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dreadwulf · 5 years

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#4 With this Kiss I Pledge My Love

(previous chapters)

Jaime Lannister should have ridden back to King’s Landing weeks ago.

He had fully intended to, after putting the Riverlands to order – to return to his son the boy king, and offer his protection. Get him a proper Small Council who will advise him wisely, and a real Kingsguard to protect him, and get Cersei somewhere well away. Garrison the Lannister armies wisely to maintain order, clean up the mess his lord father has made of the kingdom.

Instead Jaime has been wandering about in a fruitless search for an unimportant girl. Spending weeks riding through snow and freezing cold in a gods-forsaken corner of the Vale with a motley party of leftovers who don’t want him there. He has told not a soul where he has been nor where he is going. He has been gone from his post for so long that the Crown has declared him dead and replaced him on the Kingsguard, and the army he had commanded has been rerouted by unknown orders away from the Riverlands, which will surely swiftly descend into renewed chaos.

He should go back. He should abandon this pointless quest and return to his duties. Jaime has no reason not to, except that he swore a vow and meant it. Under duress and foolishly perhaps, an oath sworn to a dying woman who didn’t die after all, but an oath still. I am yours and you are mine. He is keeping his oaths now, even if no one expects or even wants him to.

There had been no cloaks, no kiss, and no pledging of love, only their hands bound together and him speaking the vow. But even if she had not spoken the same vow back, and the marriage bond will soon evaporate into the air as though it had never been, it will not be him that breaks it. He can be stubborn too.

So he wakes on the cold ground each day and she says barely a word to him and he speaks hardly a word to her as they ride to the Gates of the Moon, and the sands trickle down in the hourglass that is their marriage until only days remain.

Jaime has ridden with her every day through deepening snow and treacherous ice until finally they reached their destination and made camp here, her and Podrick and Hyle Hunt and the Hound, alongside all of the other travelers who have come to rest at the Gates of the Moon.

The Gates are no more promising than anywhere else they have arrived. There is an extensive encampment here of hopeful hedge knights and nobles from the highlands, but none have time for an odd woman in armor and her questions about red-haired girls of four-and-ten. There are no further rumors of Sansa Stark here, or of her sister, although there are a great many more interesting rumors about the rest of the kingdom in the progressing winter.

Jaime collects these rumors and opinions with some interest, mingling himself with the men at camp over food and drink for several days running. Turns out there are a great many things that a person will tell a traveler in the Vale that they would not tell to Lord Commander Lannister. Some of those things are pure nonsense, but others are rather illuminating.

It is not so bad, being dead. He gets many more smiles and greetings as a dead man, and not so many sneers and whispers. He keeps his stump shoved under his travel cloak, has muddied his hair and beard so that they are not quite so golden, and it makes him nearly invisible. He is another middle-aged hedge knight trying to relive his glory days at tourney, so far as anyone knows.

Not so far off. He could not hope to compete there now. Left-handed these green boys could take him, and without his fearsome reputation to dissuade them his life would be in real danger.

He sits at supper and looks at the farm boys and young lords, in the spring of their youth and the peak of their skills. He imagines Brienne defeating them all, beating them down into the mud until they beg for mercy. It’s a shame she won’t enter the tourney; he’d like to see that. Would any one of them be a match for her, at her full power? They are nearer her age, their reputations as spotless as their unbloodied swords. If she had awakened from her long sleep married to one of them, would she be so aggrieved?

The competitors like to talk, and the spectators even more so. They spin tales about the fighters who have come hoping to be Winged Knights, their family connections, their sweethearts and patrons. They tell him all about Lord Baelish and his natural daughter Alayne Stone, who have organized the tourney.

These tales in particular catch his ear. If Littlefinger has a natural daughter I’ll eat my boot. The man is too careful for that. Only the Spider is less likely to produce a bastard offspring, and only out of physical impossibility.

He asks questions about the fabled daughter, and her upcoming marriage to Harold Hardyng. An awfully advantageous match for a Stone, marrying the next in line to the Vale. Conveniently Petyr Baelish seems to have gotten charge of little lord Robert, and rules the Eeyrie as Regent. Jaime wonders if there might be an accident in store, once that wedding is complete. Maybe several accidents. Sweetrobin and Harry the Heir cleared away, and the Vale belongs to Lord Baelish.

He would very much like to meet this Alayne Stone.

That’s more difficult than he would like. She will attend the tourney when it begins, but thus far has remained out of sight. He will have to wait for the tourney and possibly for the very final rounds to lay eyes on her, and that is likely to happen after his deadline is passed. Not that it makes any difference – the one has nothing to do with the other, no matter how persistently his mind makes the connection. Finding Sansa will not stop the marriage from ending.

It will be a relief to have it over and still he is increasingly agitated at the thought. He lies in his tent each night and he thinks on the Hounds Tooth inn when he had shared a room with Brienne as his bride. He had passed that evening most pleasantly, and even though nothing of import occurred he finds himself thinking on it fondly. Brienne asleep and unguarded in his bed while he sat by the fire. Friendly strangers wishing them well, simply for having one another. Your lady wife. It was a night stolen from someone else’s life, a life he is never going to have.

For his own good the marriage must dissolve. It is inane to cling to an illusion and he has done that quite long enough with Cersei. He is never going to be somebody’s husband; he is a knight and he is the kingslayer and that is that.

He is chewing on just this thought as he rides back to his bed at sunset. He knows when he comes back to camp Brienne will be surprised to see him again, as she has been every day that he has not left their party. She knows very well he has other places to be, and is waiting for him to remember it and ride away. Yet he is lingering here and unwilling to leave, though what he is waiting for he cannot imagine. Brienne cannot imagine it either, clearly.

It’s making him cross, and distracted. He does not notice the riders gathering to his flanks until it is too late to evade them.

Jaime is pulled from his horse before he can draw a blade, and thrown to the ground.

Sellswords, plainly. Not expensive ones. Five of them, looking like they’ve slept rough half their lives and just barely know how to hold a blade. He’s a little insulted that anyone would think him no match for these.

He leans back on his elbows and contemplates them in a relaxed pose. “I haven’t any money, and if you want a fine horse, you’d be better off feeding mine to the one you’ve got. This one’s slow as molasses.”

“No money eh?” A skinny, toothless alley cat of a mercenary points a rusty longsword at him. “No Lannister gold?”

Jaime frowns. Clearly his disguise has not been so effective as he’d hoped.

Some of his mates are skeptical. “Can this be the golden lion? He looks more like a weasel.”

“No, it’s ‘im.” The tallest one spits a dark stream through his teeth and stands over Jaime. “Lord Baelish pointed him out to me personally.”

Well that’s irritating. Apparently Littlefinger was in the same room with him and Jaime never laid eyes on the man. Clearly he can cross “spy” off his list of potential careers after “swordfighter”.

“If you’re seeking out a ransom, you may have to wait some time to get it. Only ravens travel well now, and they don’t carry quite so much gold.”

“We got the gold already,” Toothless tells him. He jingles the money bag that hangs beside the knife on his belt. “Lord Baelish pays us well, and he only needs your head.”

Of course. He has asked entirely too many questions. And whatever his plans, Littlefinger has no intention of anyone outside the Vale hearing of them until it’s too late.

