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Even if the knock on the door was expected, her heart skips a beat when it finally comes. Before she can say anything, it opens slowly.
Jaime crosses the threshold and closes it behind him. The knuckles of his left hand are white where his hand still holds the doorknob, and his eyes… staring down at his hand, his golden curls falling on his forehead now they are longer.
He can’t stand the sight of me. But the elder brother had said he had stayed beside her while she lay on the brink of death, refused to leave, defied the rules. Held her hand.
Because he thought you were dying, stupid girl.
Jaime takes a deep breath, head raising, and his eyes are sharp, hard, unflinching. Unyielding. They burn with an anger that freezes her to the spot.
“The Elder Brother said you asked to see me.”
His voice sounds so very clear, so much more alive than in her nightmares. Her nightmares, where he is always far away, leaving, leaving her.
For a moment, Brienne reconsiders. Imagines herself telling him it’s nothing, imagines him turning away and leaving this cottage.
No . I’m not a craven.
“I… I did, Ser. If you could seat, so I can tell you what I have to say and then… then you can leave, if you wish”
“I can hear you perfectly fine from where I stand,” he answers, and Brienne flinches.
She feels her cheeks burning up, the whole and the ruined one, and she sits up straighter, higher.
“I… very well.” The blanket covering her legs is thick brown, and surprisingly soft. Her hands pick at the fabric, and she quells the urge of twisting it between her fingers.
It’s her time to take a deep breath.
Then she speaks
“I wouldn’t have you killed. I betrayed you, yes… but I wasn’t ever going to let them have your head. I had a plan… Once Pod was safe, I’d stay behind so you could escape. The both of you.” Brienne says, trying to remember the words she carefully planned to say. Jaime’s eyes narrow at her, his grip on the doorknob becomes stronger. Other than that, he doesn’t move. All the same, it sends panic down her spine.
“I’m not telling you this so you will forgive me Ser” Brienne rushes to add. “Although I won’t deny there’s nothing I wished for more than that, even when I don’t deserve it. I’m telling you because you s-should know. That I would… I would have gladly died for you.”
And now comes the hardest part, the one she knows once it’s out there, she can’t take it back. I’m not a craven. I’m not.
“And not only because you were an innocent man who didn’t deserve to die for crimes you haven’t committed, but because... I would rather d-die than have you killed. If it’s my life and yours, my choice will always remain the same. Because you are a good man, Ser Jaime. You have honor, and I swore an oath to protect you. And because… because you… because you are…b-because when I look at you I feel…”
His eyes on her are disconcerting. She suddenly feels like a fool, can’t hold his gaze any longer. Drops her eyes to her hands. Giving in, Brienne twists the fabric of her blanket between her fingers.
She is that craven, after all.
There’s so much she wants to tell him. She had prepared for it before he arrived, the words rolling in her mind while she waited for him to come.
The reason is because your absence hurt more than my broken ribs and broken arm, Jaime.
I missed even those times you mocked me Ser, because when you laugh, it feels as if there’s no weight in the world that wouldn’t feel weightless to carry.
Because you are the most beautiful man I have ever seen.
But she can say none of it. She scrambles for something else, something that might convey everything, and when she speaks again, her voice trembles.
“The real reason is because a world without you living in it it’s unbearable to me. I… I l-love you, Jaime. With all my heart.”
Her only answer is deafening silence. Suddenly, nothing seems more terrifying to Brienne than looking up at Jaime, nothing fills her with more dread than watching whatever emotion is carved on his perfect face. If he mocks me, I won’t be able to stand it.
It’s the latch on the door.
She looks up just in time to see him turning back again, and then he’s walking, straight to her, his eyes burning, burning in anger-
No.
Not anger.
But similar, in its core. She can feel it.
He vibrates with it.
And then he kneels on the bed, his hand cradling her face and Brienne has a moment to think his hand feels warm on her cheek before his lips are upon hers. Pressing against her. Kissing her.
Jaime is kissing her.
She gasps, startled, and Jaime makes a noise in the back of his throat that makes her warm. All the noise in her head seems to disappear, the feeling of Jaime’s lips pressed on hers the only thing that matters.
The hand cradling her face moves to the nape of her neck and then tangles in her hair, Jaime pulling her closer to him until their chests are pressed together. He nips on her lower lip and she gasps again, and it seems like that’s what he wants, because he makes that noise again. His tongue slips past her lips, glides against her own, and Brienne can’t help but clutch his tunic on the front and then his shoulders. Jaime’s right arm wraps around her middle, pulling her to him, even though they are already pressed together.
