![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janie_tangerine1.
Jaime doesn’t notice her until halfway into a set that is not really going that well, not that he had illusions about it - it was a bad song, and trying to disguise his current feelings concerning his sister, his father and most of his entire fucking family turning them into a dragging, sad ballad with a plot that might have been entirely too complicated to follow was not his best idea either.
Then again, he was drunk when he wrote that shit music, so he supposes that he’s asking for the rotten fruit.
Also, admittedly, it might be because he’s still too close to Lannister lands and everyone who knows who his father is would rather gut themselves than paying him. Fair enough, it’s not like he expected much less when he turned his back on his family and went out in the world deciding that he’d rather write songs about valiant knights - if they wouldn’t let him be one - than standing complicit while his father planned how to massacre his political opponents.
If he thinks he could have had Arthur Dayne knight him, if only it hadn’t gone so wrong -
Never mind that.
Point is: he’s given up on making any money tonight when he notices the woman sitting in the corner of the tavern, a dark blue hood drawn over her head. He could have mistaken her for a man because she’s definitely tall like one and built like one, with large shoulders under the cloak and long, long legs clad in blue leather… but no man that Jaime has ever known would go around with a cloak with little blue flowers embroidered on the hood.
Has to be a woman.
And he’s intrigued, and she hasn’t certainly told him to fuck off or stop singing, so he puts on his best smile and sits down in front of her.
“My lady,” he says without preamble, “as the only customer in this place that hasn’t informed me that they would rather see me drop dead than sing some more, I was wondering if I might have an opinion on my performance?”
For a moment, he sees her go absolutely still, her large hand curling tighter around her ale.
Then Jaime notices the two swords carefully placed against the wall.
Wait.
Leather armor, two swords -
A moment later, the woman pushes down the hood very, very cautiously, and holy fucking shit right, there’s no doubt that she’s a witcher. She has a pair of astonishing wide blue eyes with slit black pupils that look like a cat’s that cannot be mistaken, and her hair is such a pale blonde it’s pretty much white as the sunlight hits on it, and the wolf silver medallion on her chest leaves no room for debate. And her face -
She flinches ever so slightly when someone sneers in their direction the moment she shows it. When Jaime’s stare moves from her damned gorgeous eyes, he takes in the full picture - she has an obviously thrice broken nose, full dark lips, and her cheeks are scattered in freckles, and her neck is most likely larger than his own, and he had thought he was well-built. Then again, he’s not a witcher, she is, except that right now she doesn’t look at all menacing as people whisper all witchers do as she sighs and places her elbows on the table.
She says nothing.
“My lady,” he winks, and at that she looks surprised, “it’s not courteous to keep a man with bread in his pants waiting.”
She snorts, then -
“You sing well,” she replies, curtly, “but the music was a drag and the words were confused. And I’m no lady.
“Honest,” he says. “Then again, the subject I was singing about was not exactly inspiring. And I would beg to disagree. You certainly are a lady, unless you lack womanly parts, but that doesn’t seem like it to me.”
She glares at him. “What,” she scoffs back, drinking more of that ale. Shit. Her muscles are something.
“That’s a lovely armor. It shows that you do have breasts, and you definitely look like a woman, and I would like to presume I do know some manners, when I care to use them.”
“No need to use them with me.” She stands up as if to move the moment the men on the side whisper something about wanting such a monstrous bitch out of their way.
Jaime is about to go tell them to shut up, he was talking to her, goddamn it, except that -
Wait.
Blue armor. Wolf medallion. Pale blonde hair. Blue eyes. Broken nose -
By the time he’s made the connection, she’s out of the door, nearing her horse and searching for something in her bag. Jaime runs out, and who cares if he hasn’t eaten in two days, he can’t let her leave.
“Wait,” he says, “wait, you’re Brienne of Tarth, aren’t you -”
“If,” she interrupts him, her voice suddenly turning cold, “the name Bitterbridge leaves your mouth, I’m leaving you to bleed out on the side of the road.”
Jaime shuts his mouth at once.
People do call her Slayer of Bitterbridge. The story everyone tells is that the local king had called her to get rid of a witch that was causing havoc in his land and that she had killed him, half of his court and half of the villagers.
It was only a year ago or so.
Looking at her, she doesn’t look like a slayer at all.
“I was about to say that I’m impressed, but do keep on assuming the worst of everyone.”
“That’s what usually keeps me alive, bard,” she says, shaking her head, and she sounds sad as she says it.
She also seems sad about it.
“Well, I’m still impressed. I didn’t know they made… lady witchers.”