“The Crown will have all your heads for it,” he says confidently.

“You’ll be buried right here, Kingslayer, and they will never know. The Crown believes you dead already and no one will miss you.”

Belatedly, Jaime realizes he is right. Not one of his compatriots in the Kingsguard or the Lannister Army knows where he is, and his own house has already forsaken him for the grave. Next to no one will notice if he dies now rather than two months ago. And even fewer than that will mourn him. Possibly none.

He lunges.

The knife comes easily out of Toothless’s belt and into his side, spraying Jaime with blood. But the remaining four sellswords are on him in a moment, and it takes only a few kicks in the stomach before he lies still in the snow again. He knows this routine.

The tall man has his sword out now. “If you’ll tell us where to find the giant bitch, I can make it painless.”

“Nonsense.” Jaime brushes the snow out of his hair as carelessly as possible. “Let’s make it hurt. I can only die once, after all.”

“Happy to oblige.” The tall one shoves his face back into the snow and stands on him. Jaime doesn’t even know who he is. Some no-name cutthroat sent by Petyr Baelish. What a stupid way to die.

“What in the living fuck is that?” one of them shouts.

Horses approach. Abruptly the boot on his neck lifts, and Jaime spits out mud. Is there someone else here trailing him, after the Brotherhood and the Vale Guards? With any luck they will kill each other.

He wipes snow from his eyes and sits back on his heels. Two riders approach very rapidly, and one of them has a sword raised. It crashes into the sellsword who had just been standing over him, with such force it knocks him off his feet.

Brienne dismounts in a strikingly graceful motion, her sword drawn, and she stares them down.

“Unhand my husband,” Brienne growls at them.

Jaime grins. A more wonderful combination of words he cannot imagine.

“Already done,” he points out, waving his stump. “The bloody mummers beat them to it.”

She doesn’t hear him, swings directly into action.

The fight is brief. She holds Oathkeeper with both hands and leads with her left, with her right arm still healing. It should discomfit him how easily she switches her lead hand, how one left-handed blow knocks the blade from her opponent, but instead it makes him smile. She makes short work of their weapons, knocking them from their hands, and their owners from their feet, while Jaime kneels untouched among them.

He hadn’t known how pleasant it could be to be rescued. It’s really quite wonderful. Someone fighting for him, bleeding for him, spilling blood. When the immediate threats are downed she stands in front of him protectively, Oathkeeper in hand, and she looks like a song. A song only for him, for his sake.

“Kingslayer’s Whore!” one of the downed men moans from the ground.

“That’s Kingslayer’s Wife, I’ll have you know,” Jaime says irritably. “She’s made an honest man of me.”

“Hush.” Brienne advances on him. In the time it takes Jaime to stand, Brienne has the man under her boot with a sword pointed to his neck. “What do you want with him? Robbery?”

“Execution,” the wretched man spits. “For crimes against everything good and decent. Kingslayer, Oathbreaker, great golden cripple.”

“That’s right, you do not deserve to say his name,” Brienne tells him. “None of you do. Call him what you will, but you will not be half the man he is.”

Gods be good.

Jaime is pierced by those words, a clean wound right through his chest. It hurts like every time he heard the name and no one spoke up for him, all together, all at once. Paired with the balm of her defense it is almost unbearable.

At a moment’s notice Jaime knows what he wants after all. He wants to keep her. He wants to stay her husband, and her to stay his wife. Never to part again.

He wants her.

“Kingslayer’s Whore,” the sellsword repeats, spitting at her. “Got his cock out of your mouth long enough to ride? After murdering your liege lady Stark for him?”

His blade is drawn before he’s even thought to do it, and he’s walking briskly to Brienne’s side.

Jaime aims the end of his sword directly at the man’s mouth, descending until it falls between his teeth and the man is choking and whimpering against it.

“I don’t suppose sword-swallowing is one of your skills?” He pushes it a little further in, and the man gurgles in terror. “I hear in Braavos there are men who can take a sword right down their gullet and all the way to the hilt, and pull it out again right as rain.”

“Ser…” Brienne speaks up, cautiously.

“I wonder how you learn to do a trick like that - a little at a time, or all at once? Let’s find out.”

“There is no need,” she says quietly, putting a hand to his arm.

He meets her eye only briefly. She threatened the man herself only moments ago, but this is too far?

“My lady wife would have me show you mercy. Can you keep a civil tongue in your head?”

The man makes an eager noise, too afraid to nod his head, and Jaime pulls his blade back.

The scene has not gone unnoticed - they are not far from other encampments, and other fires. There are onlookers now, and among them Podrick Payne on his horse, his little sword drawn in their support. He threatens the onlookers with it, having them keep their distance.

“They were tipped off,” Jaime tells Brienne. “Littlefinger is here - Petyr Baelish. I don’t know what he’s up to but he wanted me dead, and you as well.”

“I have no dealings with him,” Brienne says quizzically. “Could it have something to do with Sansa Stark?”

Unwisely, the man on the ground speaks up. “There’s no Starks in the Vale, whore. No Starks anywhere anymore, thanks to you and yours. They –”

He is interrupted by a swift kick in the face.

Jamie hasn’t yet sheathed his sword, still thinks of feeding it to the man. He’s still angry. He has brought even more abuse on Brienne simply by his association and it infuriates him. His voice sharpens to a deadly point. “You will address the lady properly. Or you will keep no tongue in your head at all.”

“Lady Lannister –” the man corrects himself quickly.

Jaime startles at that, and Brienne stiffens beside him. Then he laughs. “Oh, we haven’t settled that bit yet. Lady Brienne will do for now. But there will be no more of this ‘Kingslayer’s Whore’. She is a noble lady, and a sworn blade of your precious Starks, and no one will speak so crudely of her in my presence and keep their tongue. Understand me? Tell that to your noble compatriots.”

The man whimpers agreement and Brienne lifts her boot, allowing him to sit up and rub his throat nervously.

The city guard, Vale soldiers, approaches in a thunderous pack. Brienne is cheered by their appearance, but Jaime knows better. Littlefinger will own them too; he is thorough like that.

Exactly as expected they take him by the arms as soon as they dismount holding Jaime between them. Guards will have to make a show of arresting him, so that they can murder him in private.

“Sers, these men attacked us,” Brienne tries valiantly to explain, appealing to the guards with her sword lowered. She still thinks they will listen.

One of them shoves her aside. “Quiet, you ridiculous bitch.”

So of course Jaime had to headbutt the man in the face, which hurts, but it drops the man like a sack of flour, which is satisfying enough to be worth it. For his trouble he is slung into the back of a wagon, a jailer’s hearse.

“For what crime?” Brienne questions them loudly. “We were defending ourselves from these sellswords.”

“Attacking a city guard,” the guard says.

Brienne considers that, visibly, head cocked to one side.

Then she smashes the man in the face with the hilt of her sword, so that his nose produces a most astonishing spray of blood, and is immediately thrown into the wagon right next to him.

*******************

“You could have stopped them,” he grouses to her later.

They are seated on the cold stone floor of a dungeon, daylight barely peeking into their cell.

“If by that you mean killed them, we would hardly get anywhere finding Sansa Stark if we run about murdering city guards.”

