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janie_tangerine
And he doesn’t even know what he asked until she loses her towel and moves towards him cautiously, her hand tentatively touching his left shoulder. He looks up at her, and — why are her eyes blurry? He doesn’t know, it feels strange —
“I couldn’t curse you, ser,” she finally whispers, barely audible. She reaches out with her free hand, wiping at his eyes, and — oh. Of course she was blurry. He was crying. Fuck. He had no idea, why, it has to be because he’s tired and the bath’s steam made him weaker, but then he thinks of that day again, flinching openly. His left arm shoots out of the water, grasping at hers, feeling like he might faint if he doesn’t, and — she doesn’t flinch, not like before. She moves closer, shaking her head slightly, opening her mouth once, twice, as if to say something —
For a moment he thinks, then would she kiss me?, and somehow that doesn’t sound too bad to him. And it’s ridiculous because there’s no way it could happen, Cersei is the only one he wants, she’s the one he has to go back to, she’s the one he’s been too far from —
She doesn’t kiss him. But she leans forward and tentatively wraps her arms around him.
And then she keeps them there.
For a moment Jaime has no idea of what he should do — she’s holding him with the caution and awkwardness that belong to people who aren’t adjusted to this kind of gesture, but her arms are gentle around his waist and shoulders as she draws him slightly closer, forcing him to stand, and while he can’t on his own, it’s no matter since she is holding him up.
What —
“I’m sorry,” she says then, her voice low, “that no one ever asked you why you did it.”
His left hand grasps at her back without his permission.
She obviously takes it as encouragement, or something, because then —
“I think I understand a few things,” she goes on, swallowing her words, as if speaking them is the hardest thing she’s ever done. “And — someone should have asked.”
“Who?” He spits, his head still spinning. “Stark came inside the room and looked at me and already decided on his own how it went. He looked at me like I was the worst oathbreaker in existence and didn’t even think of asking, everyone else followed the example and that was it, and I — couldn’t beg them to listen. And with what right does the wolf judge the lion, my lady?” He had thought he’d be angry. He’s horrified to hear that his voice has turned into a sob instead, and now he’s crying again, what’s wrong with him, he thought he exhausted any tears he had left on the road, he’s horrified that he’s weeping on her damned large, freckled, clammy shoulder, but he couldn’t let himself do it before, and now that she’s actually believing him he doesn’t know what went wrong but he’s just glad someone does, and then her hand tentatively goes to the back of his head, smoothing down his damp hair, and he can’t help thinking, she’s seen me lower than this, hasn’t she?
Now that he notices, she’s — her shoulder isn’t so uncomfortable to lie his head upon, and the way she touches him is almost a balm compared to all the kicking, punching and manhandling of the previous weeks. “This is unbecoming of me,” he manages to say in between fits of tears, but then she shakes her head and sits the both of them again on the tub’s edge, still cradling him close.
“Ser, not to forget myself, but I think that you might have earned it,” she whispers, her hands brushing over one of the bruises Rorge left on him in the previous days. She has matching ones all over her stomach and arms, he can’t help noticing. He moves his right arm trying to trace one, and of course he forgets that he doesn’t have the hand anymore even if it feels like he does, and fresh bloody tears spring to his eyes.
That is, until Brienne’s rough, calloused fingers carefully wrap around his wrist and the tender skin underneath, moving it on her hip. She’s blushing so much it looks like she might explode, but while it should make her uglier —
It doesn’t. Not right now. Right now she looks like the one person he told about Aerys to and who actually hasn’t disappointed him on it, and he doesn’t expect it when she talks again.
“I — I wanted to do more, on the road,” she whispers.
“You — what?”
“Ser, you were obviously in pain and they wouldn’t even give you proper food or drink. I did tell them I could handle it once, but they didn’t let me.” She shakes her head, sounding like now she is the one out of the two of them needing to confess something. He had thought she had walls higher than Winterfell, once, but he has the feeling that they might be down now, same as his own. “I did swear to bring you to King’s Landing,” she goes on. “I’m sorry I couldn’t —”
“Well, I did steal that sword and fought you, didn’t I?” he admits. Maybe if I hadn’t, they wouldn’t have noticed us in the first place, would they?
He moves his head, looking up at her again, her hand still slightly smoothing down his hair.
Maybe if truces are built on trust, it’s time he’s sincere with her.
“Wench, for what it’s worth, I could think of worst people I could have fought last while I still had that hand,” he says, leaning into her hand in a way that should shame him —
But right now it barely matters, not when her hand is warm and real and there.
