My cock's not pregnant, wench, though it's caused that condition in another.”
She turns nearly purple in her scrunched-up cheeks. “I have seen men's... states before,” she goes on, and gods, if Jaime had thought her looking at his erect cock was bad, talking about it was infinitely worse. “It is a natural occurrence and I know you don't mean it.”
He should just agree with her – say it's an outcome after every battle, admit that he hasn't felt a woman's touch since Cersei, blame it on the heat of the fire, if he must.
“Don't mean it?” he says instead, because he's offended that she thinks it's all just accidental. “I bloody well do.”
“You don't,” she insists. “It's just... eagerness after a fight.”
“We slept for hours,” he reminds her.
“You have been away from Cersei for months.”
“I've been away from her before. And I told you when I arrived: I am not my sister's creature any longer.” The last he adds with a quiet yet fierce sincerity; this in particular he needs Brienne to believe. It had been a revelation to himself when he'd ridden up to Winterfell and had seen Brienne and known it to be true.
Brienne gnaws at her lip again and Jaime feels a strange certainty settle upon him. “The warmth of the fire, then,” she says weakly.
He chuckles, soft. “Even you don't believe that,” he says.
“I-I don't...”
Jaime gives her space, until he considers how that sentence might end unfavorably. “You don't what?” he asks, searching her face. Her eyes don't have the familiar sheen of disgust in them that Cersei's had had at the end. They aren't filled with the same consuming lust, either, not as he knew it from his twin. But there is something, and he has to follow it through.
“Brienne, do you think this would have happened had it been anyone else?”
“Yes?” It's not confusion he hears in her voice; she looks far too clear-eyed for that. The line between her brows is not one born of misunderstanding, the firm set of her jaw isn't braced because she's waiting to make sense of things.
Ah. He understands now what he's seeing in those blue depths. She is nervous, not unwilling. “No,” he tells her. “No one else.”
“Not even--”
“Not even her. In truth, she wouldn't have even touched me at all. But if she had, I would have recoiled from it. This,” he waves at himself vaguely, “is because of your touch, Brienne. Because it's you.”
“But I am...”
“Dour? Yes.” Her bafflement turns swiftly to annoyance, and Jaime grins recklessly at her. “A bit slow to see what's right in front of you? Apparently.”
She huffs, folding her thick arms over her chest.
“Marvelous? Exquisitely so.” She flushes deeply red. “It's all you,” he repeats. His brief flash of courage is fading, so he strips his shirt off and throws it to the floor. “My condition is recovered. Finish your examination, and see if it is so.”
She makes a choked noise somewhere between embarrassment and desire and presses one hand to her mouth. The other hangs at her side still, though her fingers twitch. Jaime takes her wrist, circling it loosely, watching her as he would a skittish horse. Brienne's eyes are wide and wanting above the hand still clamped across her mouth. He pulls her hand towards him, and presses her palm to his bare chest, and they both shudder at the contact.
Brienne digs the heel of her palm into his sternum and Jaime's heart is pounding so hard she must feel the reverberation of it in her hand.
“Jaime,” she breathes and he lets her wrist go.
“Am I injured?” he asks her.
She moves her hand tentatively down his chest, to his stomach, her long fingers trailing around to his ribs. She covers so much of his body with the span of one hand. He wonders how it would feel to have that hand wrapped around his cock.
“Brienne,” he says, the word strangled by his arousal. “Am I injured?”
She's staring at him – at the old wounds she traces with her fingertips, at the trail of golden hair disappearing into his braies that she follows to the dip of his navel and then stops. At his cock, which is harder and more demanding than ever. Her other hand presses to his other side, and he feels embraced just in the cup of her palms.
“No,” she says. Her voice is low and deep, a tone he's never heard from her before but it rumbles through him with a familiar, curling need. This feeling Jaime knows too well. He's been fighting it since the Quiet Isle just as intently as he'd fought the hordes of wights. He's losing, here, because Brienne is the foe, not in her place at his side. Because he doesn't want to win.
“How is my state?”
He's watching her face when he asks it, watches the pink rise to her skin. “It-- It is...” The look she gives him is extraordinary – frustrated and cross and hopeful and – finally – sparking with desire. “I mean to say--”
Jaime surrenders, leans up and steals whatever she's going to say with his lips, swallowing her stuttered explanation. She's alarmed at first, her hands clenching almost painfully into his sore sides, and he waits to be shoved away.
Instead, Brienne pulls him closer. Her lips open to his, awkward and unsure, but Jaime is, too. He's never kissed a woman besides Cersei, and Brienne's mouth doesn't fit his the way Cersei's had. It's wider, the lips softer. Brienne hides her teeth where Cersei had used hers to bite. Jaime understands that urge now, wanting to nip and suck at the tender flesh, but he gentles himself, teases his tongue against Brienne's, is rewarded with her high, needy hum. Even the lingering dirt and sweat cannot compare with the sweetness of her taste. Jaime's condition is getting almost unbearable, and he has to force himself not to drag her lower body against his.
“Ser! My lady!” Podrick squeaks, and Jaime and Brienne break apart with matching gasps. The boy is standing in the open doorway, a tray full of food clutched in his two hands, his face a picture of shock. Jaime tangles his hand into Brienne's shift, holding her near. One of her hands is still curved possessively around his waist, he's pleased to note, though the other is flailing helplessly towards her squire. She is gaping, open-mouthed. Her lips are reddened and wet – because of me, Jaime thinks proudly. He turns a furious stare on the boy.