“We’re not going to find her in here!“

She is unbothered. “They will keep us but a night.”

“And wake us with a knife across the throat.”

“Pod rode for help,” Brienne says stubbornly, staring straight ahead. “He will find Ser Hyle and Ser Clegane. They will think of something.”

Time is passing fitfully as the light slowly fades. Their cramped cell is barely big enough for the both of them and it's freezing besides, and they sit just near each other, not touching, their breaths visibly hovering in the air around them. Brienne pulls her knees closer to her chest, for either warmth or protection. Without her armor she is probably short of both.

A dozen things to say flit through his mind, and he says none of them. Instead Brienne speaks up next, some time later.

“You did not have to do that,” she says softly. “To threaten the man on the ground. Or attack that guard.”

He snorts. “Certainly I did. What else would I do, the dishonorable Kingslayer.”

“I mean that you did not have to defend my name.” She shifts, angling her face away from him. “I am accustomed to being insulted.”

So is he. But Jaime is not accustomed to her being insulted, at least not by someone other than him. “Where did that particular insult come from, I wonder? Kingslayer’s Whore. The Brotherhood said it too, well before the Quiet Isle. Did you ride about declaring that I had sent you? Not a great stratagem.”

“The lions on the sword might have had something to do with it.”

“Ah.”

He swallows and thinks about the rope marks around her neck. Perhaps it had not happened because she had any great feeling for him, but it is his fault all the same. He gave her a sword covered with lions and sent her after Sansa Stark, and they broke her arm and tore her face and hung her.

“If you are going to attack anyone who calls me names, you will have to fight the whole of Westeros from one end to another. Do not bother.”

She is so calm. He wants her to be angry and rage about it, and it isn’t in her. She is resigned to this. It makes him want to shake her.

“If people must make arses of themselves it is one thing. But for you to take abuse on my behalf… that I do not like. Your reputation should not suffer for things that you did not do.”

“It’s my reputation too, now,” she says mournfully. “Already the Vale knows I killed my liege lady and disbanded her Brotherhood. I did do that, and I can hardly dispute it. It will be everywhere before long.”

“You cannot possibly be troubling yourself over that.” Jaime grimaces even to think on it, it makes him sick inside, in an entirely familiar way. “You had no choice.”

“I did have a choice, and I made it. I chose to break my oath, and I knew the consequences. I learned them from you.” She looks over at him finally. “You made a choice as well. And you have still carried the guilt all these years, haven’t you?”

His mouth goes bone-dry. Only Brienne has ever seen how he blames himself for breaking that oath, even all these years later. Despite every reason why he could not have done otherwise.

“Yes,” he says quietly.

“Sansa Stark is my last chance for honor too. I can only make up for my failure by her mother by keeping my promise, and seeing her safely returned to Winterfell.” She leans her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. “At least then I can hold up my head and know that I did the best I could. I was no kind of knight, and I failed from one end of it to the other, but I cannot go back to Tarth until I have found her.”

Brienne looks so bone-tired and forlorn at that moment that it aches to look at her.

The protective instinct in him rises up, the most powerful instinct he has, and Jaime is totally unable to resist it. Something is hurting someone dear to him and his most natural reaction is to fling himself at it. He doesn’t have a sword and the enemy is nothing he can protect her from, but Brienne is hurting and he cannot think how to make it stop.

So he grasps her shirt at the collar and pulls her to him, kissing her.

Brienne goes very still and softens all at once, melting against him. Her mouth is warm and sweet and his heart is racing and he is pulled by a current far more powerful than he can swim against. The world rushes by very quickly, a blur.

Her hands struggle up to his chest as if to push him away but they only sit there preparing, always about to.

The thought floats by without his leave. With this kiss I pledge my love. His lips speak it to hers.

But then she does push him back. He stands against her hands catching his breath. Her eyes are so blue and so wide and so full of hurt.

“How could you?” She chokes out the words painfully.

“Like this,” he says, trying to kiss her again.

“Don’t.” She jumps up to her feet, backing away from him as though he had attacked her. “Why would you do something like that?”

Because he wanted to, that’s all he can think of. And he can’t tell her. To simply say, out loud, what he wants? Jaime doesn’t do things like that. A person cannot just admit to the things they want, not out loud. If you reveal what you really want, someone will take it from you, someone will use it to get what they want from you. A person keeps those things inside, and they try not to think on them, so that no one will discern their secrets. With enough practice a person will not even remember the things they want. Or know what they are in the first place.

“I wanted you to stop talking,” he says, too frustrated to think of anything better.

“You…” she sputters angrily, and paces over him. “Did you think you can do as you like because we are still married? Did you think for a moment that I might not want my first kiss in a filthy dungeon…?”

“Your first?” That had not occurred to him.

“Oh, gods.” She covers her face and he can see she’s blushing all down her throat, where it disappears down into her shirt.

That old instinct again. How can he make it better?

“I wanted to. I wanted to kiss you.”

"You wanted…?” Her face tightens painfully. “Why?”

Jaime thinks of Red Ronnet and his rose, and he would very much like to find the man and hit him again.

“I lost my senses, all right?”

“Stop talking,” Brienne snaps at him, and shoves herself down into the farthest corner away from him, still blushing.

Jaime congratulates himself silently on making everything infinitely worse, and then things get worse again, all on their own.

A woman walks into the dungeon. They know immediately it is a woman, well before they see her, from her carefully measured, delicate steps. She is tall, though not so tall as Brienne, and she walks to the bars of their cell and looks down upon them calmly.

She takes down the hood of her winter cape, standing over them, and it reveals rather than a noble lady a young girl, no more than five-and-ten, if that. She is dressed plainly but elegantly, in fine homespun clothes of a lovely warm caramel color that matches her hair, and looks quite out of place in a filthy dungeon.

Jaime searches out her face in the dim light. “Alayne Stone, I presume.”

Alayne nods. “I am. And you are the Kingslayer, and this lady is your wife, Brienne of Tarth. The woman who murdered Catelyn Stark.”

#WHOOPS PLOT #okay this was going to be the last chapter and then it got long #because me #so now there is going to be a Chapter Five #From This Day Until the End of My Days #braime #tumblr fic

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dreadwulf · 5 years

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If you are following From This Day Until the End of My Days and like to suffer: remember the scene in chapter 2 where Jaime chases the barmaid away from the door to the room where Brienne is sleeping? Thoughtful, right? But remember he’s stealing this nice little domestic moment for himself sitting by the fire and fixing the buttons on his jacket while Brienne is asleep, trimming his beard, sharing a room with his wife, exactly the sort of existence he has never been able to have. He shares the bed with her and even brings her breakfast. But he knows if she wakes up early it will be over, because she will almost certainly chase him out. It’s not real. And the worst part is he doesn’t fully realize he’s doing any of this.