“Could you?” She whispers.
“You were good,” he admits. “But if I were you, I’d give up trying to join Kingsguards. Didn’t work too well for me now, did it?”
Gods, he doesn’t think he has spoken so freely in years, maybe. What is it about Brienne of Tarth that gets him to actually tell the truth? He looks up at her, meeting her eyes again.
She reaches down again, cupping his face softly as he shivers in the steamy, damp air all over again. Her skin might be clammy, but she’s warm. And gentle. Gentler than Cersei, he can’t help thinking, not knowing where that comes from, but — she is. Cersei never actually looks at him like she wants to read him like some book she can’t figure out — rather, more like one book she already knows by heart.
(But does she?)
“Ser, are you cold?” She asks again, and gods, fuck, the fact that she’s calling him like that —
“Might be,” he admits, and a moment later she helps him stand and take a few steps before lowering the both of them in the next tub over, where the water is still warm. He shudders in relief, his hand still clutching at her back.
“I — I understand what you meant now,” she whispers again, not quite looking at him.
“What?”
“What you told Lady Catelyn in Riverrun. About oaths and vows.” She falls silent, shaking her head. “I hadn’t imagined — but really, you didn’t tell because you weren’t supposed to? Or just because no one did ask?”
“Maybe I was hoping someone would,” he admits. “But by then, everyone had decided on the truth. It wouldn’t have mattered. I did break my vow. But I don’t regret it and I never bloody will. I guess that wasn’t who I wanted to be,” he finally admits, though, and that hurts almost half as much as losing that hand did.
“And who was it that you wanted to be?”
But — she’s here, and she’s warm, and she’s still holding on to him keeping an eye on the door as if she will shield him with her own body if someone else tries to come in, and somehow it gives him a kick to actually blurt the only other secret he had left.
“Arthur Dayne,” he shrugs. “Guess that wasn’t bound to be and I became everything but. Could’ve been worse, I suppose. I could be ash along with Aerys now.”
He can’t help shuddering at that, not even wanting to imagine it, even if maybe it would have been better, maybe he’d have just gone up in flames along with him and everyone else and he wouldn’t have had to live without that hand that made him what he was for better or worse, he wouldn’t have flung the Stark child from that window, he wouldn’t have needed to spend years running from Cersei’s bed or watching her from afar, he wouldn’t have had to kill that small spark of something that raised within him when he saw her with children that he could never call his own —
The wench makes a noise in the back of her throat, shaking her head, her lips soft against the side of his, moving his face back so he can look at her. He can only see her eyes now. Somehow, it doesn’t matter anymore that what comes with them is hardly beautiful to look at.
“But you aren’t,” she says, “and neither was the city. Also —” She blushes harder, but doesn’t move her eyes away from his. “As I recall, Arthur Dayne died at the Tower of Joy trying to stop Lord Stark from seeing his dying sister, didn’t he?”
“So he did,” Jaime sighs.
“And you broke your vows to save half a million people.” Her voice is shaky, as if she’s figuring it out as she says it, but at the same time it’s obvious she’s not lying. Not at all. “Regardless of what it meant for your reputation. I — one of these things sounds more worthy of a true knight than the other, and it’s not trying to slay a man who’s fought a rebellion for his sister and would find her dying.”
Regardless of the dampness in the air, his throat goes dry the moment she says it — he looks up at her in disbelief, shaking his head slightly, realizing he never quite dared thinking such a thing because one matter were the others in the kingsguard and the other was Arthur Dayne, and for that matter he spent years thinking that Arthur would have hated him for what he did, and he had thought that at least his own story would teach her something about how foolish is to want to uphold vows and oaths at all costs when they will inevitably clash, and maybe he did, but —
“And I can see that you care for it more than you want to let on,” she whispers, her fingers shaking. “Maybe you can still — be whatever you want.”
At that he makes a noise in the back of his throat he hadn’t known could come from him, he hadn’t known he still was capable of wishing for something so hard it hurt and he hadn’t known anyone might think he had it in him to not be known as an oathbreaker for his entire life, and suddenly she seems to remember that they’re holding on to each other inside a bathtub and they’re naked and she just told him something of that weight —
“I — I am forgetting myself,” she says, moving back, her hands suddenly gone, and Jaime wants to tell her no, I don’t care, I forgot myself, too — “I should not — I am sorry, I don’t know what came on me —”
“Come back,” he says, and he’s horrified when it comes out halfway pleading, but he’s beside himself right now, he accepted it, and now that she’s gone he’s cold all over and he doesn’t want to be and she was actually telling him something he hadn’t known he had craved to hear all along.
