Chapter Text
She could fight an army of dead and win but this was the fight she had lost. The fight both of them lost. The fight the world has lost the moment it convinced him he was nothing more than a Kingslayer and an Oathbreaker, a Man without Honor, for it will always be deprived of something so truthful and pure as their love for each other.
She wanted to punch him, to blame him, curse him, hate him. If she could cut his memory out from her heart and soul she would. But an idea that she gave him love he had never known before, even if just for a little while, and helped heal at least one of his deep cut scars comforted her and she knew deep down if she lived a thousand lives, she would give him first her respect, then her trust followed by innocent love and at last the only thing she would have left-her body in each and every one of those lives.
Jaime was staring at his feet not being able to look at those stunning sapphire blue eyes that pierced his soul which he thought he had lost many years ago by carrying the burden of countless secrets and oaths to his king and his family. During those long cold nights in Winterfell that they spent together, Brienne has planted, in whatever there was left of his depleted soul, a seed of possible redemption. If only gods, of whose existence he still was not completely sure of, would not gamble with people’s faiths by running the world so full of pain and injustice. If only there was a place in it where an old knight with only one hand who broke every possible oath and the truest Lady Knight of Westeros who kept all of hers, even the impossible ones, could hide together till the end of times.
He gathered the last crumbs of his fleeting courage and finally looked up. Once, what seemed a several lifetimes ago, he thought she, in that certain light, could almost be beautiful. Tonight, in this silver moonlight she WAS the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, for all those hidden reasons the world was not able to see or understand. But she made him privileged by showing her beauty to him. The beauty that always simmered at her surface in front of him, if only he dared to look deeper into it and discover it sooner. She showed him her true self that had been protected by high walls built because of depreciation she had been experiencing for all her lifetime, the walls around her deepest desires and fears, that only Jaime managed to make crumble and fall.
Jaime immediately spotted new depths in her eyes, bottomless dark abyss of sorrow he knew he was responsible of. Another act that went right on the list of his unredeemable deeds, he thought.
She cupped his face with her long thin fingers firmly but at the same time more gentle than ever before. He reached for her hands that were shaking in a hardly noticeable way because of cold. She was always trying to stay strong, even now. He stroke one of them with his thumb instinctively and almost unconsciously, like he was trying to, by that simple short lived touch, tell her everything he didn’t manage to put into words because the spiky waves of pain running through all his being paralyzed him.
With tears chasing one another down her cheeks, she was the first to speak. “You are not like your sister- you are better than her. You are a good man, you don’t need to die with her.” Those worlds, that he knew were coming from the deepest part of her heart, because she truly believed in them, sent a gut wrenching feeling through his body.
When he finally managed to make his tongue and mind cooperate, it took all his strength, that he didn’t have much left of to start with, and he mumbled the words, in his cracking voice, that were at the same time the only truth he had ever known and his final verdict that sentenced him to death. “You think I am a good man?” He asked. “I pushed a boy out of the tower window, crippled him for life- for Cersei. I strangled my cousin with my own hands- for Cersei. I would have murdered every man, woman and child in Riverrun- for Cersei. She is hateful and so am I.”
She understood the words he was saying to her far better than he understood them himself. He thought of himself as a bad man with no place in this world who only deserved death and nothing more. And that hurt her heart more than the fact that he wanted to sneak out in this cold dark night and leave her without saying a word.
She wanted to shout all his good deeds he could not see himself from the top of her lungs. How he saved a million innocent lives by running a blade through the back of his king and never told the world the truth about it. How he lost his sword hand only to save her from men trying to force themselves on her. How he recklessly jumped into that bear pit and saved her life, again. How he kept his oath to Catelyn Stark even after she was already dead. How he took Riverrun without unnecessary bloodshed. How he rode north all by himself and fought bravely for the living, because he wanted to keep his promise.
She wanted to beg him to break that enchanted circle that life so cruelly captured him into and made him spin in, while he was desperately trying to break free from it. But she knew it was too late for that, she was out of time. She knew him well, true Jaime Lannister, possibly better than anyone. Brienne saw the darkness in these green eyes that showed her he reached the point of no return.
So the only thing she managed to spit out while her tears were suffocating her words before they even managed to leave her throat and roll on her tongue was: “Stay. Stay with me, please. Stay.” Her final plea for mercy for both of them.
Every tear rolling down her pale face felt like another nail in the coffin of his heart. But he had to leave because his could not allow his rotten existence spoiling her pure innocent one anymore. He had done enough already to make this terrible world even worse. So he straddled his horse and rode through the Winterfell gates into the night with no such bravery to turn around and give her the final look, for he felt it would shatter him into a million pieces.
Brienne was standing there in her gown forgetting how cold it was, crying her heart out for the only man she had loved, for a good man the world was about to lose soon, as she watched the night slowly swallowing his silhouette deeper into the distance.