#I'm working on the next chapter right now and thought I'd ruin your day #don't worry the next chapter will make up for it #From This Day Until the End of My Days #tumblr fic

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dreadwulf · 5 years

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Have noted that my story tag is not working as well as I’d like, so here are the direct links to the chapters for From This Day Until the End of My Days

#1 ... And Take You For My Lord and Husband

#2 ... And Take You For My Lady and Wife

#3 One Flesh, One Heart, One Soul

#4 With this Kiss I Pledge My Love

#5 Now and Forever

#will post to AO3 with additional editing when complete #Ye Olde Married On The Quiet Isle fanfic #braime #From This Day Until the End of My Days

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dreadwulf · 5 years

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anyway for people who care about that sort of thing this is the song that I’m playing while working on my little tumblr fic

#From This Day Until the End of My Days

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dreadwulf · 5 years

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#3 One Flesh, One Heart, One Soul

Brienne has become exceedingly annoyed with him.

It is a little like when they had first met, this antagonism. Except she had despised Jaime then, and he could not arouse any anger in her however he tried. She had remained calmly disdainful that entire journey despite his continued efforts to irritate her.

Now she is vexed. Jaime has succeeded in breaking her composure, nearly without trying, and all he had to do was inform a tavern filled with people that they were married, and convince them to toast his bride and buy them drinks. Drinks that their companions were very appreciative of, mind you. Even Brienne had finished a flagon, her face turned a now-familiar scarlet. She was at first clearly torn between shouting at him and punching him in the face, and settled on glaring daggers and leaving the room without a word to anyone, and now she has ridden ahead to their next destination without him.

Jaime is not nearly so satisfied with this accomplishment as he might have expected. It is a little unnerving actually. Brienne avoiding his gaze and not speaking to him was more troubling than he wanted to admit, but he has never seen her openly angry and it is inexplicably worse. He wasn’t completely sure that was possible.

Even their companions have noticed. The Hound has been clearly amused by the entire situation, and Ser Hyle has been smugly enjoying the deterioration of their relations. Young Podrick had ridden beside Jaime most of the afternoon, and questioned him anxiously.

“Why do you antagonize my lady so, my lord?” Podrick has been unfailingly polite to him thus far, in a way that suggests he is intimidated by him, or more likely by his House. But just now he is worried and protective of his lady knight, as loyal as any squire.

“I don’t know what you mean, Podrick.” He gives the boy only a sidelong glance.

“It upsets her. Ser Lady Brienne. I’ve never seen her like this before.” Pod sits up a little straighter on his little horse and affects a hardened expression. “You should be nicer to her.”

Jaime snorts. The lad is about as threatening as a newborn puppy. “I’m very nice to her. Am I not praising her to everyone we meet?”

Pod screws up his face in frustration. “She doesn’t understand. You’re hurting her.”

He shrugs off these comments; surely the boy has it the wrong way around. He spurs his horse and rides ahead all the way to Ironoaks, and the rough terrain of the rising road successfully occupies his thoughts.

The high road to the Vale is closed by the snows, but they have managed to hug the coast around Wickenden rather than travel through the Mountains of the Moon. It takes weeks longer, and still they have had to fight their way through rising snow. Hopefully their destination is close. Much of the Eyrie court has moved to the Gates of the Moon, and Brienne’s party has heard news of a tourney there to select new members for the Brotherhood of Winged Knights. It is in this direction they ride despite the worsening weather. From there they can cross to the rest of the Vale, if needed.

The village surrounding Ironoaks Castle is quiet and still. Jaime rides through much of it, looking for some central place where he might find Brienne. If she has not decided to ride somewhere else entirely to escape him. But no, she would not leave her squire, and Podrick Payne is hot on his heels even now.

He finds her at a posting in the village square with news of the tourney. She stands enfolded in her heavy travel cloak, her loose blonde hair blowing in the snow, and he dismounts to join her.

Jaime thinks little enough of the Vale Knights - they are confident in their superiority but were no match for his sword when he had two hands. But the conflagration of nobles and knights will surely be an ideal location to learn news of the region, and a safe place to hide from Crown forces. If the Stark girl is indeed in the Vale, she would surely be there.

“I might have competed in this once,” he says by way of greeting as he comes to stand beside her. “Perhaps you might consider it, becoming a winged knight. There are not so many Starks left to serve.”

Brienne does not turn to him. She fairly growls at him, arms crossed beneath her cloak. “I thought you wanted to find your honor? If you are not so distracted by ridiculing me.”

A strange falling sensation fills his stomach. “Oh, so you’re speaking to me now? How nice.”

“Will you stop telling people I am your bride?”

“Why? It’s true.”

“It’s misleading.” She glares at the missive nailed to the wall as if it has attacked her personally. “I never agreed to be anyone’s wife. Must you make this more unpleasant?”

“It’s not unpleasant for me,” he says cheerfully.

“Of course it isn’t.” Brienne lifts her chin and looks at him, and this time it is he who cannot quite meet her eye. “You can amuse yourself as you like, you are not the one who will be considered spoiled afterwards. Your reputation will be pristine when the marriage is undone, but not mine. Even though I spoke no vow, and was not even awake for the ceremony.”

He feels a pang of guilt at that. “It was not my idea either, Brienne. It was a convenience. I know that it was not real, and you did not agree to it.”

“For gods sake let’s keep it quiet then,” she hisses at him. “For the survival of my good name keep your japes to yourself.”

“For your good name, I’ll refrain from sullying it with mine,” he agrees with considerably less cheer.

“Why did you allow it in the first place? I thought you were forbidden to marry, as a Kingsguard…?” Brienne is staring at him most earnestly, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“As it happens, King Tommen has declared me dead and replaced me in the Guard. He did not wait overlong to do it, either. So as dead men have no vows…” he shrugs, with a great deal more indifference than he is feeling.

He hadn’t known that detail at the time, of course. It had most likely happened while they were on the Quiet Isle, and he had learned of it from rumors on the road. But she does not need to know that. Nor does she need to know how hurt he had been, to find himself so easily discarded.

“But what was the purpose? The Quiet Isle would have tended to me just the same. Why -- ?”

How to explain? She doesn’t remember it. She doesn’t remember him holding her belly together as they rode for the Isle. She doesn’t remember screaming in pain in the bed they put her in. How she had thrashed and writhed in it, when they let him look in. They would not let them go to her side, not even young Podrick, who clearly loved her like a mother. Not even him, when he had carried her in pleading for their help, and was still covered in her blood.

How can he explain to her that he tried to tell them no? That he had refused to wed an unconscious woman without her permission? That was when they had shown him, when he had seen her in that bed and wanted to carry her away immediately from that awful room. It stank of sickness, of infection, and she did not belong there. But of course it was coming from her, the sickness was in her and radiating off her in waves. Her skin was grey and damp with sweat and those wounds open to the air were black and dripping with pus. Her face gaped open at her cheek and he could see a flash of muscle tissue through the swelling, the cheek she had always kept covered before. These were old wounds, weeks’ worth of wounds, one on top of another, and worst of all the one to her belly that should have carved out her guts. They had stitched it shut, that one, but it showed no inclination to stay closed. She was shivering, moving in small, restless jerks.

“Can you give her nothing for the pain?” he had demanded of them, but they said the amount they would have to give to touch these wounds, she was unlikely to wake from it. They said it and the monk and his fellow looked at Jaime expectantly, as though they have asked him a question. It takes him too long to realize what the question is.

“If you’re asking,” he said testily, “whether I agree to a mercy killing, I do not. Brienne will live. You will save her life.”