Her eyes go wide again as she does, sitting next to him now, her meager breasts disappearing under the water. He doesn’t move at all except to look at her. “And don’t be sorry. I think we’re past that now. Also, what suggests you I’d have a chance in the seven hells of being whatever I want?”
She shrugs minutely. “No one ever thought I would have a chance in the seven hells of being whatever I wanted, ser Jaime. And as badly as I protected my king, I did get into one Kingsguard without a knighthood, didn’t I?”
“If what you say about his death is true, you did all you could,” he says awkwardly. He feels slightly better now. He couldn’t walk out of here on his own, but his head isn’t spinning anymore.
At least, not in the way he was before.
“I tried,” she says, then looks straight up at him again. “I failed. I don’t intend to fail what’s left of this one mission, Ser Jaime,” she goes on, her voice suddenly surer.
He grins in spite of himself. “And where is the sullen wench who wouldn’t look at me in the face when we started on it?”
She doesn’t mirror his smile. Her eyes look bluer in the dim light. “It’s me, ser. It’s always been me. But I don’t trust easily, I think you might have guessed that.”
“… So, we’re trusting each other now?”
“You asked for it before, didn’t you?”
He wants to say, that’s valid for me, too. After all, it’s always been him all along, the man who killed Aerys and the man who flung Bran Stark from that window, wasn’t he? And he wishes he wasn’t, he wishes —
But she said he could —
“Do you really think I could, then?” He presses, needing to hear it again.
“Ser Jaime, I think I learned I was quick to misjudge. And considering that kick you took to make sure they wouldn’t — take me, I think you’re doing that already.”
He snorts, wanting to believe her against all odds, but that’s nowhere near enough to make up for the list of things he did out of love or out of rage or out of fear that he wishes he hadn’t done.
“Why did you do it, if I can ask?”
“I told you why I did it, wench,” he sighs. Maybe he hadn’t shared all of his secrets now, did he?
“You lied. I know you did. Or better, you didn’t — tell the whole truth, ser. I heard it.”
Should I tell her, he thinks, but then again… what does he have to lose?
“Aerys, he —” He breathes in. “He would — take his wife by force. More times than not. I — I would have to stand outside the door. She would scream and scream and scream and she would have fresh red scars all over her arms in the next days, and I could do nothing, and the one time I asked — they answered me that it wasn’t our duty to ask questions about it and our oath was to the fucking king first.” He snorts, trying to not think about it, but it’s hard, when he’s just — revived it not long before. “I hated it. I couldn’t listen to it. I couldn’t think that I was supposed to help her and wouldn’t.” He breathes in. “I’d go away inside for I don’t know how bloody long to stand through it. It’s not that you’d be hideous without a nose, wench. You probably would have given them a fight. It’s that I don’t know if I could have handled it.”
She doesn’t ask him what he means with going away inside, she might have guessed. But the way she’s looking at him now, as if she gets it, is — he doesn’t know how he feels about it, and he wishes she’d talk and just put him out of his misery here, because that was something he didn’t want to talk about, he doesn’t even want to think about it because then he wonders, did Queen Rhaella go away inside, too?, and it’s something he can’t bear to think about now and couldn’t bear to think about then —
“Ser,” she says, and every time she calls him like that he feels a bit cleansed, a bit lighter, because gods but she says it like she means it and not like it’s mocking, same as anyone else who’s used it since Aerys died. Then again, she didn’t call him that before, did she? “I don’t — I never was very good at words.”
“You were fine until now,” he tries to joke.
“I — there’s something. Something I’ve thought I should have done back then. But I couldn’t. Not even when I was untied, they would’ve — probably not taken it well. Will you let me?”
“I said trust you, don’t I?”
She breathes in, a sharp intake, and then she moves over him again, as she had before, not leaning down fully. She puts her hand on his right shoulder, then moves the other to his face, turning his head to the side ever so slightly, and then she leans some more, and her full, soft lips touch his cheek over his now clean beard, and —
Oh.
Oh, she’s just —
Brienne leans back, her cheeks bright red. “I never had any reason to do it with anyone else,” she says. “Thank you.”