She shrugs. “Sometimes they do.” She offers nothing more but she does look at him now and right, she’s slightly taller than him, but not that much all things considered. “And I still do not know why are you here.”
“Maybe I’m tired of writing bad songs about my horrible relatives and instead I’m looking for a real inspiration.”
He stares at her.
She stares back.
“And I would be it,” she scoffs. “Ridiculous.”
“Hey, you do slay monsters for a living, which makes excellent songs all of the time, and while your fame is certainly less than stellar, I’ve been talking to you for this long and you do not look like… that thing you don’t want me to say to me. Maybe we can help each other.”
She stares at him.
“Help each other.”
“You let me come with you, I write songs about your quests, you get better fame and I actually can prove that I’m good at this job and put my previous forgettable existence behind me.”
She keeps on staring at him.
Then -
“The last time,” she says, “I bought into anything that came from a pretty face like yours, it was the last time anyone thought I could not… be this. Excuse me if I think I will pass.”
Except that she sounds… sad, as she says it.
Then she climbs on her horse and starts riding out, blue cloak swirling behind her -
Ah, fuck this.
“I am going to follow you,” he says, “I’m known to be fairly stubborn.”
She looks back down at him, still obviously not buying it, but then after a bit, she does stop the horse and gets down from it. Jaime is pretty sure she called him Renly.
Like Bitterbridge’s king.
“Then if you’re that good,” she says, “make me believe that you mean it. I can smell lies on you, so don’t even try - the only reason why I haven’t gutted you is that I can’t smell that or fear on you, as implausible as it bloody is, and it’s driving me insane because that’s all I smell on most people, so be quick about it. Why should I let you come with? What’s in this for you? And who are you, for that matter?”
They can smell lies?
Gods, that’s such good material, such -
Right. He thinks he owes her to tell the truth.
Also, no point in hiding it.
“I’m Jaime,” he says. “Well, fine, that’d be Jaime Lannister, but -”
“Lannister as in -” He shakes his head.
“Yes, well, not anymore. I mean, my illustrious father disinherited me after I made it exceedingly clear that I had no interest in being his heir. Not counting that affair I am sure you must be entirely aware of, as everyone in the fucking continent is.”
She stares back at him. “The… affair concerning Aerys Targaryen?”
He laughs. “What do you know about it?”
“That you were supposed to be knighted and guard him when he was ruling Redania, and then your knighting somehow was postponed and it never came to be, and then you came back to your father’s castle and sent a raven to the entire realm saying that his… that his Queen had turned into a striga.”
Jaime blinks. “That’s actually the way it went,” he says, “more or less. It’s not the story most people know.”
“What,” Brienne says, and now he thinks that maybe she’s smiling, a hint of it, “the one that you bedded the queen and betrayed the king’s trust in you and were shamefully sent away because you weren’t worthy of a knighthood?”
“How the hell do you know the real story?”
“Because,” she says, “it was only a couple of years ago, just before - just before my trials.” She sighs, shakes her head. “And an envoy came very quickly to Kaer Morhen and asked for a good, discreet witcher to deal with it, and he went, saved her life and came back to tell it, and I assure you that Sandor is not the kind of person who would embellish what happened on a contract. He said the truth but he also heard… the official version.”
Jaime snorts. “Do you think that they would have admitted openly that the king’s sister turned into a striga because he spent years raping her? Please. I - well. I stayed there a few months, I found out, I told, I thought they would hail me as some kind of hero and instead my reputation was forever slandered.” He shrugs. “So I thought that since I did want to be in songs, before, and as much as my father thought it was useless I did get a musical education as every serious nobleman should, then why not making it my living? I mean, I wasn’t cut for that.”
“That,” Brienne scoffs, “is blatantly obvious.”
“Well, thank you. So, going back to your questions. What’s in it for me? That I would have material for songs that’s not… about my fucking family or Aerys or the likes, and you would gain more fame and more money out of them if they were successful, and so you have absolutely nothing to lose.”
Right.
He’s said his piece.
He stares at her, raising an eyebrow expectantly, and -
Her face suddenly goes… softer. Just a tiny bit, but it’s obvious in her damned eyes that it is.
“You… want to write songs about me,” she replies, her voice suddenly lower. It’s a nice voice, he thinks.
“I thought I made that abundantly clear.”
She shakes her head. “Go to Kaer Mohern then. It’s full of men who would love to have you ride along. You don’t even know me except as the thrice bloody slayer of Bitterbridge and I made peace with that.” Gods, now she sounds like she will cry, for - “Thank you, I can feel you mean it, but it would be useless. I am not anyone worth singing about.”