They had looked at one another, grimacing. The monks had explained, one after another, that they could not save her. That her wounds were quite grievous, and quite infected, and the lady was mortally ill. They would be only delaying the inevitable. They thought, after a certain point when they had tired of arguing with him, that it would be selfish to continue.

“When I lost this” -- he had shouted at them, holding up what was left of his right arm -- “and I was burning with infection, wearing my own rotting hand on a chain around my neck and in such unimaginable pain I was pleading to gods I don’t even believe in to put an end to me, Brienne told me to live. She said I must live, and so I did. I would ask no less of her. I don’t care that she is a maid, she is no weaker than I am and has endured far more than most men. She will survive this if we let her. You will give her the chance to, and so help me I will make certain of it. I will burn this monastery down if you don’t.”

But she had writhed. The monks held her arms down firmly against the bed, to keep her from hurting herself or flinging herself off of it. Her entire body seized with pain, silently, an agony too harsh even to allow a cry to escape her lips. It bent her back so that she arched off the bed and her hands formed claws at her sides.

When she relaxed into unconsciousness again, Jaime noticed his lungs screaming at him and remembered to breathe in. He took a harsh gulp of air and held it painfully, his vision blurred.

“Do you see?” The Elder Brother had said then. “Do you understand?”

He had nodded wordlessly. He believed them, that she was dying. Dying by inches and measured breaths, the Stranger’s hand on her shoulder. He never told anyone that, not then and not later, that he had given in. Out loud he had insisted she would live, that they must try. But in that moment, looking at her in the bed, he knew that she was dying and there was nothing he could do to save her. That was why he had agreed to marry her. He could do nothing for her terrible pain but he would not allow her to die alone and scared. He could at least do that.

But she did not die. She did not die, and now she stands before him and she is confused and he does not know what to tell her. She doesn’t remember and there are no words to describe it. It had been agony, that helpless moment looking at her in the bed, and he would have done anything in his power to help her, and so he married her. There is no way to explain that.

Jaime steps closer to Brienne. He has to look decidedly upwards to find her eyes, and has never gotten used to it. His eyeline falls more naturally to her strong jaw, her neck, which he had been so entranced by in the Inn. Her neck, with the fading burn beneath her chin where they had hung her.

He could kiss her. She is unreasonably tall but he could bury his hand in her hair and turn her face down to his. Her mouth is not pretty but her lips are thick and pillowy and would be sweet to taste. He could do it.

“What about this?” he asks instead, suddenly. Jaime brushes his knuckles against it, the mark around her neck where the rope had been. “Why would you let the Brotherhood do this to you?”

Something strange flickers across her face. “I could hardly protest. There were too many.”

He insists. “You could have simply done as they wanted.”

Brienne shakes her head. “It would not have been right. You did not do the things they accused you of, and I would not execute an innocent man.”

Jaime should have been prepared for that answer but he isn’t. For some reason it hits him square in the chest, like a blow.

“Of course,” he says, a little breathlessly. He lets his hand drop back to his side. “You would only do right.”

Of course. Of course that is why. Brienne is good, she is truly good and honorable and she would have done it for anyone. Brienne would do the right thing, and that is that. She is a true knight and he is a damned fool.

He pretends to read the bulletin of the tourney with great interest.

“It was a whim,” he says in answer to her earlier question, and shrugs. “The nuptuals. They said it would be undone, and it took no time at all. Only a few words and it was over.”

“A whim.” She sniffs, and nods harshly.

“They were quite set on having you married, their order. For a lot of unmarried monks they are quite obsessed with it.”

“I see,” she whispers.

***

When he makes the arrangements at the Inn this time, he arranges for the two rooms, but does not mention a wife. He says very little at all, and sets himself in the tavern well apart from the rest of their little party.

Podrick Payne looks between the both of them, Brienne and Jaime, and stays with Brienne.

The Hound, oddly enough, sits next to Jaime, though he offers little in the way of conversation. He makes a pleasant enough drinking companion, in that he signals regularly to the barmaid to replenish their supply, and does not ask any questions.

Ser Hyle sits beside Brienne as she sullenly eats her supper, speaking to her eagerly, probably about their ridiculous situation. He had wanted to be the one to marry her, of course. He had offered it, on the Isle. But Hyle Hunt is a schemer from a minor house and he would wed Brienne for her inheritance and leave her on her deathbed, Jaime thinks. He would not have cared for her the way he had.

I know that it was not real, he had told Brienne.

I truly believe that the ceremony was real and it was sacred, Elder Brother had said.

There was not, in fact, much ceremony at all. He had simply sat beside her on her sickbed. The both of them in the same clothes they had worn before Lady Stoneheart, torn and bloodstained and filthy. They had bound Jaime’s left hand to her right and Elder brother said the words. One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever. Her hand was cold and limp in his but he threaded his fingers through hers and squeezed, hoping somehow she felt it as a comfort. If she was not silently screaming in objection to this farce of a wedding.

He said the words; she could not say them back. I am hers and she is mine. From this day until the end of my days.

They had left him alone with her, with dreamwine and milk of the poppy to ease her passing, and he poured her a finger of the dreamwine, and when much of it dripped out of her mouth he poured her another, but no more. She did not move about so much after that. Then he had crawled into the bed beside her and slipped an arm around her, just above the stitches at her belly, and held onto her as best he could with his handless arm and her wounded from head to toe.

She at least would not die alone, nor lie in an unmarked grave in a strange place. She would not go unremembered. He would make sure of that.

I don’t doubt you would have chosen better, but I will be a good husband to you in what way I can. I will take you to my home at Casterly Rock and make a place for you and a place for me. One day when I die they will lay our bones there together.

But she did not die. She had survived through long nights and days of pain and fever, had survived the monks and their bandages and resetting of bones and scouring of infection, and slowly her wounds had closed and her fever broke and consciousness returned at last, against all odds and expectations.

She had survived and by the Seven, he had been so relieved. Every day since he has been relieved. For the first time perhaps ever his most fervent prayers have been answered. He has lost his mother and his father, become estranged from his brother, separated from the children he had fathered, lost his right hand and his vocation, found that the great love of his life had been an illusion and a lie, but when he had claimed Brienne for his own she had survived.

So if she doesn’t want him for a husband, he surely cannot begrudge her that. He had not prayed for that, had he? He only asked her to live.

He stays in the tavern longer than all the others. Brienne and Podrick and Ser Hyle finish their supper quickly and disappear. The Hound paces him admirably but eventually excuses himself to his bed, with a strangely sympathetic touch on the shoulder.

He must look miserable indeed to earn pity from Sandor Clegane.

It takes a considerable amount of ale to do him any damage, watered-down as it is, but Jamie makes the effort. By the time he wanders upstairs he is weaving in his steps and sure that Brienne will be long asleep, and he is considerably surprised to find her sitting up, fully dressed and waiting for him.

She sits on the foot of the bed, her hands twisting in her lap, and she looks tentative and uncertain. Jaime likes that least of all, this new timidity. It is Brienne being Good again. She treats him as a suitor she is letting down gently, and he thinks that if he is going to be rejected, he might at least have made a real overture first. He has not earned this. This is unfair.

“We must put an end to this marriage,” Brienne says slowly, meeting his eye at last. “I do not like what it has put between us.”