He doesn’t know what in the seven hells passes through him at that — surprise, and bewilderment, and gods, did she really just kissed him like maidens do to valiant knights in all those damned songs he used to love and now hateshateshates, and wait, of course she had no reason to do it before, with whom would she? —, but then he shakes his head, reaches up with his left hand and grasps at her hips, pulling her down, feeling that this isn’t enough, he has to be closer to her, closerclosercloser because she’s too good for him and somehow sees something in him that he thought was long dead. And gods, gods, now he’s realizing that he’s hard all over again and that the explanation can’t be that he’s been too far from Cersei, now. It can’t, when he’s not thinking about Cersei whatsoever as he stares up into Brienne’s large, clear eyes, and when he almost wants to ask, how do I get that drive back? How do I turn back into you? Because I used to be like you once, and then I wasn’t anymore, and the world hasn’t tarnished you completely yet, and how can you do it, how haven’t you given it up yet?, but he can’t say that, he can’t put it into words, and so he does the next best thing he can think of and turns so that they’re this close, his mouth just next to hers —
“I want to kiss you,” he blurts, and her eyes go wide but she says nothing, not when she can feel his hard-on press against her thigh. “But I wouldn’t take such a thing from you unless I wanted your opinion of me to pummel down again now, would I?”
“You — want to kiss me?” She breathes back, sounding incredulous.
“Wench, I think you can feel that,” he tries to joke back, and she scoffs, but she doesn’t say no. She parts her lips, breathing steam. Then —
“Ser, I — I am hardly experienced now. I mean, I know how it goes, I’m not that clueless, but — would you really want —”
“The only person who seems to care a whim about what’s left of my wretched honor? Wench, let’s not even jape about this.” And I’ve only ever been with one woman who is the entire contrary of what you are, for that matter. “Unless you’re saving your maidenhead for someone worthier.”
She glares at him. Then —
“Mayhaps it’s more trouble than it’s worth,” she says, and then she’s closing the distance between them.
It’s plain obvious that it’s her first kiss — she doesn’t quite know how to move even if she’s certainly not tentative, and he immediately kisses back, his tongue running over her lips, once, twice, coaxing them open, and then she moans inside his mouth, mirroring his movements at first. She certainly isn’t holding back now, her hands cradling his head, but — she’s not — taking. She’s not all fire and passion and fire like Cersei, she’s not kissing him like she’s trying to burn him from the inside out. She’s — gentler, again, even if she seems to have forgotten any shyness, and suddenly he has a wild thought — could it be that it’s the contrary, now? Could he be the one trying to turn her inside out with his kisses?
Could it be that if his tongue finds every crease of her mouth he might reach that part of her who is so much like he used to be and gain back some of it for himself? Not all, it would be impossible, he could never, he’s too tarnished for that now, but maybe just some —
As if. It’s probably beyond him. It’s most likely bad enough that he’s about to take her maidenhead, even if she does seem plenty willing to give it to him, but too bad that he’s not… honorable enough not to, is he?
She moves back, breathing in heavily, her face still close to his. He stares up at her eyes, so blue, and then she grabs his left hand, her fingers shaking, and he groans when she puts it in between her legs — gods, she’s warm, running so hot he thinks he might faint, and she’s not wet with only water.
“Hells, we need — help me out,” he gasps, and she seems to get it at once because as he moves his hand away, she grasps him under his thighs and lifts him up, bringing him to the staircase leading out of the tub. For a moment his head spins because of the colder air, but then she kneels on the steps, her knees around his legs, and before she can assume he changed his mind, he moves his hand in between her legs again.
Seven hells.
Without the pool’s water confusing things, he can feel exactly how wet she is, and the way she moans when his useless, clumsy fingers rub at her cunt, finding their way inside its folds. He hates that his hand won’t do what he wants, not now, but she doesn’t seem to care — she puts a hand on the ground and holds him up with the other, and maybe he should feel ashamed that if she wasn’t doing it he’d crash to the ground but he’s beyond caring now. She moans as his shaking fingers stroke and caress her soft, wet flash that seems almost scalding to the touch, and he wishes he had the right hand because he’d know how to move it, he’d do it best —
(will Cersei hate that I won’t be able to pleasure her the way she liked best?, another wild thought says, and he flinches, knowing she will as much as he doesn’t want to admit it and he knowsheknows he’s always known —)
— and then she’s shaking her head and trying to not moan any louder, leaning down over him, her wet hair falling against his face.
“Ser —”
“Jaime, for the — wench, not that — I don’t appreciate your newfound respect for my honor, but maybe we’re a bit beyond that, now?”
She huffs, but it doesn’t sound angry.
