janie_tangerine | (cowt8 sett.6: titania) five times brienne wanted to kiss jaime and one he he did (asoiaf, j/b,pg13)

I must be feverish, too, Brienne thinks, because there's no other explanation for what she has just felt like doing. Except that the fever Jaime Lannister has right now isn't the kind you catch, so it isn't enough of an excuse for her to entertain such thoughts. It's the way he's trembling and shivering as he lies next to her - they haven't even bound them tonight because he's beyond harming anyone. Brienne's arms are bound, but not to a tree; his head is inches from hers.

She shouldn't be affected right now, and the only reason she should care is that him being bound and feverish and lacking a hand is her fault because she was supposed to be the one delivering him safely. Still, it doesn't matter right now. He might have scorned his vows for half of his life and he might not deserve to wear a cloak that she knows she could never even dream of donning, but like this, it's hard to hold that kind of grudge. Not when he's forced to ride with his rotting hand around his neck (of all the things he is, a fraud is not one of them - Brienne had enough proof while they sparred near the river) and when he can barely speak. Or when he's forced to drink horse piss.

It would barely take a second. She has faint memories of being sick before her mother died - Brienne remembers that a couple of times her mother had kissed her forehead while she shivered in her bed. If she leant forward just an inch, she could do the same for him. She knows it wouldn't change anything, and he probably wouldn't even realize it, but she can't help shaking away the urge.

In the end, she's about to do it, and then a guard comes to keep watch over them and she doesn't dare. After all, Brienne thinks, it would have been wasted on him anyway.

Jaime doesn't try to stop her as she scrubs him clean and helps him with his clothes. She's grateful for small favors, and after all she could always tell him that it wasn't anything <i>she</i> hadn't seen, too. But right now, it seems an unnecessary cruelty, especially as she goes through the story he told her all over again. Brienne has no idea why he told her, he wasn't obligated, especially when he hasn't told anyone before, but she can't help noticing that he's more subdued than before. He almost looks vulnerable, and she knows she won't be able to think about him in the same terms again. He isn't a good man, and before this last month she hadn't thought he was a good knight either, not in the ways that mattered, but now... she can't help wondering what she would have done if it had been her having to make the same choice. She has to admit that she doesn't have a clean, straight answer, and he was younger than her when he slit Aerys's throat.

Brienne thinks she might understand where most of his bitterness comes from now. For a second, as he turns his head to the side and bares his throat, she wonders what would happen if she leant forward and brushed her lips against his temple, just enough for him to feel it, but she doesn't do it either and settles on keeping her touch as gentle as possible. Now that he's cleaner and that she had the chance to give his beard a slight trim, they don't look equally filthy and equally ugly, and Brienne doesn't want to even think about making a fool out of herself when he trusted her enough with secrets no one else has heard from him.

When he asks for her arm, she pretends not to mind either way.

III

He's hardly a knight in shining armor; for one, he has no armor whatsoever, and without his right hand he's arguably lost what mostly made him a good knight if only for technical reasons.

But as he drags her out of the pit, that pink rags barely covering her by now, she feels her heart pounding for reasons other than adrenaline. Brienne has been her own knight in shining armor since realizing what it was that she was good at and since realizing that she'd never be the fair maid of the songs (but that she could have made a fairly good knight, and it's nothing she's willing to renounce); she can hardly believe that he's come for her out of anyone. Brienne can't process how he has just risked his life to save hers, and when she asks him why, she's expecting something about Lannisters always paying their debts or about her really being more fit for bearing children than hold a sword.

Instead, he answers I dreamed of you.

Brienne knows that it can't be what it sounds like - that's the answer someone from a song would have given, and Jaime Lannister isn't the kind of knight you find in songs - but for a handful of seconds she wonders, how it would feel to move closer and kiss his cheek. That's what fair maidens do in songs when they're rescued, don't they? But Brienne won't ever be fair and making a fool out of herself in front of everyone other than him is something she can't and won't do. So, she doesn't and merely thanks him again.

When he gives her Oathkeeper, Brienne wishes she had, after all, but it's too late.

She closes her eyes when she's done talking. Brienne isn't sure that she can stand looking at his face going from concerned to disgusted. He gave her a mission and she came back having sworn an oath to kill him, and telling him the truth was the least she owed him. (I swore that oath, but I can't keep it. I'm sorry I failed you. I swear I tried. I know what you meant now when you said all oaths are wind and songs aren't real.) She knows this means having practically condemned Pod and Hyle to death, but Brienne never was one to fool herself too much. She had gone searching for him planning to tell him the truth. For a second, approaching his camp, she had thought that maybe she could actually do it. Then she had seen him again and realized she never could have.