He breaks the kiss, only for a moment, for a breath, before leaning in again, and this time it feels frantic, heated, faster than before. His tongue dips inside her mouth once more, and Jaime’s breath feels heavier, warming her face.
When he leans into her more, their combined weight making her slide down the bed, it’s when the sharp pain from the cut on her side knocks the breath out of her. Brienne gasps for an entirely different reason, and Jaime is out of her in a second.
“ Fuck.” He says, before grabbing her by the shoulders and forcing her to lie down, gently. He then proceeds to lift up the white tunic she’s wearing until he can see the bandages around her middle, checking for any blood that might be staining the dressing. Thankfully, there’s nothing. He puts it back into place as if this is something he’s used to. As if seeing her in her small clothes only and barely nothing else is a common thing that happens between them.
She does not know how to handle that intimacy.
“Forgive me. I got carried away.” Jaime says, oblivious to her thoughts. Much of the tension in his shoulders is gone, but there’s still something hard in his gaze and in his voice. It is anger this time, she sure of it. “After the sleepless nights the Brothers spent trying to save your life, I don’t think they would be happy if I caused your death while profaning their sacred isle”
She does not know what to say, so she stays silent.
Brienne tries and fails to hold his gaze, cheeks burning aflame. Jaime… he kissed her. But he hates her, does he not? He must.
“I don’t hate you, Brienne” Jaime says, voice much lower than before, breaking their silence. She startles, looking up at him, thinking she might have said it out loud, thinking he’s watching her, but he’s not.
He sits beside her on the bed, staring at his golden hand. He starts unfastening the buckles that keep it in place.
He laughs then, humorless.
“I tried wench, the gods know I have, from the moment I first saw you. But I couldn’t. I can’t . You… how can’t you see? ”
He looks at her then.
“I am angry. I don’t… I shouldn’t be. Because you made the right choice. You should have done it much sooner, even before that noose was put around your neck. It’s just… I wish… I wish you had trusted me. That you had told me the truth. How could you think I wouldn’t have helped you? That lying to me was the only way? I wouldn’t have left you alone to deal with something that was mine to deal with. I wouldn’t have left you alone at all, no matter who’s mess it was. You shouldn’t have been alone out there in the first place. I would’ve helped. You wouldn’t have almost died”
Her cheeks burn from shame, because he’s right. He would never leave her helpless, Brienne knows that. Jaime has too much honor to deny help to anyone who rightly needed it, even if nobody else believed that.
She, from all people, should have known that. She knows that.
But in the height of her despair, she couldn’t see any other solution. She didn’t think she would be enough reason to justify him abandoning his duty, his army, his s-… his king.
“I…I’m sorry. I should… I just never thought…. I’m sorry Jaime. I really am. I know you would never deny help to someone in need, no matter what others might say. I know who you are, Ser. ”
Jaime looks at her, puzzled. The silence is heavy between them.
And then something dawns on him. Brienne can see the moment he seems to put the last piece of a puzzle together.
“You really don’t understand, do you? You really don’t see.”
Brienne furrows her brows, confused. She feels slow witted, like her Septa used to say she was. She mislikes the feeling.
Jaime shakes his head, and laughs again.
“What a pair we are, you and I. Fools, the two of us. Perfect for each other.” Jaime looks straight forwards, his jaw so sharp against the light of the fire in the hearth.
“I’m angry because it hurt , Brienne. It hurt too bloody much. And I realized what it meant. What it means. The power you hold over me.” Jaime sighs, the Golden hand discarded on the bed beside him. He rubs the skin of his wrist, covers the stump with his hand. “ You come and… you will tell me some made up tale that couldn’t be further away from the truth, I will know it to be a lie, and I will follow you blindly anyway. Hells, tell me now we must head north and climb the bloody Wall wearing nothing but our small clothes and I would curse you all the way to Castle Black, with you leading the path.”
Brienne’s chest squeezes painfully at his words. She cannot believe what she’s hearing, so she reaches for him. It’s tentative, her hand finding his forearm, but Jaime turns to her immediately, leaning down, wrapping his arms around her again. He’s careful enough to be gentler than before, as if she’s delicate, some small pretty thing that deserves that. Her eyes sting.
“All my life, and nobody ever could. Break me” he says against her ear. “ No one. Not my father, not Aerys, not even Cersei. But you ..” his voice catches, and he buries his face against her neck, the next words spoken through her skin. “I saw you dying every day for a sennight and taking with you all I am. You can crush me, Brienne. Reduce me to nothing but dust.”
She tightens her arms around his shoulders. “I would not… I don’t… I don’t wish for it, Jaime. I don’t want to have this power”
She can feel his smile against her neck. His lips press against her jaw. “And because of it, all the more you have it.”