“Jaime, never mind that — ah, you’re being more than adequate,” she groans, and wait, he spoke out loud? “Doing it on my own didn’t feel half as good,” she whispers then, as if she’s half-afraid to admit it, and — oh. Oh. It’s not even that she can’t know any better than him, but to think that he’s actually her first and that none of the undoubtedly idiotic men that ever ran across her in the years have noticed that ugly as she might look, she’s all the contrary, and they should have been lucky to even have her look their way, never mind the way she’s looking at him right now…
Gods.
She believed him, he can’t stop thinking, and before he can say something even more stupid he surges up, kisses her again, works his fingers around her cunt again and again, until his hand is sopping wet and not shaking anymore, and she’s moaning into his mouth and telling him to go faster please faster —
He does, shaking all over again, wishing his right arm wasn’t useless because he can’t even use it to prop himself up against her, he’s not strong enough.
He shoves his fingers inside her faster, and faster, until she’s clenching around them and saying his name over and over — gods, yes, yes, not Kingslayer, not ser-anything, just Jaime — as she spills against his hand and if only he could move he’d slide down and drink it directly from where it’s coming in a rush, but he can’t, not now, and so he just does what he can to ease her through it until she’s breathing above him, still looking down at him with those blue, wide eyes that somehow make him feel like believing her when she says he could still be —
He could still be —
He thinks, what if she had met me when I was younger? Before Aerys? Before —
As if it’s even possible. It couldn’t have happened. But suddenly he thinks he would have wanted to show her, because maybe she would have understood, no, surely she would have, he’s never met anyone that he felt for sure would as much as Brienne —
“If you want to stop here,” he whispers when her cheeks are less flushed, his lips ghosting over them, “we can. I — you’re a lady, I shouldn’t even have offered — you should wait until someone better comes along —”
She shakes her head, gently pushing his back to the ground. It’s hard, but it’s warm with the dampness of the baths.
“And what if maybe I am fine with giving my maidenhead to the one man who ever seemed to care about whether I had a choice in keeping it?”
“You don’t have to —”
She shakes her head. Her wet leg is pressing up against his cock and he’s sure she’s entirely aware of how much he’s aching for her right now. “The first man I was supposed to marry said he never would the moment he saw me. The second — I was his very last choice and he said I would have to give up my sword if I were to marry him, and I broke his collarbone. When I was at Renly’s camp, men did court me… because they bet on whoever got to bed me first.” She sounds pained at that, but she doesn’t let him talk and goes ahead. “And you were there when — those three wanted to have me. I don’t need to tell you that. Somehow, it seems like you are the only man in Westeros who not only — saw fit to help me when it looked like it couldn’t be avoided without reprimanding me for my life choices, but who actually suffered for it. Somehow, you seem to want me for real. As much as I never thought I might when we started off, I — I do, too. I don’t think I will wait for someone better coming along. He wouldn’t exist, I think.”
She seems almost emboldened now, as she reaches down and places her mouth over the bruises Rorge and the others left on his chest, kissing each of them as he tries to not be too loud when he just wants to scream her name every time her tongue touches the healing skin — she gets as far as his stomach, then works her way back up, slow, taking her time, her eyes looking up at him once in a while as if he’s checking how he’s doing, and then when her head is finally above his own again, she wraps her hand about his hard-on, and maybe it’s clumsy and maybe she’s being even too delicate, but the moment he does he almost cries in relief. And then —
“Ladies,” she whispers, “only ever get perfect men in songs, don’t they?”
“So what if they do?”
“I never was a lady,” she sighs, “and men don’t get like this for the likes of me,” she says, stroking his cock experimentally. She’s no Cersei, no soft fingers and quick touches to make sure he won’t go too long without before attending to her — she feels him in her palm, the way someone who has thought about doing this to someone but never could would, and gods if Jaime’s blood isn’t boiling by now. “I —” She leans down, whispers right against his ear, as if this is her deepest darkest secret that she’s sharing with him, same as he shared Aerys with her, “I know life doesn’t work like in a song. I’ve known since — since forever.” She stops her ministrations, and he figures he can’t exactly expect her to talk about something this meaningful while she’s — well, doing that. “There’s a reason why I want to be in one. Songs live on. We don’t. And it’s always summer there, isn’t it?”
Oh. Oh, he realizes, understanding the entity of what she just told him —
“It’s not always summer in real life,” she goes on. “I thought it might be for a short while. It was not. I want to think I learned. And who would I be saving myself for anyway? I want this. If you want it, too, then you shouldn’t doubt.”
Gods.