Then she feels his left hand close around her shoulder, but she doesn't dare open her eyes.

"Wench, why did you ever tell me the truth?"

Her eyes shoot open then, and he's staring at her, but he doesn't look angry or disappointed as she had thought he'd be for sure. He's looking at her as if he gets it.

And of course he does - she can't help thinking that keeping an oath to Aerys Targaryen or one to Lady Stoneheart might not be that different.

"Why - you're saying I should have killed you after luring you out?"

"You're putting me before two people that don't deserve dying for my sake."

"That's what you say. And if that's what being honorable means, then I'm not so sure I want to be honorable any longer," she answers, realizing that her voice is breaking.

"They gave you six months?"

"They did."

"Well then. It's more than enough to find the girl ourselves."

Brienne is sure she hasn't heard right.

"What did you just say?"

"I can't take this bloody war anymore and I'm not sure that I care for going back to King's Landing either. And if we do fulfill that vow, maybe she'll release you."

Brienne looks at him again, and there's no question - he's serious. She feels tears of relief falling on her face before she realizes that she's crying.

Then she has an answer to one of the questions she had asked herself in the latter part of her journey; he would let her weep on his shoulder. And not just that. He's using his good hand to comb through her hair, which is more of a tangle than anything else, and his other arm is around her waist.

She really must be a fool, because this is more than what she had ever hoped to get, and yet she's wondering, would he let me kiss him? Not that innocent kind of kiss she had hoped to get from Renly Baratheon or the one she had thought to give him after the bear pit. She wants to press her lips against his, to know how it'd feel if their tongues met, she wants to know if kisses can be as sweet as they are in songs; she'd have never thought to want it from him, but at the same time, she doesn't move. It's too much to ask of him, not when she has already more than she had ever hoped to get.

"What will you do now?" Brienne asks Jaime, dreading the answer. Against all odds the plan did work, and now they're safe enough in the Vale where they escorted back Sansa after bringing her to her mother - which is a meeting Brienne tries not to think about often.

"I'm still weighing my options," he replies, not sounding at all worried. "I don't think I'm braving the way to King's Landing any time soon, though."

"I'm sorry," Brienne answers sincerely. "If it hadn't been for me, you would have been there."

"I think it wasn't where I was needed most."

Brienne doesn't look up at him even if she feels him approaching.

"Also, I'd have thought you would look less gloomy. Having kept your oath and all."

"I kept my oath by bringing that poor girl to a thing that was a shadow of her mother and keeping you from your family until spring comes. Both people I swore service to are dead and gone. When spring comes you'll still have your cloak and there'll be a king to protect. The only thing I have left is going back to Tarth."

"And I can imagine how much you'd like it," Jaime says. He sounds understanding, and when she looks at him she just knows that he does. "You're not made for a gown and bearing children to a husband taking decisions for you. That much was clear. Then again, I guess I wasn't made for my oaths, either." He doesn't even sound sad - merely as if he has come to terms with it.

"I think you're wrong. Or... at least not completely right," she answers, figuring that at least she owes him. "Say what you will, but as far as I see, you're not the worse man who took the white."

"Wench, I'll never be Arthur Dayne."

"I never asked it of you."

Then Jaime's hand is on her shoulder again, and when she meets his eyes, she thinks that she knows the way he looks. It's the same way he looked when they were at the pools in Harrenhaal.

"That's why you'll drive me insane - you never asked it of me, true, but you make me want to be like that. I haven't wanted it since I was sixteen."

"Jaime -"

"And it's senseless. Because I know that he wouldn't have ever done this," he says, and then before she can reply he has moves forward and kisses her, his good hand cupping her face.

Brienne gasps and doesn't think - she kisses him back, trying to remember everything about how it feels like (his lips are soft and thinner than her own, his hand isn't as heavy, his tongue is warm and wet and his teeth are gentle as he bites her lower lip before moving away).

"Do you mean this?" she asks, not trying to think about it too hard, trying not to let the usual questions (is it for real? Does he want to mock me? How could he even want me?) get to her head.

He nods, obviously expecting for her to punch him.

"Good," she answers, "because if you really do, then you're lucky that I don't want Arthur Dayne. Or Renly, for that matter."

She doesn't end that sentence, or she'd have said, I just want you, but he seems to understand. He closes the distance between them for the second time and kisses her again, this time faster and rougher and with a lot less finesse, she isn't thinking about cloaks or honor or vows or swords. When he holds her against him even when it's over, Brienne thinks that if this was to be the first time, maybe she can't regret having never kissed him before.