The words stick in his throat awkwardly, though he has thought them often enough. “If we returned to King’s Landing, the Faith could annul it at my request. But I did not think you would want to abandon our search for that.”

“I don’t see much choice.” She wipes the heel of her hand across her face, quickly.

Finally he snaps at her. "Is it so awful, being wed to me? How humiliating for you, married to the most dishonorable man in Westeros. You must be suffering intolerably.”

Her mouth twists. “If you were not the loudest man in Westeros, it would not be so bad. If you did not insist on embarrassing me--”

"I didn’t realize I was to be a shameful secret for you to keep. If it embarrasses you, I will not speak of it But tell me, if you are so distressed, why didn’t you ask your Elder Brother to dissolve this farce?"

"I did," she replies sullenly.

Oh, he thinks. And then: Oh. Of course she did.

"I suppose he told you the same thing he told me then." His face is grown hot again, as if held to a fire, and he spits out the words as though they burn. "That it would be dissolved if left unconsummated at year's end. So there is your freedom if you can stand the wait."

"I can endure your japes if there will be an end to them." She hunches over strangely, her shoulders up nearly to her ears. 'i know that you would never touch me."

"Certainly not. I am a gentleman."

She looks up, suddenly fierce. "Sleep you in the other room then, so that there is no mistake. Our companions must support our claim that we do not share a bed."

"Fine," he says before he has quite thought about it, and storms out into hall, slamming the door behind him.

He stands frozen in the hall staring at the wall in front of him, until he hears footsteps behind him. Cautious footsteps.

He listens closely to them, imagining their maker, how carefully she steps so that he will not hear. She will open the door at any moment, to be sure he is gone, and he should move quickly into the other room they have rented but he is frozen in place. For some reason or other, he wants her to see him there.

But she does not open the door. Instead he hears the lock clicking into place behind him, sealing him out.

Click.

At this he immediately breezes into the adjoining room, startling awake their companions with some story of being locked out of his room after visiting extensively with the bar patrons.

"I knew you'd fuck it up," Ser Hyle says derisively from his pallet on the floor, and Podrick evinces a small giggle, and Jaime curses them all to the darkest of the seven hells and claims a chair for his bed.

He sleeps fitfully against his fist, and he does not think of his wife asleep alone in the next room behind a locked door and it does not hurt at all, it doesn't, it doesn't.

#From This Day Until the End of My Days #whoops now it's sad #my emotionally constipated warrior babies #tumblr fic

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dreadwulf · 5 years

Text

#2 …And Take You For My Lady and Wife

Jaime Lannister is not sure just what spirit of mischief has overtaken him, but when it is his turn to make the arrangements at yet another dismal inn he requests two rooms -- one for his companions, and one for his new bride.

It is a harmless enough deception; it’s even true. True enough. The distracted innkeeper accepts his coin with no indication that anything momentous has occurred.

Jaime returns to the other four riders with the arrangements, directing them to the Hound’s Trail Inn, and Brienne makes no comment when he tells her there will be two rooms instead of one. She looks ready to fall asleep on her feet, and there’s no point telling her about his little joke. She is unlikely to find it funny.

After seeing to the horses in the stables, he is reminded of his small deceit. “Your lady wife is resting upstairs,” the inkeep calls to him, and it takes several very disorienting seconds for Jaime to realize that the portly man refers to Brienne.

A more fully absurd summary of her he could not imagine, “lady” and “wife”. He makes a noncommittal noise and continues up the stairs to their room, those two words echoing in his ears.

Lady. Wife.

Brienne is, indeed, resting. Flat on her back, on top of the covers, only bothered to shuck the most troublesome of her armor off along the way. She snores lightly through her hair stuck up from the pillow in all directions, a thorny nest around her freckled face. Her boots are still on, those absurdly large feet pointing straight up at the ceiling.

There is only one bed in this room, a large and sturdy one with a fine headboard. He might have expected that, had he thought about it more carefully. He did tell the inkeep they were newly wed. Still, this room, with a small crackling fire and a dressing table, is far nicer than the one that Hunt and Clegane will be snoring in, which has three beds and not much else. And Jaime does not especially want to share a bed with Podrick again. He talks in his sleep, and thrashes about, and has kicked him several times already.

Brienne doesn’t stir when he shuts the door behind him, nor does she wake when he sits on the side of the bed and unlaces his boots. A good thing really; she has been most cautious of maintaining her distance whenever they set camp, and she will not like sharing the bed with him.

Even though they did, in fact, share a bed on the Quiet Isle. Several times. But she had been desperately ill, and does not remember it.

He sets his boots aside, and after a moment’s thought removes hers as well - it takes some time to unlace them with one hand but she sleeps on, even as he pulls them off her feet and puts a blanket over her. She opens her eyes only a little when he tucks the fur around her, allowing just a slice of blue to regard him sleepily before turning her face and closing them again.

Jaime would have to wake her on purpose if he wanted any company, and he supposes he shouldn’t. She was exhausted when they had left the road. She is exhausted most days, of late. Brienne is stronger than she was, but not quite back to herself. She tires rapidly, and her face has little color to it, and she engages not at all with his conversation no matter which way he tries. She has lost some of the bandages and the sling on her right arm, but she has not lost that nervousness of him. Ever since she left her bed on the Quiet Isle and learned the monks had married them. She has not quite looked him in the face since.

He considers the bed again. It is probably not that much more comfortable than the floor. But there is a blanket, and he is suddenly rather cold.

Brienne would be warm, he is sure of it.

Instead Jaime busies himself freshening up at the basin, even the lukewarm water refreshing after so long on the road. He washes his face and drags his fingers through his hair. He ought to shave while he has the opportunity; there is a small straight razor. His sister had hated his beard; she said it made him look common, and scruffy, and old. He would like to ask Brienne what she thinks of it, but if he wakes her for that she might slice him with the razor.

He decides to trim his beard instead, neatening the edges. He sits in the single chair and takes his time, wiping his face with a cloth draped over his stump. The fire is dying down and periodically he will get up and feed kindling to it until it sputters back to life.

When there is a knock at the door he jumps to his feet quickly and rushes to snatch it open.

The surprised barmaid is interrupted mid-knock. She is as young as Brienne but sweeter-faced, and holds an armload of wood. “I came to tend to the fire, Ser,” she says pleasantly.

He puts a finger to his lips and shushes her, and she looks past him to the shape in the bed. “I’ll take it,” he says quietly, maneuvering to take the wood and keep her out of the room.

“I’m sorry, My Lord,” she whispers. Then she smiles in a strangely conspiratorial way, puts her own finger to her lips, and closes the door herself.

Everyone loves a newlywed couple, it seems. Everyone else, anyway. He kneels at the firepit, quietly stacking the logs.

They have not discussed it. The marriage. Though admittedly Jaime has not tried very hard. When Brienne rejects his friendly overtures and shies away from him he simply grits his teeth and talks loudly to someone else. He grows ever more charming and personable. He can ingratiate himself to nearly everyone else they meet in their travels, now that he is inclined to make the effort. He banters with innkeeps and learns the news of the day. He makes playful conversation with barmaids, who are far happier to be in his company. He engages the lords and ladies they encounter in the usual idly predictable niceties until Brienne can ask her questions about a red-headed girl of four and ten. He is, he thinks, remarkably helpful and agreeable and it makes no difference whatsoever to the Maid of Tarth, who seems bound and determined to pretend that he does not exist.