Thing is: she sounds like she wishes she was.
And Jaime can hear that whatever happened in Bitterbridge was… not what people think it did.
“Tell you what,” he says, “let’s compromise. You let me follow you for what, a week, so I can see if you’re really not worth my effort. I’m not even going to write songs or anything until it’s over, and I swear I won’t get in the way of anything. And you can see that I’m not japing. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t. If not… well, it would be mutually beneficial, wouldn’t it?”
She stares at him for a long, long moment -
Then she bites down on her lip and nods -
“You don’t touch Renly. That is, the horse,” she adds.
“Wouldn’t dream of that, my lady,” Jaime grins.
Oh, he is going to make sure she lets him go with her even after the next week. If anything, if he wasn’t intrigued before, he very much is now.
2.
It’s been six days and Jaime thinks his opinion concerning his fellow non enhanced humans, so to speak, has pummeled down to unheard depths. He had thought it couldn’t get worse after Aerys and his damned family, but...
But he’s followed Brienne for not even a week, as he promised he made himself scarce and didn’t write any songs nor tried to meddle in her business, just to see how she fared, and Seven Hells but he couldn’t handle what she handles for five minutes. They’ve been across some four towns. In all of them they’ve been refused a room to sleep in on account of not wanting abominations in our humble establishment, he’s heard more people than he can count call her a freak to her back and within her hearing distance, he’s absolutely sure she’s been swindled out of at least a third of the money she should have been given and he knows she knows it but she doesn’t do anything about it, and the worst thing is that she takes it… well. He can see that it hurts her, because her eyes go sad every time it happens, but for the rest she barely even shrugs and pretends she hasn’t heard.
That would be enough, but then she takes some five jobs and - for two of them it happens that she doesn’t even kill the monsters in question because it was obviously not at fault and instead renegotiates the situation with them, not even taking payment because the commissioners were dirt poor, for another she doesn’t complain when the alderman refuses to re-negotiate her contract when she had killed a nest of drowners rather than two. The other four -
Well.
She got swindled out of money for them, too, but she had let Jaime tag along after he pointed out that he was about to be knighted, he can fucking hold a sword and defend himself, except he hadn’t needed it because she took care of the menaces in question swiftly, efficiently and quickly, and fucking grief but after he sees her take down a rabid werewolf that couldn’t possibly be saved or brought back to reason with a series of quick, well-placed blows, handling that sword like it’s part of her arm, he feels almost ashamed to realize that it got him so hard it hurt, and good thing that he managed to handle it until they got to town -
And then it promptly stopped bothering him because she was refused a room and paid less than she should have had, yet again, and so couldn’t even go wash in a proper tub.
The only good thing is that they’re not refused at least dinner and ale, but when they sit down to eat, Brienne’s armor covered in blood, same as her cheek (at least they let her wash her hands), he’s fuming.
He’s about to address everything that’s wrong with her situation.
Then she speaks.
“I hope that you did realize how there is nothing romantic or worth singing about in my life.”
“What I realized,” Jaime retorts, “is that there are even more idiots in the world than I had once presumed, and I had presumed a lot. For - you’re saving their asses and that’s all you get?”
She shrugs. “If you think people treated me differently even before I became what I am, you are sorely wrong.”
“... What?”
She looks at him like he’s just grown two heads. “Gods, if only I couldn’t smell on you that you mean it -” She shakes her head. “Look, the eyes? That was the trials. The hair? I - I already was straw blonde, they just made it lighter, but fine, let’s say it was the trials. Enhanced senses? That also was the trials. But I was tall before, I was good with a sword before, I was built like a man before, my nose was broken before, my face was ugly before, no man ever looked at me without sneering before, except my father, and - I was called a freak and a monster long before I was put on this path. It’s nothing new.”
Jaime opens his mouth, closes it, then finishes his drink. “Then people were idiots before and are idiots now. You don’t deserve any of that shit and - fuck’s sake, you’ve done more knightly deeds in six days than any anointed knight I’ve ever met in my entire life! They shouldn’t treat you like this. And I cannot believe they didn’t let you have a room.”
“I haven’t had one since Bitterbridge,” she shrugs. “I make do.”
Jaime is about to scream. “How old are you even?”
She looks young, younger than him, but he knows that witchers age very slowly and live very long, so he could be mistaken.
“My father died when I was thirteen. Turns out I was a child surprise and he hoped it would be forgotten. It wasn’t. I passed my trials at seventeen. I’m nineteen now.”