He’s floored from a moment, even if none of that is surprising. Of course she hopes to end up in a song that speaks highly of her bravery and strength and goodness, because that will live on, and not the memory of some ugly daughter of a lord’s who was never taken seriously even when she was a better knight than most put together —
The same way he wished his noble deeds would end up immortalized when he first donned that white cloak, rather than be known as an oathbreaker he never wished to be.
Maybe she’s not as sure of herself as she likes to make others believe.
“Then I think you might have to give it to me yourself,” he says, trying to not feel horribly, woefully unequipped for this.
She smiles, though, enough that her teeth show.
“Gladly,” she says, and a moment later she’s taken him in hand and lined herself up against him and sank down on his cock and oh, oh, she’s warm and wet and tight around him, and when she clenches down he feels like screaming, but he doesn’t have the voice for it and he doesn’t want someone to walk in on them, anyway. The lining around his right wrist has fallen down with how damp it was, damn it, but then she moves an arm behind his shoulders again so that he’s sitting up at a better angle and he can put his right one around her neck, and she doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, and gods, he thinks his face is wet with something more than just steam, and then he’s moving inside her and she’s sinking down on him, her hips canting up and down, finding a rhythm, her mouth finding his again, and he had no idea his body could respond so readily to anyone else that wasn’t — that wasn’t —, but right now he’s only seeing blue eyes and strong legs and wide shoulders and freckled skin, and he wants her and everything she showed him she could be
(and that she says he could be again)
so much he’ll burst with it, and the more she says her name in between kisses the more he feels like he’s getting closer to the edge so fast he can barely keep track of it, and when it finally comes in a blinding, hot wave that makes the whole of him shudder in pleasure, he doesn’t think about how it’s the first time in more than a year and that he missed it and the thrill that came with it, or better, it’s a fleeting thing that burns away by thoughts of how Brienne feels perfect around him, of how all the misery of the previous weeks seems to have disappeared at once, of how he likes the way she says his name and how she seems delighted to hear him say hers, of how gentle and firm her hands around him are, of anything but what’s outside the door.
If only he could afford to not care forever, Jaime thinks as he comes down from it, as Brienne moves him back inside the tub so they can wash off the proof that they actually fucked on the ground — for a moment he feels a pang of something he doesn’t like at the idea, but they certainly can’t let Roose Bolton know that they just did this now, can they?
By the time they’re done, the blood on her thigh having disappeared into the water, he feels like he’s washed off years of grime, not just weeks. Brienne glances at him, then at the door.
“There’ll be a guard outside,” she says. “I will ask for clothes and new linen. Do you think you can stand?”
“Not for long, probably,” he admits. “But I’m not going to dine with fucking Lord Bolton in my old rags. If you give me your arm I could probably walk there.”
“Of course,” she replies at once. “I — I will get him, then.”
“Brienne?” He asks, suddenly wishing she’d be back as she gets out of the tub.
“Yes?”
“Qyburn might come himself with new linen and whatever else. But — I’m not so sure I trust him.” And I trust you, he doesn’t add. “Do you think you could…?”
“I will,” she says, a sweet, small smile lighting up her face. She opens the door just slightly, asks for the clothes, comes back and helps him out of the tub and into a towel before taking one for herself and sitting next to him on a stone bench. She puts herself in between him and the door.
They wait for a moment, two —
“Ser Jaime?” She asks, her hand gently closing over his right wrist, just above the inflamed skin.
“Lady Brienne?”
“That is… I just got adjusted to you not meaning the other one,” she whispers, but she does seem pleased of it. “I — just — wanted you to know I do not think I’ll regret it.”
He wants to say, I was afraid you’d thank me when there was nothing to thank me for. “Good, because I won’t either,” he says.
Then —
He has to ask before anyone else comes.
“Do you really think I can still… make up for lost time?” He can barely hear himself over the sound of water running through the pool.
“You lived, didn’t you?” She answers, and —
Fuck. She’s right. He’s still here to try and amend for it, and he wouldn’t be if she hadn’t gained the purple bruises on her pale skin to stop him from wasting away.
He thought he might teach her a lesson somehow, when he told her about Aerys. Now he’s starting to think she might have taught him more than a few.
“Guess what,” he says, feeling lighter than he can remember in years. “I did.”
And if he has actually learned anything from those lessons… he will try. Not that he thinks he’ll manage for sure, but just knowing there’s a chance he might is good enough.
He lets his head fall on her shoulder and breathes out in relief when she brings him closer.
End.