He might have been hoping for conversation, when he put them together in this room. Though he had known it unlikely, after a hard day’s ride. Jaime’s not sure just what he had been hoping for, to be honest. He confuses himself.

There is a small mirror, and he regards his face briefly. Plucks a few grey hairs sprouting from the crown of his head. Then he settles back in his chair and scrubs some of the dirt out of his military tunic, rubs at the buttons with his rag until they shine again. Vanity, perhaps, but he enjoys these little duties, and with a small fire crackling nearby and Brienne’s quiet breathing, the evening passes peacefully.

When he finds his eyes closing on their own and the fire simmered down to embers, he walks back across the room and lies down beside Brienne, with a considerable acreage of bed between them for propriety’s sake. He stays on top of the blankets that she is underneath and he steals one pillow from under her arm and it is warm already against his face. He lies beside her in the dim light and is suddenly, terribly awake.

Propriety, he thinks. But of course he literally could not be more proper. He is a husband sharing a bed with his wife.

But she is not happy about that, and in some weeks it will be undone. If they ignore the marriage it will go away, and perhaps things will go back to the way they were between them, some version of that. He can joke with her again and she will spar with him the way she does with Podrick and Ser Hyle and they will find Sansa Stark somewhere here in the Vale and send her back to what remains of her family and sometime after that he and Brienne will part ways. She will continue serving the Starks, most likely, and he will go back to his son in King’s Landing. And that is how it should be.

It is sensible and inevitable and yet the thought of it fills him with a strange hollow feeling that makes it difficult to fall asleep.

He has a direct view of the place where the muscles of her long neck dive down into her freckled collarbone. He can’t stop looking at that, the cords of her neck, the gentle slope of her shoulder and the pale flesh below it disappearing into her tunic.

These are thoughts that, once you’ve had them, you can never un-think. You can try to stop them and they will only start themselves over again, like the words to a song that is stuck in your head. That spray of freckles seems to stay with him even when he blinks his eyes. She is freckled in a great many places, as he recalls from the baths. He keeps his eyes fixed on her neck so that he won’t become interested in anything else.

If the marriage is not consummated by year’s end, you may consider your vows rescinded.

What a terrible word, consummated. At the time it was a remote and legalistic proposition, a preposterous one. He has no intention of consummating anything with Brienne. But right now, at this moment, Elder Brother’s words are echoing in his mind and it sounds downright filthy. He is an arm’s length away from consummating a marriage. He didn’t even want to be married. Those damnable monks talked him into it. But she’s here and he’s here and she’s enticingly warm and he’s suddenly obsessed with her neck. He’s losing his senses.

He passes a fitful night in this way, wondering what in the world is wrong with him.

***

On the morrow Brienne is still sleeping soundly, and Jaime slips away to the kitchens. His restless night has only renewed his sense of mischief; he is a cheerful groom again amongst the kitchen staff.

“My goodwife sleeps still, but I will bring breakfast for her. She’s going to need the energy.” He smirks at the barmaid, who blushes. The cook gives a knowing sort of laugh and loads him down with pasties and sausage, a fine breakfast even for King’s Landing.

This is a good racket, he muses as he climbs the stairs. We could do this all across the Vale, and be fat as pigeons.

He wakes her this time, and insists that she eat. He knows all thirteen verses of “When Willum’s Wife was Wet” and he will sing them at her until she eats the breakfast he took the trouble to bring her. He gets through two verses and begins a third before she pulls the pillow off her face and sits up, glowering.

She rubs at her face and yawns and looks thoroughly unhappy to be awake, and then she looks at the bounty he has brought her, slightly dumbfounded.

“This is enough food for ten of us,” she says, looking over the food spread on the bedcovers with eyes a little wide. “I should share some with Podrick and the others.”

Jaime gently dissuades her. “Later. Let’s break our fast quietly first, without the Hound’s chewing and Pod’s chattering.”

She frowns at it, but she has already picked out a buttered roll that flakes apart in her fingers, and he starts on a sausage, and they eat together in comfortable silence. After that Jaime takes the remainder to share with their three companions, and by the time he returns Brienne has redressed herself.

Still, since Pod is shoveling pasties into his mouth Jaime takes the opportunity to help Brienne buckle her chestpiece, and in return she helps him with his quite amiably, and they leave their rooms rested and well-fed, and all-in-all it is a most pleasant morning until they are accosted on the stairs by the woman who had visited their room the night previous.

She puts a hand to Brienne’s armored arm after a worryingly bright smile in Jaime’s direction.

“Your lord husband,” the barmaid says, “looked after you quite solicitously. I was a little jealous.”

“My what?” Brienne sputters.

Jaime should jump in here to end the conversation before disaster could befall them, but he has suddenly quite forgotten how to speak.

“I’m sure it takes some getting used to, new bride and all that. You are a lucky woman, married to a handsome lord. And rich too, by the looks of him. Does he have any brothers?”

The Maid of Tarth’s eyes have gone so round they are fairly bulging from her face, and belatedly Jaime finds his voice.

“He’s already wed,” Jaime cuts in. “We’re here seeking his wife, actually. A maid of five-and-ten, with red hair, nobly born? Might you have had a guest of that description?”

The barmaid shakes her lovely head. “No, love. We don’t get many redheads round these parts anymore, with the Tullys bunkered up in the Riverlands. Best of luck to you.”

“My thanks.” He nods to her very politely and takes Brienne’s other arm. He has to steer her out of the Inn, as she keeps whirling her head around to look back at the barmaid and the inkeep behind them. Her face is very red.

Outside she snatches back her arm abruptly and storms over to her horse.

***

Later that day, after hours of riding in silence, Brienne pulls her mare alongside his destrier.

“My lord husband,” she says flatly.

His face goes hot with stunning rapidity.

“My lady wife,” he says back, as cheerfully as he can.

“Why did you tell them that?” She sounds defensive; her hands on the horse’s reigns are tight fists.

“It was far simpler to share a room when they believed us wed, and the others our servants. They asked no uncomfortable questions.”

“That was uncomfortable enough,” she says.

He feels an unpleasant sting at that; is it so intolerable to be thought the Kingslayer’s wife for a few hours? She doesn’t have to be so angry about it.

“I thought you appreciated honesty? We are in fact married, why shouldn’t they know it?”

“It’s hardly necessary to announce it to strangers for your amusement. Is it funny, the thought of me as someone’s wife?”

Yes, he thinks, and also no, not at all. Simultaneously.

“We are not touring the Vale for leisure,” she says, and her cheeks are burning still. “We are seeking the girl Sansa and keeping our vow to her mother.”

He affixes his eyes to the trail in front of them, a little incensed. “I have not forgotten.”

“Good. If it pleases you, let us leave what happened on the Quiet Isle behind us and attend to our quest without distractions.”

She spurs her horse and rides ahead, leaving him stewing on it

It does not please him. It does not please him at all.

Which is why, in the next village, Jaime does it again.