She’s fucking younger than him.
Jaime is going to lose his shit sooner rather than later. The part of him who wanted to be a knight and be courteous and kind to the ladies and help out people who needed it hasn’t died, after all, or so it seems, and while she certainly can handle herself… she probably does need his help.
“Sorry,” he says, “but after hearing all of this if there is one thing I am sure of is that you are in dire need of my services.”
“... What?”
“A good song goes a long way. And you desperately need someone to explain that you’re nowhere near what people think you are, and I can’t - how are you even so - how can you just shrug at all this?”
She smiles, sadly. “I told you, nothing I had not experienced before. But it’s… kind of you to worry.” She says it like it’s a novelty. Fuck this noise.
“Then - just, let me write those songs. Then if it doesn’t work it doesn’t, but… listen, you know I wanted to - be a knight. Then it didn’t happen and all things considered I’m happy about it because all knights I have ran into were a complete disappointment at best, but you - you are so much better than all of them and apparently I’m still the kind of idiot who wants to do something about this kind of thing.”
“You did something with Aerys’s queen,” she says, not unkindly. “At the cost of your own reputation.”
“Yeah, well, it would be rather sad if it was my only accomplishment, right?”
“I -” Brienne starts.
“Jaime Lannister?” Someone almost shouts from their side.
Jaime sighs and turns to his right. Oh, fucking Seven Hells, not Ronnet Connington - he’s run into the man a few times when he was vying to become his father’s bannerman after his own uncle was disinherited on account of not having disguised well enough that he was not carnally interested in women. He thinks he succeeded. He cannot be arsed to remember that.
“I do not,” he grits his teeth, not bothering to stand, “go by that surname anymore, Ser, but yes. Can I help you?”
“Oh, I just saw you and was wondering - are you really writing songs now?”
Jaime shrugs. “I’d rather try that than spend my time plotting my poor neighbors’s destruction.”
“And what would your father say if he saw that now you take company with that?”
Jaime really, really doesn’t like where this conversation is heading.
“She,” he replies, slowly, “is better company than about anyone in Casterly that’s not my brother, and we were having a drink in peace, so how about you… just leave us alone to have it?”
“Come on,” Connington goes on, “you can’t mean it. How do you grow up with your sister and then even look at… that? And don’t you know witchers are just little more than beasts or are you just suicidal right now? I’m sure she’s hairer than most of the contracts she takes -”
Now.
Jaime was going to let is slide.
Brienne is mouthing at him to let it slide.
But.
It’s not just that the moment he put her and beast in the same sentence Jaime had just seen deep, bright red.
It’s not just that he had seen Brienne flinch as usual, taking it in again without protesting -
But -
How do you grow up with your sister and even look at that -
(Ronnet Connington never felt Cersei’s hands leave bruises on his wrists or arms, Ronnet Connington never heard Cersei whisper in his ear all the damned time that they were one and the same to the point that he felt bad when he didn’t want what she wanted and couldn’t find it in himself to say no, Ronnet Connington didn’t have to plead her to leave Tyrion alone, Ronnet Connington surely never realized years later that maybe not remembering a lot of times he knows they had been together when they were young and where he knows they kissed or better that she kissed him and he let her, Ronnet Connington never was told that he was a useless burden when he threw away his place in court for the sake of poor Queen Rhaella who according to her was a monster that should have been put down -)
“You know,” Jaime says, standing up, “she has a name. Which is Brienne, if you fucking please, Ser,” and then he’s clenched his hand into a fist and punched the asshole so hard he spits a damned tooth.
He doesn’t even care when one of his friends punches back.
--
“You didn’t have to do it,” Brienne says later, quietly, sitting on the banks of a small river outside the damned town and dabbing blood from his face, her large, rough hands surprisingly gentle as she wipes it away. They’re washing as best as they can and he does have a split lip, but he cannot care less. Also, his lute has come out of that skirmish unharmed and that’s all he cares about, and even if it hadn’t, he wouldn’t have regretted it.
“Well, I wanted to,” he shrugs. “He was an asshole and he had no right. Stop looking at me like I am completely insane.”
“I - I’m sorry,” she whispers, suddenly sounding her damned age, “it’s just… I told you, my father has always been the only man who ever… who never told me that kind of thing. The few boys he tried to marry me to back in the day, before he died and before it turned out that was not meant to be for me, they all... told me similar things. And in Bitterbridge, it’s a long story, but I did spend a lot of time with the king’s men, before… things went down. They actually tried to court me, the way I am now, and for a moment I thought they actually… saw a peer in me and they didn’t mind the way I was.”