“Go away, Podrick,” Jaime orders with gritted teeth. “We've not finished checking each other for wounds.”
“I-- I--”
Jaime half-growls at him and Podrick dumps the tray hastily on the ground before scampering away, slamming the door shut behind him.
Taking a steadying breath, Jaime looks back at Brienne. She looks stunned.
“Our food,” she says.
“It can wait,” Jaime assures her, though his stomach clenches painfully in disagreement. It gurgles, too, joining his body's ongoing rebellion against his intentions.
Brienne's fingers are still hot against Jaime's skin, and when she clenches them more tightly it feels like a brand. “You're hungry,” she says.
“Yes,” he murmurs, leaning nearer, but this time she does push him away. Gently, but firm.
“Not now,” she says. And then, her face pinking delightfully once more, she adds, “But, later.”
“Later,” he agrees. He unwinds his hand from her shift, bends to grab his own and pull it back on. Brienne looks disappointed when his head pops out of his collar and he smiles slyly at her. “Shall I take it back off?”
Brienne quickly shakes her head, no, but he doesn't miss the way her eyes linger on the exposed skin at his throat.
They pick up the tray of food and set it on the table, feed the fire and then seat themselves stiffly in the chairs to feed themselves. Later will be better anyway. They're both still exhausted and covered in grime; a bath and a rest will do them good. And there is time, somehow. Whatever is happening outside of their door, it is not war, which means they have later where none has ever been before.
“You terrified Podrick,” Brienne eventually says, not quite able to meet his gaze. He hopes she's not regretting the kiss.
“He needs to learn to knock.”
“He thought we were decent,” she replies with enough bite that Jaime grins.
“Seems a foolish thought to have about me.”
Brienne gives him a dry look from across the table, and Jaime's insides shift inside of him as though an earthquake has rent his soul apart, exposing the deep, endless well of his feelings. This battle he's entirely lost now, as he stares helplessly into her eyes and tries to remember how to breathe.
“Jaime?” Brienne asks, her hand stretching near.
“I'm well,” he reassures her. Tentatively, he meets her hand halfway with his own, linking their fingers. The sense of rightness from before returns. His right hand had been his sword hand; he suspects his left was made for this.
“What do we do next?” she asks, staring at their entwined hands.
Get married, he thinks, but no. That's for later, too. He squeezes her hand.
“A bath. Fresh clothes. Perhaps an apology to your squire.” Brienne's lips twitch into a small smile, before falling to seriousness once more.
“What about... what we were doing?”
No one could have stopped her on the battlefield; no one can turn her when her mind is set on something. Jaime is surprised now that he ever doubted they'd live, when Brienne had been at his side the whole time. She is all remarkable courage and unceasing goodness, and she is here holding his hand and looking as though she's waiting for him to admit regret.
“You promised me later, my lady. I intend to hold you to it.”
“If, if you don't wish it--”
“Brienne.” Her eyes flicker up to meet his. “If I didn't feel and smell like a corpse myself in this moment, I would show you that it's only the beginning of what I wish to do with you.”
The linen shift can't hide her deep breath. Her sweaty palm can't hide her rapid pulse.
“Jaime,” she says again, not a question this time, but an answer.
The fight is over and they're here on the other side of it, alive and together. “Let's eat,” he says, squeezing her hand one more time. She lets go as reluctantly as he does. “We'll need our strength. For later.”
“It's just kissing,” she mumbles, picking at her plate.
He grins a little but a timid knock at the door interrupts his reply.
“Come in, Pod,” Brienne says.
The door opens, the boy peeking his head around the door, staring intently at the floor. “S-ser. M-my lady. May I...?”
“Everyone's fully clothed, lad,” Jaime tells him grandly.
The boy blushes nearly as complete as Brienne. “I'm sorry about earlier,” he mumbles, shuffling inside.
“No apologies necessary,” Brienne says, shooting Jaime a warning look. “Have you eaten?”
“No.” Podrick's gaze shifts hungrily to the table and then back to the floor.
“Then eat with us,” she tells him kindly.
He hesitates. “If you're sure. I don't want to interrupt your... your wound checking.”
Jaime smothers a laugh at the boy's unmistakable tone. He has spirit, Jaime will give him that. Podrick walks to the table, glancing sidelong at Jaime before he grabs a hunk of bread and crumbles of cheese.
“Fear not,” Jaime says, popping a torn-off chunk of cold biscuit in his mouth. “We still have to check our lower bodies for injury.”
He nearly chokes on his food at the scandalized look on their faces. Neither of them seems concerned about his imminent death, though – Podrick sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of the fire, Brienne taking Jaime in with an amused, disapproving look.
Podrick relays to them what he's learned as he eats, that the battle has been won, that the wounded are being cared for and everyone else is slowly waking much as they did. His voice is soft, Brienne's as well in reply. It's peaceful, the three of them here in the room: the crackling fire, their bellies not so ravenous. The promise of later loud in the silent looks Brienne sends his way.
The fighting is over. Jaime's palm feels empty. He takes Brienne's hand.