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Jaime looked to the woman standing across from him in the garishly red tent, truly a welcoming sight amongst the men of lions. Since he last saw her, she’d been riding away from him with a promise. A promise to Catelynn Stark. A promise for him.
Brienne of Tarth. She was still dressed in the armor he’d gifted her, Oathkeeper strapped at her side. He’d almost forgotten how tall she was, but he had never forgotten her enormous sense of self-righteousness.
Witfully, Jaime decided to test that sense with his own show of Lannister arrogance. “I just assumed Sansa was dead. I never thought you'd find her.”
Brienne blinked, her expression a picture of astonishment. It wounded him to see her accept his words so quickly, the words of a lion. “Why would you assume that?”
“In my experience, girls like her don't live very long.” Myrcella’s sweet face flashed through Jaime’s mind, blood creeping down her face, mocking him in his most vulnerable moment.
“I don't think you know many girls like her,” Brienne interrupted his grief and pinned him with a stare. Ah, there it was. Jaime regained his composure, lifting his chin. The irony in her statement was that he did, and he wanted her to know that.
“Well, I'm proud of you,” Jaime said, and when her eyelashes fluttered in that shy manner that she always hid behind her armor, he insisted further. “I am. You fulfilled your oath to Catelyn Stark against all odds.”
As he walked around the war table, he was suddenly reminded of those very odds. “Of course, my sister wants Sansa dead. The girl is still a suspect in Joffrey's murder, so there is that…” Closer now, Jaime was suddenly overwhelmed by Brienne’s towering presence. He quickly glanced along her taut form before steeling his nerves to finish in a single breath, “… complication.”
Brienne, in this tent, was another rising complication. Her stubborn silence emboldened Jaime, so he demanded, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I've come for the Blackfish.” She said it so surely, as if she’d take the old man’s hand and walk right out in the midst of Jaime’s army.
“You're welcome to have him,” Jaime replied bitingly, suddenly annoyed by the very prospect that someone had sent her here in the midst of a siege. What if she’d fallen in the wrong hands? He was already preparing to kill for one woman’s war.
What he’d do for Brienne’s life … He didn’t want to entertain the thought. Perhaps Brienne was already in the wrong hands after all.
“Lady Sansa desires to take her ancestral seat back from the Boltons and assume her rightful position as Lady of Winterfell." Ah, so this was Lady Sansa's doing. No longer a girl, it would seem, but a wolf hellbent on reclaiming her home. Ice formed in the pit of Jaime's stomach as he had a feeling that he knew where this was going.
Jaime looked down at his boots to mask the wave of panic overtaking him. "With what army does she plan on taking Winterfell?"
“The Tully army.” His gaze rose back up to meet Brienne’s assured one.
“They're a bit occupied at the moment,” he said wryly. “I was sent here to reclaim Riverrun currently defended by the Tully rebels, so you can see the conundrum.” I can’t help you.
“The Tullys are rebels because they're fighting for their home?” There was an air of virtuous defiance in her tone that stroked the flames of Jaime’s underlying anger and shame.
“Riverrun was granted to the Freys by royal decree,” he shot back.
Brienne’s blue eyes were brewing with a storm. “As a reward for betraying Robb Stark and slaughtering his family.”
“Exactly,” Jaime spat. Welcome to the game of power and blood, Brienne. She’d been surrounded by the high-minded Starks for so long, their presence lingered even after they died. She was angry for them, at him. She was theirs now.
Once, Brienne had been Jaime’s, back at King's Landing, and he her's when he was bound by chain and under her watchful guard. Things were simple then, when it was just them.
After a stretch of silence, he softened his tone. “We shouldn't argue about politics.” He moved to stand behind the table, keeping a respectable distance between them that would cool the tension.
But then she said, “You're a knight, Ser Jaime.”
And with absolution, she said, “I know there is honor in you.”
And with admiration, “I've seen it myself.”
“I'm a Lannister.” Everyone around me reminds me of that, except you. “Don't ask me to betray my own house.”
“I do no such thing.” Brienne’s chin lifted, and she stepped forward, her armor brushing the table. “Take Riverrun without bloodshed. Ride south again with your mission complete and your army intact.”
To talk strategy with Brienne was something Jaime was unfamiliar with. His curiosity surrounding this new aspect of their relationship got the better of him. “What do you propose?”
“Allow me to enter Riverrun under a flag of truce. Let me try to persuade the Blackfish to give up the castle.” Stubborn wench.
“Why would he abandon his ancestral home?”
“Because you'll allow him to lead the Tully forces safely north.”
Jaime’s humor got the better of him. “Have you ever met the Blackfish?”
Brienne hesitated, already sensing his trap. “No.”
“He's even more stubborn than you are.” But, she had come here to try, and that alone gave Jaime enough of a reason to cave. “All right. Try to talk some sense into the old goat.” He moved around the table once more, crossing the invisible line he’d deliberately drawn between them. “He won't listen, but his men might. Not everybody wants to die for someone else's home.”
“I need your word.” Brienne’s eyes conveyed the meaning that she wasn’t asking out of distrust, but out of honor. The kind that she felt he carried within him. “If I persuade him to abandon the castle, you'll grant a safe passage north.”
Jaime began to nod. “You have my word. You have until nightfall.”
Brienne gave him a small nod in return, then her hands grasped the buckles of Oathkeeper’s sheathe. Jaime’s heart froze in his chest at the idea of rejection, that she no longer wanted it, that piece of him. It would be worse than Cersei rejecting him over his hand. But his heart beat again upon further realization of what she was really doing as she held the sword out to him. Oh, Brienne.
Jaime found himself stepping closer as he took one long look at the sword, basking in its beauty while he let her ramble. “You gave it to me for a purpose. I've achieved that purpose.”
He glanced back up at her stern face, and he reminded her gently, “It's yours.” Brienne’s features softened, perhaps mirroring his own as he came to terms with what he was truly saying to her then: the words he could never say as long as they waged on opposing sides of war. “It will always be yours.”
Jaime knew that she heard what he wasn’t saying, because her lips parted, and she looked away almost achingly before moving to the edge of the tent. He cleared the emotion from his throat and followed her, mentally preparing to send Brienne out on her way. He hoped this wouldn’t become the last time that he saw her.
But she stopped him at the exit with a sudden urgency on her face. “One last thing, Ser Jaime.”
Jaime’s brow furrowed, and he couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, Lady Brienne?”
“Should I fail to persuade the Blackfish to surrender and if you attack the castle, honor compels me to fight for Sansa's kin.”
Jaime was confused by the pain in her eyes. He would never doubt her honor. “Of course it does.”
“To fight you,” she clarified, the fear more prominent now.
Jaime swallowed harshly. “Let's hope it doesn't come to that.” He suddenly hoped they wouldn’t meet face-to-face anytime soon, as agonizing as the idea already was.
Brienne lingered a moment longer, their eyes locked in an intense conversation that couldn’t be spoken aloud, secretly sharing the words they couldn’t say.
She turned abruptly and left the tent, leaving Jaime to watch her go once more in her wake.