“They didn’t?”
She shakes her head. “It was a bet on my maidenhead. Because you know, a woman who can hold a sword and looks like me, that’s absolutely a prize, but bragging about having taken a witcher’s maidenhead?” She snorts a little, moving the cloth to his temple. Gods, she really is gentle.
Meanwhile, he is feeling sick.
“I found out,” she says quietly, “and I made clear to them that if any of them tried it again they wouldn’t have much… equipment to take anyone’s maidenhead anymore. That worked.”
He laughs, in spite of himself. “As you should have.”
“So -” She shrugs. “Men don’t usually… do that on my account. Thank you,” she replies, so quietly it’s barely audible.
Jaime could say a lot of things.
But he also never quite managed to be… very much straight, during this kind of conversation.
“Yeah, well,” he half-smiles, even if it hurts, “there are no men like me, my lady.”
She stares at him, and then she actually laughs, not a snort but a real one, not loud and not too much, but she smiles enough to show a bit of crooked teeth and Jaime thinks he wants to see her smile more often and gods, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s just landed himself into, but he cannot give a single fuck.
“I think I understood that,” she says, and then, quieter, her cheeks maybe slightly flushing, those blue cat-like eyes staring up into his as if it’s taking all of her guts to say what comes next, “and - you can come with me, if you want.”
“Oh, finally,” he says, “you won’t regret it.”
“I don’t think so. But - gods. You should probably know about Bitterbridge.”
“You don’t have to say it -”
“No, you should. Because if you don’t - you won’t understand. I think you have just begun to. But - all right.” She breathes in. “It was… one of my first contracts. Not the first, and people knew of me by fame because, well. No lady witchers around, as you would say. Also - Renly, the king, he had been on a campaign when he heard that a witch had enchanted his castle and taken his lands, and I was nearby, so he hired me to deal with her on the way back. I traveled with his army, which was… how that bet happened.” She sighs. “The closer we got to Bitterbridge, the more it was obvious things were wrong - men started snapping at each other and killing each other even within friends, and then it turned out that she actually was hiding within the camp, posing as a washerwoman, and when we got to Bitterbridge… before I could kill her - and I did - she cursed Renly and part of his army. To - kill everyone else he’d see. I put myself in the middle of it before it could get too bad and I only killed people in self defense, and then I fought him and I tried to make him reason.” She wipes at her face. Gods, is she crying? “He was… kind,” she finally says, “and he was the only pretty face who never called me a freak to my face.”
Oh, fuck him to hell and back, the poor girl who was what, eighteen at most, and spent her youth either being rejected or surrounded by future witchers to be who, as everyone knows, most times don’t even survive their trials, and was most likely smitten with this Renly, and -
“I had to kill him,” she whispers, sounding pained, “or he wouldn’t have stopped, but people decided that I had turned on him and that it was all my fault, and - well. That is how it went.”
“I suppose no one wanted to hear your side of the story, did they,” he answers.
“You are learning,” she replies, half-smiling, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “No. They didn’t. And they haven’t. At least it set me straight soon.”
“... How exactly it set you straight?”
She shrugs. “Becoming what I am, it isn’t… most people don’t survive it. And I didn’t even choose it, but I couldn’t refuse it either, so - I thought, well. I did want to be a knight, before my father died. Because - I was good with swords. And I figured that if I survived the trials and got this far at least… it could be the next best thing. At least no one would question my right to go around the continent wearing armor. And when I was younger, I - the thing with songs, is that I know they make everything better than it actually is. So I thought that if I got that far, if people wrote songs about me, I wouldn’t… be remembered like I am.” She sighs. “But Bitterbridge set me straight on that account. It was never going to happen, so I just… accepted it, I guess.”
Jaime can’t fucking believe her. “Sorry, but then why have you tried to convince me not to when it’s exactly what I’ve been telling you I wanted to do until now?”
The glare she levels at him really, really isn’t effective at all.
“I don’t usually get what I want,” she sighs. “No point in setting myself up for disappointment.”
“You do know you’ve just given me a challenge, my lady?” He presses, moving closer to her, so that their shoulders are touching.
She lets herself smile again, ever so slightly.
“Will you accept it?”
He lets himself grin fully, not bothering to hide that he actually is excited for it.
“Gladly,” he says. “And see if within two months people won’t give us a room.”
“I’m… looking forward to it, then,” she says, not moving away.
Good.
He can’t wait to prove her wrong.