#From This Day Until the End of My Days #in which Jaime considers some of the big and important things #such as: Does Brienne Like My Beard?#tumblr fic

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dreadwulf · 5 years

Text

#1 - And take you for my lord and husband

Their strange party makes ready to leave the Quiet Isle. Young Podrick cheerful, chattering to Ser Hyle, seemingly not noticing the hard line of dissatisfaction the man’s mouth makes as he packs his horse. The most recent addition to their strange party, Sandor Clegane, formerly the Hound and recently a gravedigger, packs his own horse with a somber countenance, saying little.

Brienne acquaints herself to her horse, brushing her flank and speaking to her quietly. They have met only this morning; no one knows what became of her pretty mare and they hesitate to ask. She herself had arrived at the Isle in no condition to ride anything, across Ser Hyle’s horse.

She is pale in her travel clothes, not yet strong enough to wear her armor. More in hope than necessity her armor is strapped neatly to her horses’ back. Her right arm is in a sling and she is bandaged from one end to the other. Still she is eager to be away, determined to follow a rumor of the Stark girl in the Vale, and her companions know very well she will leave without them if they do not follow.

She moves a little stiffly, but her expression betrays no discomfort. Her only concern shows in frequent glances at her companions, watching anxiously for the last member of their party to appear.

Elder Brother watches them make their preparations a short distance away; he has said his goodbyes already, and accepted Brienne’s copious gratitude for their hospitality. Now he stands on the hill overlooking the cottages, waiting patiently. Lord Lannister approaches him with the uneasy feeling that this strange septon is waiting exactly for this conversation. One Jaime has been avoiding as long as possible.

He climbs to the top of the grassy hill, frost crunching beneath his boots and snowflakes sticking in his shaggy blonde hair. When he stands beside the monk, he finds himself pointed precisely at her. The only woman on the Isle, such as she is, presently strapping weapons to her horse and hitching her trousers to prepare to mount it. The lady warrior, the leader of their little party. His wife.

“You said that you would annul it,” he says to the septon in an undertone. “Have you done it?”

Elder Brother does not turn his head, and the cowl of his volumous brown robes conceals his expression. “I said that the marriage could be annulled if you both regretted it, when you left the isle.”

“Then it’s done?”

Elder Brother glances at him. “I cannot.”

“You–” Jaime glares at the man, who looks back at him placidly.

He grimaces, and looks down at Brienne. She looks up at precisely that moment, and when she sees the two of them standing together she hurriedly averts her eyes. Turns her back on the hill and busies herself with her mare’s bridle, her stance tense and uncomfortable.

Gods, this is going to be an ordeal, isn’t it? Jaime takes the monk by the arm and steers him away from her view. “What does she know?”

“I’ve explained it to her,” Elder Brother says. “Brienne has long known the rules of our order, that you could not have resided with her except as her husband. And you shared a cottage with her for well on a month now.”

“But not a bed. You saw that yourself. Surely you cannot mean to leave us married?”

He has a knowing sort of tone, Elder Brother. “We cannot administer and dissolve holy vows at a whim, Lord Lannister. However, considering the… unusual circumstances of your union, one of you being at death’s door at the time, we can make some allowances.”

“Allowances…” Jaime echoes his tone bitterly, and his hand makes a fist at his side. “You told me it could be undone. You told me she was dying, and anyway it could be undone. And now you refuse.”

“You’ll remember I have taken your confession as well, my lord,” he reminds the impatient lord. ”Your vows were sworn in earnest, and cannot be dissolved for convenience.”

He struggles to maintain calm, appear disinterested. “I would not take so seriously the confession of a man without honor.”

“You said that girl would have let the Brotherhood hang her rather than betray you. She let them put a rope around her neck. You said not one person in all your life had ever shown you such loyalty, not a single one.”

“I say a lot of things,” Jaime hisses at him. “If I praise your ‘gravedigger’ will you marry me to him as well?”

Elder Brother gives him a measured look. It is similar to the disdain with which he had first greeted Jaime, when he had been landed on their Island, but there is another and more fatherly mien to his gaze now, despite that he is not so much older.

“Do you know, Lord Lannister, why we require that men and women be married to reside together here?”

“Because you’re a religious order bound more by rules than sense!” Jaime snaps, with an anxious glance at the hillside.

“Because marriage is sacred.” The Elder Brother presses his hands together in a benediction, the same gesture he had made when he administered the vows. “Because it is blessed by the gods, and it is by the gods will that we work our healing. The bonds of family, the oaths of matrimony, the things we promise one another. These are among the most holy things in our world.”

Jaime laughs to himself at that. “I do not know why you have allowed me to make mockery of them then.”

The expression the monk gives him after this comment is much closer to pity than anything appropriate to a priest; Jaime likes it not.

“On the contrary, you have upheld your vows faithfully. You stayed at her side these weeks, you tended to her body and her spirit. I believe it saved her life.”

Jaime shakes his head. “You healed her, I did next to nothing. And I still would like very much to know how your healing works. Her recovery is nothing short of miraculous.”

Elder Brother sidesteps the underlying question quite smoothly. “Precisely. Many desperately ill and wounded people come to us on the Isle, and over the years you come to know who can be healed and who cannot. I tell you not one of us thought Brienne of Tarth would live out the night, all of the Quiet Isle expected her to perish. But not you. You would not allow it.”

He shrugs. “I know her better. I knew she would survive if given the chance. I only convinced you not to give up on her. That is all.”

“Listen, my lord.” Elder Brother turns to him fully and draws back his pointed cowl, revealing his bald head, as broad and sturdy as a bull’s. An expression as stubborn as one, too. “I could annul the marriage. Given that we truly believed she would die and she did not, and that she did not speak the vows herself, we could declare the ceremony null and void, a false pretense for convenience sake.”

Jaime nods to it. “That would be a relief.”

“But I won’t. I truly believe that the ceremony was real and it was sacred, and that your union is blessed by the gods. What’s more, I believe you truly love one another. That is a rare thing, a love that could bring a person back from the brink of death. I cannot in good conscience dissolve this marriage.”

“Surely someone can.” Jaime turns half away. He is imperious now, every inch the arrogant lord that Elder Brother had taken him for at the first. “It is a fine story you tell, but you are mistaken. I have only the highest respect for the Lady Brienne, but I am no lovestruck suitor of hers. And she has no wish to be married to me. I know The Council of Faith in King’s Landing would see this union as a fraud - a forced marriage, a concerned liege persuaded to wed an unconscious woman. They will annul it at my request.”

Elder Brother thinks on that. “I said there would be allowances. We have made no report to the Faith of your vows, and only we on the Isle know of them. I would not hold you to this union if you both are truly unwilling. If the marriage is not consummated by year’s end, you may consider your vows rescinded.”

Lord Lannister snorts and walks away, pulling a glove over his golden hand. “So I suppose that problem will solve itself in time.”

Elder Brother watches him approach his palfrey and mount it smoothly, pulling it onto the road without a glance at the rest of his party, most pointedly not at the woman who watches him with a perplexed and hungry expression.

“We shall see,” he says.

#From This Day Until the End of My Days #Tumblr-only for now #I guess everyone does a Married on the Quiet Isle story sooner or later #I guess I might as well hit all the tropes in one go while I'm at it.#next chapter: Yes There Is Only One Bed #Jaime x brienne #braime #tumblr fic

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